Mosh politics

A crowd of city-council candidates fight to be heard in the People's Republic

by Jason Gay

Think local politics are dead? Get your butt to Cambridge. This fall, 24 people are running for nine seats on the Cambridge City Council. This race is packed tighter than a Barnum & Bailey clown car. You have seven incumbents. Seventeen wanna-bes. Old-school candidates. New-school candidates. Big-money campaigns. No-money campaigns.

Call it democracy squared. Under Cambridge's proportional-representation system, all a candidate needs to win (in theory) is a little more than 10 percent of the vote. That's what brings out so many candidates. Proportional representation means you don't have to appeal to everyone. You just need to find an audience of loyal supporters, target their issues, and get their bodies to the ballot box.

This year, there's extra buzz in Cambridge because two veteran councilors, Frank Duehay and Sheila Russell, are hanging it up. That means fresh blood on the council for the first time since 1995. Guaranteed. The open seats have attracted new challengers and new energy. "There's some strong candidates," says incumbent councilor Henrietta Davis. "It's ratcheted up the competition."

Of course, candidates are only half of the equation. The other half is the Cambridge electorate. Here's where it gets really unpredictable. Ever since rent control ended in 1995, Cambridge has been a city in flux. Many people have left town because of higher rents, and they've been replaced by younger, more affluent residents. It's anyone's guess whether these new residents will vote -- many people are betting they won't -- but they're a big campaign issue in the city.

"It's sad," says Councilor Kathy Born. "I was door-knocking last weekend, and I met a nice man and asked him if he had any problems he wanted to talk about. He said, `The problem is that there are too many people like me moving into the city.' "

Indeed, if there's a central theme to the '99 city-council campaign, it's the challenge of keeping Cambridge affordable to its new and old residents alike. The issue to end all issues is affordable housing -- the preservation and creation of housing that fits the budgets of the city's increasingly strapped working and middle class. Another concern is the pace of development: many Cambridge residents, wary of the new construction recently completed or in progress in many parts of the city, want controls on business expansion. Residents are also asking their elected leaders to preserve the city's dwindling supply of green space for recreation -- instead of letting it be overrun by another building boom.

The goal of all this? Slow down the change. "I think we've been losing our neighborhoods for a while, and I hope we can bring them back," says Councilor Michael Sullivan. "I do have the sense that we're losing the city's middle ground -- we're getting the very, very rich and the working poor."

Of course, the '99 race must address other fundamental issues as well. As usual, there's debate about the quality of the city's school system. Concerns about elderly care and public works. Fears of racial trouble -- in particular, alarming charges of discrimination in City Hall and in the local schools. There have also been complaints about the activities of the city council itself -- charges that the current group has been too divided and plagued by petty infighting. Says first-time council candidate Marjorie Decker, "You don't have to like each other as city councilors. But you do have to work together."

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So off the 24 council candidates go, with their stock issues and their brochures and bumper stickers and yard signs. They slogged through the spring and the dog days of summer, when no one was paying much attention (some even started as far back as December '98). Most of them are going door to door (one, MIT student Erik Snowberg, is going dorm to dorm), hitting the senior picnics, and even jogging in the local road races.

The incumbent pool includes Anthony Galluccio, the city's vice-mayor and a formidable campaigner who topped the council ticket in '97. There's also Katherine Triantafillou, a progressive's progressive who finished second to Galluccio two years back. There's Sullivan, scion of the city's most famous political family. There's also Born, the senior candidate of the city's fading but still active liberal political organization, the Cambridge Civic Association, who figures to cash in on some of Duehay's old CCA votes.

Other incumbents include Tim Toomey, the East Cambridge stalwart who also serves as a state representative. There's Henrietta Davis, who was frightened when she finished ninth of the nine winners in '97, and is stepping up her campaign this year to avoid getting bounced. Same goes for Ken Reeves, the iconoclastic former mayor who finished eighth two years back.

But incumbents are incumbents. Though some are better liked than others, they're old news. The big news this election season is the new kids -- the challengers. And it's not just the quantity. It's the quality.

