March 5 - 12, 1998
![[Cambridge]](/archive/features/98/03/05/image/Cambridge_468x80.gif)
It's unseasonably warm for a late February afternoon, and Cambridge mayor Frank Duehay doesn't bother putting on an overcoat as he steps outside City Hall and into his green, city-issued Oldsmobile Eighty-Eight LS. It's a shiny, handsome ride -- power windows, power locks, power everything -- far nicer than the vehicle Duehay says he drove when he last served as Cambridge's mayor, back in 1985. But the no-nonsense Duehay seems to care little for these auto accouterments. He's all business as he steps on the gas and pulls out of the City Hall parking lot. The decline of the People's Republic
Cambridge politics used to be about rent control, radicals, and rabble-rousing. But the city is changing, activism is fading, and the old fires are burning out.
by Jason Gay
Duehay rounds a corner and turns right onto Massachusetts Avenue. Like much of Cambridge, this stretch of roadway has changed considerably since Duehay first won elected office some 34 years ago. Back then, Mass Ave was crammed with students and young families living in cheap apartments; today, students are still in evidence, but much of the area is dominated by luxury towers and stores catering to upwardly mobile professionals. To a long-time Cantabrigian like Duehay, this change is striking. Gourmet grocers, expensive furniture outlets, and fine restaurants have replaced the mom-and-pop shops and eateries he frequented as a young pol. This transformation is ongoing; many of the new establishments that Duehay drives past are less than two or three years old.
It's the same story elsewhere. From Harvard Square to Lechmere to Memorial Drive to Alewife Brook Parkway, Cambridge is a changing city, and veteran politicians are just trying to keep up. The changes have brought new residents, and raised new questions about the city's identity and direction. Cambridge has long been linked to a tradition of political inclusion and progressivism; this is, after all, a city known as the "People's Republic of Cambridge." It was the training ground of Democratic heavyweights like JFK and Tip O'Neill, and it remains a city where it's okay to be not just liberal but left-wing. To paraphrase native comedian Jimmy Tingle, Cambridge is the kind of place where people don't care if condoms are passed out in the schools, but they'll throw a fit about a Christmas tree pitched on city-owned property.
But now, Cambridge's progressive fireworks -- its "People's Republic" rebelliousness -- seem to be going the way of all those mom-and-pop stores on Mass Ave. The new Cambridge is rich and getting richer, less diverse, and (egad) more conservative. Likewise, the new Cantabrigian isn't the activist type, and is less likely to pay attention to street-level city politics. Sure, people still care about issues like good schools, safe streets, and clean water, but when it comes to political life, Cambridge today has more in common with sleepier, more suburban-style cities like Brookline or Newton than with the Cambridge of old. There are different faces, different attitudes, and shifting priorities.
"Maybe this community is becoming less caring," Duehay muses, spinning the Oldsmobile down a side street lined with triple-decker homes. "It's really hard to tell."
The People's Republic tag is partly mythic, of course. Cambridge has indeed been home to thousands of feisty intellectuals and insurgents, and it's seen plenty of ultralefty, anticapitalist rabble-rousing. The city still gets mentioned in the same breath as Berkeley, California, and Madison, Wisconsin. But that Moscow-on-the-Charles reputation gives short shrift to Cambridge's rich tradition of working-class, street-smart neighborhood politics. Though students may get attention for marching in Harvard Square, the city's political backbone is still found in its less transient neighborhoods -- close-knit places like North and East Cambridge, Central Square, West Cambridge, and Cambridgeport -- which have defined the local agenda for decades.
And starting in the early 1970s, no issue dominated the city's political agenda more than rent control. Cambridge is a tenant city, and the promise of low rents energized many residents and infuriated others, particularly small landlords. Either way, rent control was undeniably the organizing principle of city politics; it built careers and constituencies for leaders on both sides of the issue. Duehay, who was first elected to the city council in 1971 after eight years on the school committee, was an early ally of rent control, and maintained the solid backing of rent-control tenants for nearly two decades.
But the statewide elimination of rent control in early 1995 brought the debate to an end, and Cambridge's political landscape began changing immediately. Many of the city's activists lost their raison d'être and withdrew from the political scene. New activist groups -- such as the Eviction Free Zone and the Campaign to Save 2000 Homes -- have formed to defend the rights of former rent-control tenants, but these groups' battles are comparatively low-profile. "Since rent control has gone out, people seem to care less about what is going on," says David Hoicka, a local activist and attorney who is mounting a bid for the state legislature.
