(No more) Mr. Nice Guy

Cambridge city councilor and mayor Frank Duehay calls it quits after 36 years. What will his legacy be?

by Jason Gay

CAMBRIDGE

Frank's outta here. That's the big news in Cambridge, where mayor and city councilor Frank Duehay announced last week that he will not run for reelection in the fall after 36 consecutive years in elected office.

Duehay called it quits Friday, March 26, at a small press conference inside his second-floor office in Cambridge City Hall. There, surrounded by political associates and friends, the mayor -- a compact man with neatly combed gray hair and small, sunken brown eyes -- stood before his wooden desk and read a prepared statement. "I have been honored to represent the citizens of Cambridge on the school committee and the city council, and as mayor, for a total of 36 years," Duehay said. "When my term expires on January 2, 2000, I will have achieved many of the goals I set for myself during that time. I thank my supporters for giving me the opportunity to serve Cambridge."

Then Duehay, who is 65, fielded a couple of easy questions from reporters. He said he'd been thinking about stepping down for several months. He said he had no immediate plans to endorse another candidate for the council. He joked that he'd considered sticking around long enough to fix a rut in the road near his Harvard Square home. He thanked his colleagues for their support through the years. "This has to end at some point," he said.

The press conference was like the man himself -- straightforward, dignified, and slightly wooden. During his decades of service, which began with his 1963 election to the Cambridge School Committee, the Harvard-educated Duehay developed a reputation as a reliable, if restrained, liberal voice on the city's occasionally combustible political scene. He has never ranked among Cambridge's most stylish or colorful pols, but he is generally well liked and respected.

"What I learned from Frank was finesse," says Kathy Born, a three-term Cambridge city councilor. "I learned you don't always have to be the loudest and angriest councilor for the public to understand your dedication."

Indeed, colleagues say Duehay's signature assets are his practicality and his affection for procedure -- good skills for a politician, to be sure, but not the kind that win headlines. Trained as an educator (he later became a university administrator, first at Harvard's School of Education, then at Tufts's Filene Center for Citizenship and Public Affairs), he is well regarded for his ability to broker compromise. Born recalls working with him shortly after the state voted out rent control in 1994; Duehay, she says, worked tirelessly to prod Harvard into preserving 100 decontrolled units as affordable housing. "He is quiet but effective," says Born.

And though his suits, patent-leather shoes, and plain-colored ties give him a decidedly middle-of-the-road look, Duehay's lefty credentials have rarely been questioned in über-liberal Cambridge. Solid on schools, enviro-friendly, and big on affordable housing, he has long been a favorite of the city's progressive establishment. (One of his closest allies is Geneva Malenfant, who for years was head of the Cambridge Civic Association, the city's oldest and most powerful political-interest group.) Duehay, who was born in Washington, DC, and raised in Cambridge, has backed local initiatives for nuclear disarmament and has helped make Cambridge a safe haven for Central American refugees. He also led a peace delegation to the former Soviet Union.

"Frank has been the quintessential good-government good citizen," says Glenn Koocher, a former school committee member who now hosts a cable-television show on Cambridge politics. "He's been on the appropriate side of every issue."

At the same time, Duehay's critics argue that the mayor has been too reluctant to stick his neck out on controversial matters, especially if it might mean alienating his constituency. And it is the nature of that constituency that perhaps rankles his detractors the most: historically, some of his strongest support has come from voters in the wealthier neighborhoods surrounding Harvard Square. As a result, Duehay has occasionally been derided as a chauffeur for Cambridge's limousine-liberal set, too timid to make waves. Says Koocher: "He's a guy who's never tossed a bomb in his life."

It's ironic, then, that one of Duehay's biggest political achievements was also one of the city's most explosive political moments. Last winter, he outwrangled fellow CCA councilor Katherine Triantafillou to get himself elected mayor (in Cambridge, the mayor is chosen by city councilors, and not by the public at large). Critics said he'd engineered a backroom deal with independent councilors to ensure his victory. Duehay denies any wrongdoing, but it's clear that some resentment lingers among the city's left. Councilor and former mayor Ken Reeves calls Duehay's election a "bushwhack of Councilor Triantafillou" and says it was "unnecessary, unkind, and really inhumane."

To some, Duehay's maneuvering for the mayorship revealed a shrewdly calculating pol lurking beneath his mild-mannered exterior. But suggestions that Duehay has a dark side are overblown. Even Reeves, the closest thing the city council has to a political iconoclast, acknowledges that he and Duehay "have been on different pages very few times." Born says that Duehay has broken away from his limo-liberal base in recent years, most notably in his support for a nursing home abutting Fresh Pond that was opposed by some wealthy voters on environmental grounds. And nearly everyone who knows Duehay says that his marriage several years ago to attorney Jane Kenworthy Lewis -- after a lifetime of bachelorhood -- softened him and made him realize there's more to life than politics.

"There's a tendency in politics for people's egos to get in the way," says Cambridge vice mayor Anthony Galluccio, who wasn't even born when Duehay first won office. "With Frank, that hasn't taken place."

Of course, it's not over yet. Though Cambridge insiders are already handicapping Duehay's council replacement (Democratic strategist Jim Braude has the pre-race pole position, with state rep Alice Wolf's aide Marjorie Decker a length or two behind), the mayor still has nine more months in office. Duehay clearly relishes the opportunity. On Friday, long after his press conference ended, he lingered in his office, discussing unfinished political business and his hopes for the rest of 1999.

But after umpteen elections and too many handshakes and dedication ceremonies to count, the end is near for Frank Duehay, politician. There's talk that Duehay could wind up back in a university-administration job, teaching, or even with a smaller gig in local government. But last week, as he talked about his big victories and his little ones, recalling the meetings that never ended and the phone calls from constituents in the middle of the night, it was clear he's eager to see what the political afterlife is like.

"This job," he said, "never really ends."

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.