Many of the challengers are not only good candidates, but good stories. There's Decker, a 27-year-old product of public housing and a former aide to State Representative Alice Wolf, whose aggressive campaign is wowing (and worrying) the incumbents. Among other proposals, Decker's pushing for a centralized office to address the city's housing needs and a cautious review of business development in her Central Square neighborhood and elsewhere in town. There's Helder "Sonny" Peixoto, another 27-year-old, who's busily organizing the Spanish and Portuguese vote and keeping Tim Toomey on his toes in East Cambridge. Peixoto, an MBTA Police officer, is predictably big on law and order, but he's also pitching ideas such as an equivalent of the Hatch Shell for concerts on the Cambridge side of the Charles River. And how about Erik Snowberg -- a mere pup at 22 years of age -- who is making Cambridge's strongest bid by a student candidate in recent memory, registering more than 1000 voters at MIT and Harvard alone?

"The big problem with the student vote hasn't been that students don't take politics seriously," Snowberg says. "It's been that politicians haven't known what students want."

Over on the other side of town, first-time council candidate David Maher -- a former member of the city's school committee -- figures to capitalize on the support of the departing Sheila Russell, who still carries major clout in North and West Cambridge. But Maher will face strong competition in that neck of the woods from Robert Goodwin, an energetic youth-sports organizer whose work with children and parents will also earn him votes in other parts of the city. Running for council "is a lifelong dream," says Goodwin, who officially declared his candidacy last December.

As usual, the race also includes plenty of wild-card candidates. There's Robert Winters, who publishes the Cambridge Civic Journal, an online magazine about city politics (http://www.math.harvard.edu/~rwinters/ccj.html). There's Republican activist David Trumbull and libertarian Jeffrey Chase. There's a let's-bring-rent-control-back slate organized by tenant activist David Hoicka, which includes Vincent Dixon, Dorothy Giacobbe, Alan Nidle, James Williamson, and Hoicka himself. On the other side of that issue is rent-control opponent Charles Christenson, a supporter of small-property owners. Other wild cards include perennial council candidate William Jones and Daejanna Wormwood-Malone, a teacher and Greenpeace volunteer.

Most of these candidates don't plan to win; rather, they're trying to attract attention to their respective causes and keep the rest of the field honest. "I get so sick of hearing the candidates saying the same crap all the time," says Winters, who admits his own campaign is hindered by his reluctance to pound the pavement. "I've seen them in action a lot before, and now that I'm on the tennis tour, I see them doing the same shtick over and over. It's nice to see a few people breaking the mold."

The wild card with the best chance of breaking into the council is likely Jim Braude, the former head of the Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts (TEAM) and a political talking head on New England Cable News. Braude has both revved and rankled the electorate in his first-ever bid for public office. Though he lacks a seasoned Cambridge pol's knowledge of the local nitty-gritty -- a fact that his detractors will point out at every turn -- Braude has made waves by speaking frankly and recommending that the city do away with its "weak mayor" system of government, in which the councilors elect one of their own to the largely ceremonial post and the city's day-to-day business is handled by an appointed city manager. Instead, he thinks the mayor should be elected by the public at large.

Local political junkies predicted that a policy wonk like Braude, accustomed to thinking about state and national issues, would be driven bonkers by the petty grindings of a city-council race. And he has been irked by what he sees as candidates' unwillingness to get specific on tough issues such as development and affordable housing. "The single most frustrating thing about this campaign has been how issue-free it is," he grumbles. But Braude, who served as campaign manager for congressional candidate John O'Connor last year, says he's been heartened by his contact with the electorate itself. "The public is far ahead of the people they elect on [issues] that I care about," he says.

Braude also won himself the backing of the CCA, but it's hard to say what that means anymore. One of the big stories of the 1999 election is the faltering clout of the city's oldest political organization. In previous years, CCA councilors built powerful voting blocs in City Hall, and a CCA endorsement was eagerly sought by progressive candidates, since it provided instant credibility. But in the past few years, the CCA has lost its marquee issue, rent control; its marquee candidate, Duehay; and younger, popular CCA progressives such as Ken Reeves and Katherine Triantafillou (the latter quit the organization after she felt she was backstabbed by fellow councilors in the 1998 vote for mayor, which Duehay won). The erosion of the CCA's power was never more evident than when Marjorie Decker -- a rising progressive whose mentor, Alice Wolf, was a CCA star when she served on the council -- didn't even seek the organization's endorsement this year.

