Part II: The Coalitions Fall Apart

This is the conclusion of a two part feature. Part I chronicled the rise of Edward A. Crane '35 as an all powerful Cambridge political boss who, ironically, came to power, because of reformers changes in the city government.

Harvard stayed relatively helpless to get in on the city power and development game constantly stymied by people like Crane and Bertha Cohen, a reclusive, eccentric land-owner.

Bertha Cohen died in 1965, leaving no will and few close relatives. A distant nephew was named executor of the estate after a five-year court battle and he quickly disposed of the property on the open market. Harvard and developer Max Wasserman, a close friend and high school chum of Eddie Crane's, both bid on the property, with Wasserman coming out the winner.

After spending $5 million on the property, Wasserman had more in mind than the soon-to-be-evicted tenants on many of his property holdings. He wanted high-rise condominiums erected on his land and to get permission to build them he needed not just down-zoning, but a whole new zoning charter. Wasserman applied for and was granted the unprecedented changes by the Zoning Board of Appeals. The Boston Phoenix reported in 1971 that Crane pushed Wasserman's projects so vigorously that he "forced out a member of the planning board that opposed a Wasserman zoning request." The Phoenix went on to show that Crane got some patronage in return--some of his building associates cashed in when Wasserman built his luxury housing in a few areas that sorely needed low-cost construction.

It was not the first time that Crane removed land from the low cost housing market. In a rare move for a university, MIT's Chairman James Killian complied with a Crane request that he help develop Technology Square, now the fourth largest property taxpayer in the city, but partly built on land where low-cost housing was before.

It was also Killian who engineered the National Aeronautics and Space Administration deal with Crane that was supposed to bring in $60 million worth of space facilities into a now vacant Kendall Square site. The federal government dropped the proposal in 1969.

But even as Crane was working out the Kendall Square deal with Killian and NASA in the early sixties, there were rumblings from within the City Council--rumblings that Crane for the most part failed to detect.

Joseph DeGuiglielmo '29--who had been in partnership with Crane even when Crane threw John Atkinson out of the city manager post and replaced him with a hand-picked selection, John J. Curry '19--was assembling a coalition of Cambridge Civic Association reformers and independents who were getting weary of Crane's one-man rule.

DeGuiglielmo, now a Boston Municipal Court judge, says he can't talk about his role in Cambridge politics, but he can still be seen sipping coffee every morning with his brethren over at Wursthaus, as he has for the last 20 years. Although Frank Cardullo, proprietor of Wursthaus and klatch-master of the Rinky Dinks, a club consisting of several Middlesex and Suffolk County judges and a handful of registrars, insists that the conversation is lighthearted political fun, it is widely held that DeGuiglielmo plotted the coup that would overthrew John Curry in 1966 and place himself in as city manager, while eating with friends at Wursthaus.

Although once in as city manager DeGuiglielmo wasn't successful in sustaining his coalition and subsequently lost his council support in the ensuing election, Crane's power remained battered from the ambush by his political friends. Crane told The Crimson in 1966, after losing the fiercest political battle in the city's history: "I don't get shook up over these things, the city won't blow up, the sun won't rise in the west.... I've been through these things before. It's all part of the game." But this time it was all over for the Cambridge kingpin. He stayed on to run for re-election as a councilman again in 1967, but failed to finish in the top three for the first time in a number of years and retired to his practice rather than run again in 1971.

"Crane had been the dominant figure in the city for years, no question about it," says current City Manager James L. Sullivan, rehired this year after serving three years at the tail-end of the Crane regime. "But he ceased to be the dominant figure when Joe DeGuiglielmo replaced Curry."

Crane left the city in a mass of confusion. His short-sighted policies, designed for immediate growth, no matter what cost, and for low taxes, ignored a crucial housing shortage and a dearth of blue collar jobs. His alliance with James Killian brought in public sector jobs and suburban white collar research work. But the land where these jobs were located was tax-exempt, of little value to the tax base.

