The fixers

The candidates for Cambridge City Council are hoping to revitalize interest in local government. And one potential contender -- Jim Braude -- wants to turn that government upside-down.

Cambridge by Jason Gay

Pinch yourself. Mark that calendar. There are fewer than 160 days -- that's right, 160 -- until the next Cambridge City Council election.

Okay, so Cambridge City Council news doesn't exactly quicken pulses these days. After all, times are pretty good over in the People's Republic, what with a booming local economy, bustling business development, and a white-hot residential-real-estate market. Local politics, once a blood sport in this city of 90,000, has devolved into an amusing, mostly benign sideshow.

But the show is primed for a spark. All nine council seats are up for grabs in November, and for the first time in four years, some new faces are guaranteed to join the ranks. Two councilors, Frank Duehay (a 36-year political veteran who also serves as the city's mayor) and North Cambridge's Sheila Russell, have announced that they will not run for re-election.

That means that at least two members of a growing field of challengers will be sitting courtside in Sullivan Chamber come January 2000. Current hopefuls include Marjorie Decker, a former aide to state rep Alice Wolf; youth organizers Donald Harding and Robert Goodwin; Republican activist David Trumbull; environmentalist Craig Kelley; school-committee veteran Dennis Maher; and Robert Winters, a Harvard mathematics lecturer who publishes the Cambridge Civic Journal (www.math.harvard.edu/~rwinters/ccj.html), an occasionally irreverent Web newsletter about city politics.

But the biggest buzz surrounds someone who isn't even an official candidate yet. That would be Jim Braude, a veteran progressive and campaign strategist who has been quietly meeting with local pols and City Hall watchers as he mulls his first-ever bid for public office. Political observers and local journalists are all but begging him to run, hoping that he'll spice up the contest. And it's safe to say that Braude -- a former head of the Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts (TEAM) -- will oblige. As the race for City Hall draws near, he's looming over the existing field like a storm cloud. And he's already making noise about leading a charge to revolutionize Cambridge's oft-criticized "city manager" form of government.

"He's the big fish," says Robert Winters. "He's got the name recognition, and especially when you're thinking of new voters, people from other parts of the state may have heard his name before. And every little advantage helps."

But big ideas or no big ideas, Braude's not a cinch to win. And whether or not he makes a bid, the hope for Election '99 is the same: that Cambridge politics, lingering on life support, will get a new burst of energy -- and a new group of energizers.

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It's been some time since Cambridge residents were galvanized by the goings-on in City Hall. The end of rent control in 1995 not only changed the city's income demographics -- as rents have risen, younger, more-affluent people have flocked to Cambridge in droves -- but also its civic spirit. When rent control was an issue, Cambridge politics (and politicians) had a clear identity and a purpose to rally around. Without it, both are harder to find.

Likewise, recent city-council elections haven't been the liveliest. The last one, in 1997, was a real snooze-o-rama: all nine incumbents won re-election, with nary a challenger in spitting distance. Voter participation has dropped off since the early '90s, too. "Some people are dying, some of them are moving out of the city, and few of their children are picking up on the political traditions of their parents," explains Glenn Koocher, the host of the political talk show Cambridge Inside Out, which appears on local cable TV. "There are not a lot of people left who are passionate."

That's not to say that Cambridge has become a carefree Land of the Swells, however. There are still sizable working-class and middle-class populations that share grave concerns about Cambridge's affordability -- especially when it comes to housing, which remains in short supply. There are also pressing debates over education, public safety, care for the elderly, and development, to name just a few.

But the X Factor in next fall's election may be the city's new residents. Many of them have never voted locally, and so have yet to make their political presence felt. "The wild card is the demographic change," says Koocher. "Every once in a while, a change like this comes about and whacks you in the chest."

Cambridge elects its councilors through proportional representation, which means that candidates can secure office with a mere 10 percent of the vote. This can encourage them to nurture small, loyal constituencies. For example, Koocher attributes the "out of nowhere" 1993 election of attorney and gay activist Katherine Triantafillou to the "very meaningful gay and lesbian constituency" in Cambridge.