The end of rent control is also beginning to alter Cambridge's demographic character. A recent study commissioned by the city's community development department found that from 1995 to 1997, the rents in the city's 14,000 decontrolled housing units rose, on average, 54 percent. Forty percent of the tenants who lived in rent-controlled units have moved in the two years since the apartments were decontrolled, and more than half have left the city entirely. Not surprisingly, the hardest hit have been low-income tenants and the elderly, the study reported.
The long-term residents leaving the city are being replaced by a new breed of Cantabrigian who tends to be younger, richer, and white. "Compared to existing tenants . . . new tenant households are more likely to include college or graduate students, no children and no elderly, and have higher incomes," Susan Schlesinger, the assistant city manager for community development, recently reported to city leaders. Her department's study also noted that of the new tenant households in Cambridge since rent control was phased out, 25 percent have a median annual income of $60,000 or above. Prior to 1995, that figure was 14 percent.
"I live on a street where every house has been improved in the past two years," says city councilor and Central Square resident Kenneth Reeves. "And my back-door neighbor just bought his place, a one-bedroom condominium, for $415,000."
To be sure, Cambridge has always been home to the very rich, especially in the tree-lined, mansion-filled enclaves of Harvard Square and Brattle Street. But these days, rents are rising everywhere, and younger, more affluent professionals are taking up housing stock in traditionally blue-collar and ethnic neighborhoods from Central Square to East and North Cambridge. A recent cartoon in the Cambridge Chronicle lampooned what it termed the "New Cambridge Diversity" -- a string of different-colored Range Rovers.
"We're beginning to see a new class of residents who don't have much need for government," says Reeves.
Glenn Koocher, a self-styled Cambridge political pundit who hosts the weekly cable television show Cambridge Inside Out, sees even broader implications.
"We've lost our sense of unity," he says. "Cambridge is becoming a place of people who are well-to-do and people who are economically disadvantaged, and the people in the middle -- the blue-collar types who cared a lot about politics and schools and such -- are moving out."
Duehay, who was recently named chair of the community and economic development committee of the National League of Cities, worries that post-rent control Cambridge is splitting into "two separate cities," with different constituencies and political concerns. The wealthier city resident is preoccupied with quality-of-life issues such as traffic congestion, noise, open space, and parking, the mayor says, while the less fortunate resident faces more basic concerns such as affordable housing and job training. "One city has the luxury of thinking about quality of life," the mayor says. "The other city doesn't."
In years past, Cambridge's disenfranchised residents could count on the city's activist population to rise to its defense. But this population, too, is changing. Though a handful of groups and causes remain (Food Not Bombs, a homeless advocacy group, recently won a standoff with city officials in Central Square), many of the city's activists have either moved away or recast their priorities. Indeed, the generation of Cantabrigians who once protested everything from the Vietnam War to a nuclear reactor at MIT to nerve-gas research at the consulting company Arthur D. Little, in the Fresh Pond area, has grown older and begun embracing such timeless political subjects as zoning, public education, and property taxes.
"As the baby boomers age, they are growing more interested in their own economic welfare," says Koocher.
Cambridge politics are being taken over by "home and garden" issues, says Robert Winters, a Harvard mathematics lecturer who publishes an e-mail newsletter about the local political scene. Indeed, the city's political agenda is looking increasingly suburban and neoconservative. "Growth management" has supplanted rent control as the Cambridge resident's rallying cry, he says; if you want to get something accomplished nowadays, you don't call a protest rally, you go before the planning board with a petition.
"We used to have a very radical-sounding, radical-acting, even radical-looking sort of identifiable avant-garde left wing," Winters says. "[But] today, that has been replaced by people who are more concerned with property values."
In fact, almost everyone's obsessed with property values in Cambridge these days. Why not? Thanks to a booming economy, a thriving real estate market, and an accompanying surge of private investment, Cambridge is in robust financial health. The Wall Street Journal recently heralded the city's white-hot status among technology firms. Add rent deregulation to the mix, and you quickly see why property values are soaring, tax revenue is climbing, and the city's coffers are swelling. Cambridge is only one of two cities in the state with a triple-A bond rating; Newton is the other.
But the current boom has also rekindled local fears about overdevelopment and gentrification. And this anxiety is strongest in neighborhoods that are home to long-time residents and families. In North Cambridge, for example, residents are trying to block large-scale business development along the Alewife Brook Parkway, citing worries about increased congestion and environmental pollution. Similar concerns surround the construction of Museum Towers, a pair of luxury apartment high-rises near the Charles River in East Cambridge, and plans for two office buildings and a 577-car parking garage on the former Polaroid headquarters along Memorial Drive.