But most important, Crane left a political, social and economic vacuum so large that no one person could fill it. Ever since the Crane-DeGuiglielmo split the city council has suffered from a political divisiveness that renders it helpless in coping with Cambridge's major problems. The shattered body has already gone through twice as many city managers since Crane left than it did in all the years that he reigned. Chamber of Commerce President Robert Jones criticizes the council for playing politics above all other concerns. "City Council just doesn't have a leader in the crowd. Many are unhappy as it is but others just revel in it," Jones says.

The leadership crisis stems in part from the ability of councilors to win re-election by appealing directly to a small group of constituents. "You've basically got two types," a Harvard government professor says. "One is the Al Vellucci type, who offers symbolic jokes at Harvard's expense, and the other is the cult figure like Saundra Graham, who has a personal following and an acme of influence in a neighborhood but can't really put a coalition together."

To ex-Councilwoman Cornelia Wheeler, who claims that she received all her political knowledge from Crane, mayor and consistent vote-getter Walter J. Sullivan is an old-style politician: "It is discouraging to walk in a parade with Walter. Everyone who sees him says 'Hi, Walter.' I thought I should have hired a claque to yell 'Hi Connie,' just to march with him because he is so popular." But does she believe he could lead the city coalition needed to make things move? "No," says Wheeler. "I don't think the businessmen would rally around him."

John Moot '43, an ex-president of the CCA from Coolidge Hill, says he believes that proportional representation, with its emphasis on minority rule, is the scourge of the coalition makers. He says that p.r. enables "a group of 300 citizens to throw their weight around," and forces certain councilors to play to small interest groups--causing fragmentation that hampers progress.

But most city businessmen and political leaders today believe that p.r. just accentuates the fragmentation, making it easier to see. Cambridge Trust President Gardner Bradlee holds that the whole political base is simply too fragmented to get anything done. "There are 25 different points of view on each issue, and they all want to be represented," he says. "It's very difficult to get a consensus and there is no one today capable of forming a coalition."

City Manager Sullivan, struggling desperately to clear his office of the political tinge that his predecessors gave it, claims that before p.r. there was divisiveness "because in any town-and-gown community you will get fragmentation.

And since Crane departed from the scene no one person has been able to pull either neighborhood or business groups together. Moot notes that the CCA, once broad, powerful and shrewd, today is composed of inexperienced politicians, many incapable at the moment of mounting a coalition. And the community groups for the most part have yet to exercise the coherence or the political acumen to throw their weight behind a certain issue and get it done.

The Harvard Square Task Force is emblematic of a community action group that receives only fragmented support from its constituents. Established by the city manager in 1962 to draw comprehensive plans for Harvard Square and watch over the Square's development, the task force, headed by Oliver Brooks, recruited business and community leaders and in December released a preliminary draft for use of the Square. It was expected that if anyone planned to erect any structure in the Square the task force would be called in first to survey the situation. But while the force was finishing its policy plan Sheldon Cohen, a task force member himself, went about unobstructed in his unauthorized addition to the Out of Town News Service kiosk. Brooks admits that the task force "does not have a great deal of influence and only attempts to urge, cajole, persuade or convince when it can." But if the task force's own members don't respect its comprehensive policy plan or the force itself, there seems to be little reason to believe anyone else will.

Martha Lawrence, active in Neighborhood Ten--a Cambridge community association--and a Brattle area native, admits that the neighborhoods exert little political influence and are not in contact with the city manager. But she is quick to point out that associations did get together to fight the Kennedy Library and museum. "We have shown you really can fight city hall," says Lawrence of the battle to keep the complex out of Cambridge.

But the community groups aren't the only fragmented interests in town that coalesce only to kill an issue they don't like. The Harvard Square Businessmen, after several years of leaderless lethargy, quickly consolidated forces when the 1972 Brattle Street walk project apparently threatened their businesses. The Brattle pedestrian mall, a Cornelia Wheeler-backed project, closed off Brattle St. at Brattle Square to all but emergency traffic. The project lasted for six months until. Wheeler claims, Square retailers chose to brand the mall a scapegoat for slumping trade and successfully petitioned the council to scrap the measure.

