DeBergalis Suffers Narrow Election Defeat

Although an upstart MIT graduate who pledged to provide a student voice in local politics gave them a run for their money, all nine incumbents stood poised for reelection to the Cambridge City Council late last night, according to unofficial results.

Preliminary results also showed Cambridge voters electing two challengers to the School Committee and voting down a measure that would request that the state allow rent control to be reinstated in Cambridge (see related stories, pages 6 and 7).

Most of the election results were unsurprising: in an uncontroversial race, the incumbents reclaimed their seats, and perennial favorite Anthony D. Galluccio—nicknamed “The Gooch”—once again dominated the election, winning more votes than any other incumbents.

Twenty-six year old MIT graduate Matt S. DeBergalis’ strong showing was the surprise of the evening, eliciting gasps from the veteran political observers who gathered in the Cambridge Senior Center to watch “The Count” last night.

DeBergalis registered approximately 700 to 1,000 students on the Harvard and MIT campuses during his campaign and garnered 1,172 so-called “number one” votes, giving him more than the total number of first place votes received by incumbents E. Denise Simmons and David P. Maher.

But DeBergalis was not elected under the city’s unusual system of proportional representation, in which each voter ranks candidates and each rank on the ballot matters—the number one votes count most, but the other slots on the ballot count too.

As the top vote-getters achieve “quota”—one-tenth of the total votes cast—the rest of the votes in their piles are transferred to the next candidate on each ballot.

The process, now done almost instantaneously by computer, continues in subsequent rounds until nine council candidates make quota and are elected—in last night’s preliminary count, for 13 rounds.

And while DeBergalis created a base of voters who strongly supported him, he lacked the citywide name recognition that would have put him over the top.

After the count of number one votes was announced, DeBergalis’ campaign manager Geoff Schmidt said he thought his candidate would do well, but was nervous that his candidate might not receive many transfer votes because his campaign strategy focused on recruiting new student voters to place him at the top of their ballots.

“We ran a very different campaign,” Schmidt said. “The number of number ones we need for a seat may be a lot different [than for other candidates].... The worry is that everyone who voted for Matt put him number one.”

He added that he thought DeBergalis had been “accepted into the Cambridge political community” and that his appeal was not limited to students.

DeBergalis’s campaign focused on student issues such as increasing the number of eateries and transportation options available late at night.

“One of the big problems nationally and locally is that young people don’t vote,” DeBergalis said. “A lot of good things will happen with a student voice on the council.”

After learning of the results after the transfer votes, DeBergalis said he planned to continue his involvement in politics.

“We have an opportunity with this, but we have to do something with it,” he said of his strong showing among students.

Several councillors congratulated DeBergalis on his high total of number one votes and said that the student-centered ideas in his campaign should be taken into consideration.

“We have a lot to learn from reaching out to young people, and I think that’s what he did,” councillor Henrietta Davis said.

Councillor Timothy J. Toomey Jr., said he appreciated receiving a copy of DeBergalis’s campaign letter in which he asked for voters’ number one vote—but crossed out “#1” and wrote in “#2” when sending it to Toomey.

“He’s a very energetic and smart young man,” Toomey said. “It looks like he has a future in politics.”

Based on the early results last night, candidates needed 1,950 first place votes to reach quota out of 19,490 ballots cast. Galluccio was the only one to reach quota in the first round, with 2,908 first-place votes.

The candidates had to wait until almost 1 a.m. to hear the unofficial results of the ballot transfers, after the ballot counting machine in the two precincts overloaded and those ballots had to be recounted.

The city will announce the official tallies today after write-in and incorrectly marked ballots are counted by hand and factored into the totals.

Maher, who was elected on the strength of transfer ballots after winning a lower number of first place votes, said he was glad that it appeared the current council would remain in office for another two-year term.

“This council’s worked well together,” he said. “I think that there’s been a lot accomplished.”

Last week the councillors voted unanimously to approve a deal with Harvard which regulated the development of the Riverside neighborhood by allowing Harvard to build taller buildings than community members had originally wanted, in exchange for providing public open space and affordable housing for city residents.

At Reeves’ campaign headquarters before the election, veteran local politician and Riverside activist Saundra Graham said she was pleased with the councillors’ actions and believed the incumbents would all win re-election.

“I thought they worked together well at the end,” she said.

While she said she did not like the last-minute nature of the agreement and wanted more time to look over the details, she said it was “something we can live with.”

Reeves was poised to win by a more comfortable margin than in 2001, when he had only a dozen more first place votes than challenger John R. Pitkin.

This year he came in fifth with 1,506 first place votes, while Pitkin, running again as a challenger, came in 12th.

According to Robert Winters, local political pundit and editor of the Cambridge Civic Journal, Reeves put more effort into the campaign this year and was a more “highly visible” member of the council who, for example, stepped up his support for Riverside during negotiations with the University.

Winters also said that the perception that Reeves was vulnerable may have influenced some of his supporters to rank him higher on their ballots.

Reeves’ campaign manager Gabriel Mondon said the campaign had feared that many of Reeves’ voters had left the city, so they focused on registering new voters and increasing publicity to win back some of their former constituents.

“We’re glad to be where we are,” Mondon said last night.

Reeves said his standing in recent elections has ranged from first to last, and his only focus is on winning a spot, no matter where in the ranking it falls.

—Staff writer Jessica R. Rubin-Wills can be reached at rubinwil@fas.harvard.edu.