"People want to make sure that their city is not overly built and congested," says Katherine Triantafillou, a three-term city councilor who lives in North Cambridge.
Such fights cannot be dismissed as parochial, not-in-my-backyard disputes. There's a concern that these developments are changing not just Cambridge's physical appearance, but its eclectic, take-all-comers spirit.
This fear is especially acute in Central Square, where a growing number of older businesses are closing their doors and giving way to chains and other more upscale establishments. Woolworth's, the area's last surviving major retailer, recently became a Foot Locker when the dime-store chain went bankrupt. The former Harvard Do-nut Shop is a spanking-new Starbucks. A protest group called Save Central Square is attempting to block a developer's bid to build a seven-story apartment/retail complex on a block once occupied by an eclectic row of stores including a haberdashery, a left-wing bookstore named for Lucy Parsons, an Egyptian-owned diner, and an Ethiopian restaurant. (All but the Lucy Parsons Center have closed their doors.)
Hoicka, one of the Save Central Square organizers, says the protest group draws its core membership from residents "with a sense of place" who think that Cambridge is losing its character amid its current prosperity. "We're a surprisingly broad group of people," Hoicka says.
Still, some Cambridge residents applaud the upscaling of the neighborhood, often citing Central Square's past troubles with crime and trash. Critics of Save Central Square charge that Hoicka is using the protest to fuel his own bid for office, and that the group is ignoring the developer's promises to designate some badly-needed affordable housing in the proposed rental/retail complex. Robert Winters, for one, thinks that Cambridge -- with a rental vacancy rate hovering below 2 percent -- should be encouraging as much housing construction as possible, even if it's targeted toward the affluent.
"During good economic times, we should be encouraging pretty wide-scale development," Winters says. "Then, when the economy changes, you may not have the money, but you have all these units."
Perhaps. There's no question that Cambridge can use more places for people to live, especially at affordable prices. But right now, says Duehay, the pressure to build is enormous, and Cambridge's leaders are being asked to make weighty decisions more quickly than they'd like. During the boom, he says, the city should move deliberately and cautiously.
"We must try to preserve the livability, hospitality, and diversity of this city," the mayor says.
In this climate of rapid change, it's surprising how constant the city's political leadership has remained. Last November, all nine members of the city council were reelected with barely a scratch from a swarm of challengers including Winters and Ian MacKinnon, a local street performer who pledged to donate half his salary to fund arts grants. The absence of new faces, coupled with the current prosperity, gives the proceedings inside City Hall an efficient but drowsy feel.
"People are happy, and so are the pols," acknowledges William Cunningham, a long-time rent control activist who also mounted an unsuccessful bid for a city council seat. "And Cambridge politics are duller than ever."
But tell that to 30-year-old councilor Anthony Galluccio, a West Cambridge native and rising star who clawed his way to the highest vote total in the council's proportional-representation election. Galluccio, a relentless campaigner with no shortage of self-confidence, bolstered his following by courting votes not only in his neighborhood base, but also among blue-collar and ethnic residents. (His rising stock was confirmed in late January, when his council colleagues voted him vice mayor.)
"I don't think Cambridge politics has lost its spark," Galluccio says matter-of-factly. "We're now entering politics as it should be. It's less about stereotypes and labels and more about who's standing up for neighborhood issues. It's really going back to old-school neighborhood politics."
Still, some of Cambridge's political traditions appear to be crumbling. For more than 50 years, most local progressive leaders have been aligned with the Cambridge Civic Association, the city's largest and most powerful political organization. (More-moderate councilors, such as Galluccio, are backed by the newer, more working-class-oriented Alliance for Change.) Every election season, the CCA produces a political platform and a "slate" of council and school committee candidates; more often than not, its candidates and agendas prevail.
But an ugly dispute over the city council's election of Duehay to the mayor's seat has put a few chinks in the CCA's armor. Just prior to the late-January election, it appeared likely that Triantafillou -- who had gone out and secured the vote of the unaligned Reeves -- also had the backing of her CCA colleagues Duehay, Kathy Born, and Henrietta Davis. Triantafillou says that Duehay personally promised her as much. That support would have given her the five votes she needed to win. But in a last-minute shift, the three CCA-ers broke rank, and joined Galluccio and Alliance member Sheila Russell to install Duehay as mayor.