It was not too long ago that the business interests, particularly the Harvard Square Businessmen's Association, were stronger. As restaurant proprietor Frank Cardullo says, "Up until five years ago we had a very strong association. But being as they are getting old we don't have the energy we had. In the old days we really got things done. We went to the mayor, the chief of police. But a few of the leaders have passed on, a few are retired, and now there are different types of business."

Different businesses are what Harvard Trust President Ernie Stockwell sees as being the problem. He says the moving out of blue-collar industry, coupled with a rise in absentee ownerships and mergers with out-of-town corporations, have caused businesses to care much less about the City's welfare. "You hear that companies are not attracted to Cambridge." Stockwell laments, "because the paralytic city government and a lack of businessmen have an effect on the price structure. A lot of people might consider moving in if more active political groups made concessions. But now they are going elsewhere. Other cities must be offering something better."

But as for his own role in city politics, Stockwell says, "If I had been accepted to this office to bring back Cambridge that would be one thing. But Harvard Trust is bigger than it was [in the days of ex-President Robert Duncan]. I've got meetings later today in Arlington and Belmont. Pre-commitments occupy my time--I can't dedicate my future to the reconstruction of Cambridge. But we do pay our taxes."

Stockwell says that part of the problem with coordination between business and government is that the council doesn't give what he calls "too many pounds of respect for those who shape the town's economy and commerce," a point to which insurance executive Jack Dyer readily agrees. "Politicians here tell you that you ought to be more involved," says Dyer, "and then when you get more involved they tell you not to interfere--I'm not convinced what goes on [in City Council] Monday night is the answer."

What do most leaders in Cambridge today think is the answer? Many businessmen are quick to place their hopes with Chamber of Commerce President Jones, whom Dyer calls "a man of missionary zeal." While other community leaders look towards city manager Jim Sullivan. "I think we have a strong and vital leadership in Robert Jones," Howard W. Davis, general manager of the Coop, says. "I support him in trying to get things done. He represents the business community and recognizes the need of collaboration with neighborhood groups and other groups."

But Jones, new to the job, already has encountered massive troubles. His biggest headache, he says, is that he doesn't live in Cambridge but in Belmont, a factor that considerably reduces his legitimacy in some Cantabrigian eyes. But Jones insists, "Just because I sleep 300 yards from Cambridge shouldn't mean anything. I spend most of my life here. My friends and job are here and the things I care about are here--so why should it matter?"

As for Sullivan, as city manager he is always in the precarious position of being able to be fired at the whim of the majority of the council but he has shown a wisdom and desire for cutting costs and trying to bring back blue-collar industry to Cambridge.

And who do these two leaders view as key resources to bring Cambridge around to fiscal sanity? Both men believe that it is Harvard that must exercise the biggest role. "Harvard is so god-damned paranoid that it is afraid to ask for anything, so there emerges a leadership crisis," Jones says. "As a businessman and Chamber of Commerce president I have chosen to lean heavily on Harvard and MIT for cooperation."

Sullivan sees the problem strictly in terms of money. "It is my belief," he says, "that universities should contribute more in the way of dollars. Although Harvard is trying to attract foreign investment for us, overall the relationship between the city and the University proper suggests that there is a long way to go."

But both acknowledge that Harvard can't exert the political leadership needed to unite the fragmented groups and "get Cambridge back on the tracks," as Jones says. However, Sullivan and Jones are optimistic. Sullivan speaks enthusiastically of the future because, although the city has no community power structure, Cambridge is getting out of the cut-rate service low-tax mire that Eddie Crane dredged it through. But Jones pins his hopes a different plane--he claims he is looking ahead to the future. He's waiting for the emergence of another power broker like Eddie Crane.