This year's CCA slate consists of Braude, Kathy Born, Henrietta Davis, Robert Winters, and Erik Snowberg -- and though all these candidates have their merits, Born is the only one who's even close to being a lock. Barring a total shocker, the CCA will elect two or three candidates at most, which won't even give it enough clout to pick the pizza toppings when the council orders out.

"I can remember when the CCA was an entity that I looked to for guidance," says James Williamson, who's running on the rent-control/rent-stabilization slate. "I'm not sure what the CCA is anymore."

But even if the old political definitions are fading in Cambridge, local elections are still being won the old-fashioned way. Door-knocks, handshakes, and favors for constituents still matter here, and the most fabulous policy ideas in the world won't matter if voters feel they can't call you about trash pick-up. Flashy brochures and phone banks help -- as do rides to the polls on election day -- but it really comes down to elbow grease. That's why well-organized and energetic campaigns such as Decker's and Maher's and Goodwin's and Braude's have a shot. It's why an out-of-nowhere candidate like Sonny Peixoto -- who is mobilizing a previously unrecognized ethnic bloc and claims to have locked up more than 1500 first-place votes -- thinks he can pull off a November 2 surprise. "We're doing this the hard way," says Peixoto. "I think I'm going to surprise people."

The impressive field of challengers has lit a little fire underneath the incumbents, some of whom are finally moving after lying low throughout much of the summer. Anthony Galluccio credits the challengers with giving his own feisty campaign a "kick start." He and other popular incumbents hope that their supporters aren't taking their re-elections for granted. "There's a hazard that people will get complacent and assume you're going to be elected, and won't come out and do what needs to be done," says Katherine Triantafillou, who says she has no plans to run for Mike Capuano's Eighth Congressional District seat, as has been speculated. "I have to keep reminding people that no one's election is assured."

Of course, the crowded council ballot presents problems. With so many candidates, it's not a campaign field; it's a campaign mosh pit. You'd be hard pressed to find a resident who can tick off all 24 names, and it's especially hard for the new candidates to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack. When the entire field shows up for a campaign debate, for example, you don't get a debate. With few exceptions, you get a speed-talking and arm-waving exhibition. "It's a beauty contest," Winters complains. "It's very good for the button pushers, not so good for the rest of us."

And in the end, voter turnout may not be much higher than it was in 1997, when around 19,000 of the city's 40,000 registered voters showed up for a nine incumbents/nine re-elections yawner. The new candidates will bring additional voters to the polls, of course, but new residents -- especially affluent ones -- may stay home. For all the fuss about the new Cambridge and new voters, many candidates believe the 1999 race will likely be decided by the die-hard constituencies that always vote, no matter what. "Long-time Cambridge residents vote, people with children in schools vote, activists vote, senior citizens vote," says Decker. "I'm not giving you anything profound here. Those are your good voters."

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So who's going to win? Tough to tell. Because the field is so crowded, the conventional wisdom may not be so conventional or so wise. The local scuttlebutt is that Duehay's vacated seat will go to an incoming progressive -- likely Decker or Braude -- and that Maher and Goodwin will duke it out over Russell's seat. But with the votes flying around in so many directions, it's possible that an incumbent could be toppled, letting a third challenger squeak in. At least that's the kind of thing that has happened in the past. Winters, who's also a Harvard mathematics lecturer and studies old proportional-representation ballots for (believe it or not) fun, says that empty seats traditionally beget more open seats. "It creates a lot more fluidity in the system," he says.

One thing is certain: the Cambridge City Council will be a different-looking body when the group is sworn in in January 2000. Two respected senior councilors will be history. At least two fresh-faced newcomers will be in the house. No one's certain who they'll elect mayor. Triantafillou, who recently dissolved her law practice to concentrate on politics, will almost assuredly make a bid, but she's certain to have competition from Galluccio, who's unabashedly gung ho for the mayor's job. New leaders will emerge, as will new voting blocs and new disagreements.

At the very least, it promises to be lively. Now, what was it you were saying about local politics?

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