Depending on whom you talk to, Triantafillou was either lied to by her closest colleagues, or caught flatfooted by some old-style back-room dealing. She immediately denounced and quit the CCA, and the association lost one of its brightest stars. A lesbian and an attorney by trade, Triantafillou had strong support in the gay and lesbian community and among progressives, but she was expanding her base as well. And now, she's doing her best to take those followers with her.
"I think the mayoral election was a real watershed for Cambridge politics," says Reeves, another CCA expatriate. "You cannot have elected officials who lie to each other and publicly embarrass each other and at the same time pretend to have some sort of civic virtue. . . . I think some very thoughtful people are disgusted."
And Duehay, who denies any wrongdoing in the mayoral controversy, is left to clean up the mess. His election-night gamesmanship may have impressed insiders who thought the well-liked councilor didn't like playing hardball -- "I was surprised that Frank could pull something that ballsy off," says Koocher -- but now, Duehay must preside over a council that is increasingly Balkanized. In one corner is the remaining CCA trio of Duehay, Born, and Davis; in another are Galluccio, Russell, Tim Toomey, and Michael Sullivan of the Alliance; and then there's the new, iconoclast progressive duo of Triantafillou and Reeves.
Duehay puts several issues at the top of his mayoral agenda, including more affordable housing, better job training for young and new residents, improved public education, and expanded city-sponsored daycare and after-school programs for the children of working parents. But given the current divisiveness on the council -- and, especially, the broken ranks of the CCA -- it will be difficult to shepherd this progressive platform into reality.
"The current political system has collapsed upon itself," says Reeves.
Duehay parks his green Oldsmobile outside Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, and heads to his next appointment: a Black History Month celebration recognizing the school's African-American honors students. From the moment he sets foot inside the school, it's clear that Duehay is in familiar, welcoming territory. Students, teachers, and administrators approach him and offer congratulations on his recent election. The organizers of the celebration are grateful he's shown up, and as Duehay works his way into the school auditorium, a student in a goose-down vest announces within earshot, "Mizzah Mayor is in the house."
At the ceremony's outset, Duehay gives a brief, glad-to-be-here speech; later, he hands out certificates of accomplishment to African-American students who have made the honor roll. It's a handshake, smile-for-the-camera affair, the kind of event that many politicians get bored by -- especially after three decades of public service. But Duehay seems genuinely energized by the hourlong celebration. When an honor-roll student grabs him tightly by the hand and chest-bumps him, the mayor breaks into a smile, and the crowd erupts. "Wasn't that a great ceremony?" Duehay says later.
The current knock against Duehay is that he's a creature of the establishment, a liberal fossil backed by comfy constituents around Brattle Street -- a man who isn't going to rock the boat while he's in office. ("It's going to be more of the same old, same old," groans one city councilor.) But others think the pragmatic, process-minded Duehay is the perfect leader to steer Cambridge through this turbulent transitional period. If he's not exactly a sparkplug -- Duehay will never be confused with Winston Churchill -- he's earned a reputation for consensus-building and fairness.
"I'm not sure he's the most dynamic innovator," says Koocher. "But for someone on the left side of the aisle, he certainly is well-liked."
And it's important to remember that this is Cambridge, and the standard political definitions can't be used to describe local pols like Duehay. (There are progressives, and then there are Cambridge progressives.) Duehay is a pol who has been, at various points in his career, an aggressive campaigner for nuclear disarmament, the leader of a peace delegation to the Soviet Union, and a catalyst in Cambridge's drive to establish itself as a sanctuary for Central American refugees. This is a pol who once beat hippie NBA center Bill Walton at chess.
"He may not be an aggressive leader, but he's thoughtful," says Robert Winters. "People who really pay attention to city council affairs like Frank."
Nevertheless, the Cambridge political culture that shaped Frank Duehay's career is changing around him. No one knows this better than he does. In his last campaign, Duehay was caught off-guard by the number of new residents living in apartments and houses where he'd once found loyal supporters. Those new people, he knows, have their own concerns. A new political era is descending upon the People's Republic of Cambridge, and not even the mayor knows what the future holds.
"Despite all the pressures, this can still be a diverse city," Frank Duehay says. "But is this becoming a city of displacement? We still don't know the answer to that. And I'm not sure it's going to be a completely satisfactory answer."
Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.
In a loosely related feature, Elizabeth Manus follows
author Ben Anastas on an underachiever's tour of Cambridge.
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