Now, Koocher and others wonder whether Cambridge's younger, educated, disposable-income set can power its own challenger into office. "The people, by and large, who are moving in [to Cambridge] may be a bit better schooled and better financed," says Robert Winters. "One would be a fool not to assume that there is a correlation between educational attainment and financial status and the way people vote."

But no one's certain what kind of candidate these new Cantabrigians will embrace -- or whether they will even vote at all. (Around here, in fact, there's sometimes a perverted correlation between educational attainment, financial status, and not voting -- just look at the Back Bay.) At the very least, these new residents are unpredictable. Winters, who has compiled election data for the city in the past, says that several candidates have come to him for analysis of 1997's council ballot. He has told them that those results are "almost irrelevant" because of all the newcomers. "You cannot make any predictions based on past information," he says.

Winters himself could benefit from the changes to the city's voting base. A long-time City Hall watcher and coordinator for the city's recycling programs, he's mounted three unsuccessful bids for a seat on the council and has yet to prove himself a capable fundraiser or door-knocker. But this time around, the Cambridge Civic Journal could give him an inside track among the city's growing legion of young people and techies. "I think it does help in a few ways, certainly with exposure to people who don't know me," says Winters.

Marjorie Decker is another candidate who could appeal to Cambridge's emerging youth movement. Just 26 years old, the UMass Amherst grad already possesses a formidable political résumé, including stints in the offices of Alice Wolf, state representative Ellen Story (D-Amherst), and former US senator Pat Schroeder (D-Colorado). Last fall, Decker managed Wolf's re-election victory over popular city councilor Anthony Galluccio.

"Part of my campaign is to reach out to young people and make them feel welcome -- make them want to invest in Cambridge for the long term," Decker says.

Still, Decker's too politically savvy to stake her hopes on fickle twenty- and thirtysomething voters. A product of a working-class family that lived in public housing, she's assembling a campaign agenda that hits the traditional progressive high notes of affordable housing, education, and the protection of racial and socioeconomic diversity.

"People come to Cambridge because of the type of community it is, not because they want to pay $350,000 for a house," Decker says. "They can pay $350,000 for a house in Sudbury."

What's more, Decker believes that Cambridge's political torpor has less to do with an influx of shiny, happy people than it does with the ineffectiveness of the council in general. She's not alone. More than one observer has complained that some of today's councilors seem more preoccupied with petty issues and personal score-settling than with resolving major issues. Such behavior has turned off the Cambridge electorate. If nothing else, says Decker, councilors must win back the attention of voters. "The city council needs to take a more active role," she says. "People are looking for that."

Some have suggested that the root of the problem is Cambridge's 59-year-old Plan E form of government. With Plan E, the mayor is elected by the city council, resulting in a so-called weak mayor. The council serves largely as overseer, and the day-to-day business of the city is performed mostly by an appointed city manager. Plan E, which arose out of concerns over political patronage, has been criticized, among other reasons, for ceding too much power to the manager, leaving councilors too unaccountable, and making the city's mayor little more than a ceremonial position.

Here's where Braude is looking to step in. The not-quite-candidate, who managed John O'Connor's unsuccessful Eighth Congressional District campaign and co-hosts a New England Cable News show called Talk of New England, favors a system where the mayor is elected and serves as the city's chief executive, and he says he's intrigued by the possibility of torpedoing Plan E. "My sense is that this election will be the beginning of a pretty intense debate about the form of government here," he predicts.

Braude says that his distaste for Plan E is not directed at Robert Healy, Cambridge's long-time city manager, though Healy is a target of increasing scorn whose future has become the subject of speculation. Rather, he says, he's interested in fostering "greater accountability" for city councilors and in boosting the city's political energy.

"If I can help move that debate front and center, then I may have accomplished something," Braude says.

Those who remember Braude's days leading progressive policy fights at TEAM and elsewhere won't be surprised to hear that he's aiming high. Skeptics still wonder how Braude will handle handshaking and baby-kissing -- "I don't know how enthusiastic he'll be about some elements of constituent service," offers Koocher -- but leading a reformers' revolt sounds like something right out of his progressive playbook.

"I have a very low threshold for bullshit," says Braude. "I'm not a process-oriented person. I'm outcome-oriented."

Hmmm . . . sounds like a candidate, doesn't it? There are fewer than 160 days till November, and counting.

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