Behind the City Council Clash: People as Well as Politics

When it was all over last Monday, Walter J. Sullivan sat at his desk in the corner of the Cambridge City Council chambers. He looked glum, and he was. The place was almost empty. The eight other City Councillors had left, and with them most of the press and 290 spectators who had just witnessed two-and-a-half hours of the most divisive, bitterest debate in the City's recent political history.

Walter Sullivan stumbled that day--or rather, he got pushed--and though he had fallen before, it had never happened in quite this way. For the past four City-wide elections, Sullivan had received more votes than any other candidates, and, naturally, coming from a family that has always been prominent in Cambridge politics, he had wanted to be mayor. In the three previous elections, he hadn't made it.

This time there had seemed to be a real chance. On the first ballot (taken Jan. 3, after the Council's inauguration), Sullivan had received four votes. His name had been placed in nomination by William G. Maher, a new Councillor who had made a strong and forceful speech. Alfred E. Vellucci, who has a habit of voting for himself, had broadly hinted that he would switch to Sullivan in due course.

But on Monday the man who had given the stirring nomination speech switched his vote, placing Daniel J. Hayes Jr.--the ninth-place finisher in the last two elections to the Council--in the mayor's seat. Sullivan had expected that Maher would remain loyal until his vote was released. He didn't, and when he changed he carried four other Councillors with him.

That majority of five broke all the traditional rules of how politics works in Cambridge. Besides Maher, who is an Irish Catholic and draws support from many of the same groups as Sullivan, the group included Thomas Coates, a Negro Councillor endorsed by the Cambridge Civic Association; Mrs. Cornelia B. Wheeler, the Council's only Republican and also CCA-endorsed; Bernard Goldberg, a Jew and an independent (non-CCA) Councillor; and, of course, Hayes, an independent with a relatively restricted base in North Cambridge.

What these five pulled off Monday by selecting a mayor of their own choice and then ousting John J. Curry '19, city manager for the past 14 years, was no less than a full-scale insurrection. And the easiest way to understand the dramatic shift is as a revolt of the outs against the ins.

(Curry, it must be mentioned, has technically not been dismissed yet. Under law, he will have a public hearing next Monday. Most observers believe, however, that the five votes for former Mayor Joseph A. DeGuglielmo '29 will hold firm.)

In some senses, Monday's revolt was political. The five Councillors thought that Curry, at 67, was getting too old for the job, that he hadn't taken a dynamic enough position on prospective capital improvements for the City, and that his administration was growing too complacent. In DeGuglielmo they found someone who seemed more active, forthright, and progressive. (Actually, DeGuglielmo found them, for it was he who wanted the manager's job and labored to pick up the necessary majority.)

But, in a more fundamental sense, the revolt was personal. Somehow the Councillors seemed to feel that no one was taking them into consideration. They felt slighted, and they were resentful.

The statutory duties of a Cambridge City Councillor are not great, and his influence is not extensive. The formal power he wields must often suffer by comparison with the staggering political chores he must do to remain in office.

Much of the real power lies with the city manager; he appoints members of all City boards (planning board, recreation board, etc.), and all department heads. He plans the budget from which the Council has only the power to delete. Many temporary summer jobs fall under his jurisdiction, and even with civil service positions, he has a certain amount of discretion: usually he can take any of the top two or three candidates on an exam. He may also appoint someone to a temporary civil-service position until an exam is offered; the first appointee may very well end up with the job.

In addition to these powers, the manager has a degree of control over the contracts that the City lets; perhaps the smaller the contract, the greater his leeway. The obvious strength of the manager's position may suggest the possibility of corruption, but no one in Cambridge hints that there has been corruption under Curry. The very reason for adopting the city manager plan here in the early '40's was to hamper hanky-panky by vesting the manager with wide powers, and it seems to have had that effect.

While the city manager sets a good deal of policy, the mayor is technically little more than the chairman of the City Council and of the school committee. His real power must derive from his relationship with, and influence on, the city manager.

Between Edward A. Crane '35 and John J. Curry '19 there developed an extremely close working arrangement. Few people are able to define the arrangement exactly, but most observers tend to think of Curry and Crane as one political unit.

It was this close relationship and its consequences that helped create Monday's revolt. With Crane in office for six years (three consecutive terms, something unprecedented under the city manager form of government), and with the mayor and manager cooperating so well together, the Councillors felt a little manhandled, especially the younger members.

New vs. Old

Take a look at the Councillors who voted for Hayes and DeGuglielmo: Hayes has only been on the Council since '62; Goldberg since '62; Coates since '64; Maher since last week; and Mrs. Wheeler, with an interruption, since '60. Of the Curry supporters, Crane, Vellucci, and Sullivan have the longest tenure of any current Councillors. Thomas H. D. Mahoney, first elected in 1963, is the sole newcomer, and his loyalty to Curry can be explained, to a large extent, by a long friendship with Crane.

From a feeling of relative isolation and impotence there evolved more purely political complaints. Perhaps Crane and Curry, having worked together so long, actually did pay less attention to the other Councillors (or to some of them). At any rate, it was said that Crane, Vellucci, and, to a lesser extent, Sullivan were getting too many jobs from the city manager's office. Some of the other Councillors wanted in.

But there had to be a common element of irritation and animosity against Crane and Curry for DeGuglielmo to have united Councilors of such divergent political backgrounds. Had this element been missing, the desire, and probably the courage to challenge Crane would have been missing, too.

The more one watches this battle, the more one becomes convinced of the importance of personal as well as political relationships. For example, Councillor Maher's dislike of both Crane and Curry--particularly Curry--stretches back to 1963, when Maher first ran for the City Council and finished tenth, one place away from being a winner. A policeman then, Maher was switched from the detective section to the traffic division. He labelled the transfer political punishment and blamed both Curry and Crane.

Sullivan had strongly supported Maher's right to campaign, and now expected Maher's support in the mayoralty fight. But Sullivan wanted Curry for city manager, Maher reportedly felt that his own efforts, rather than Sullivan's, had gotten him elected, and therefore considered himself free to switch his vote.

The antagonism between Maher and Curry was clear on Monday. Curry sat silently through most of the hearing, and only Maher could provoke him to visible anger. "When you took office in 1952," Maher asked accusingly, "did you expect you had a civil-service obligation to stay there forever?" Curry jumped to his feet, and gesturing angrily toward Maher, shouted his reply, concluding: "I let it be known that when I came to my 70th birthday, I would gladly walk out of office." There was, one feels, a fundamental irony, in Hayes's appeal to the other Councillors to avoid discussing personalities during the stormy meeting. For personalities was the name of the game, and, more than anyone else, Mayor Hayes should have known. They are largely what made him the mayor