Forty Years With America's Oldest Municipal Party

Most municipal elections throughout the United States involve a showdown between the Democrats and the Republicans. Most, that is, except the ones in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For 40 years, Cambridge politicians have aligned themselves either with the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA)...or not.

In its current incarnation, the CCA faction in city politics is pro-rent control, pro-minority rights, and in general favoring progressive social policy. The CCA usually stands opposed to the more conservative Independent faction in the city council and school committee. At its inception, however, the CCA was designed primarily as a moderately conservative "good government" group.

The association has seen many splits and factions in the course of its evolution. As it enters its fourth decade of involvement in city politics this year, it seems to be facing yet another challenge.

Like its neighbor across the river, Cambridge in the 1930s and 40s was saddled with blatant corruption in city government, financial disaster, patronage and corruption. Cambridge citizens, including many Harvard administrators such as then Dean of the Law School Roscoe Pound, decided to take action, establishing in 1945 a series of three reforms. The first two measures were aimed at cleaning up City Hall by revising the city charter and establishing a new electorial system. The third, the formation of a new citizen's coalition known as the CCA, was to ensure that it stayed clean.

Thus, the CCA was born at the same time as the other two oddities of Cambridge politics, "Plan E" government and Hare Proportional Representation. Under Plan E, a professional, non-elected city manager handles the day-to-day workings of government under the supervision of the elected officials. The mayor holds a largely ceremonial position and is elected from among the city councilors. PR voting, an at-large balloting system where candidates are ranked by voters, is designed to give minority views a chance to elect their own representatives. The CCA was dedicated to electing a slate of reformist city councilors.

For the next 10-15 years, the CCA remained moderately conservative. "There was still a lot of cleaning up to do," explains Frederick C. Levy '67, former president of the association. By the 1960s, however, new issues came to the attention of the group, spurring its first venture into progressive policy and also the first of the several splits in CCA support.

Urban renewal began throughout the Boston area in the 1960s, and the idea of tearing down slum areas was considered a progressive policy in its time. Trouble arose only when it became apparent that the people who lived in the slums had no other place to go. When an urban renewal policy was proposed for East Cambridge, the CCA mobilized against it, lobbying instead to improve the housing stock. The urban renewal was defeated, but the association lost some of its more conservative members.

The sixties increasingly brought the CCA into debates on liberal issues, mostly centering around housing. The association was instrumental in blocking the inner beltway proposed to cut through residential Cambridge on the way out of Boston. "The sixties was a time of great liberalism and progressive ferment, and these were influential in turning CCA attention to social policy instead of just government," says Levy.

The culmination of the sixties was the issue of rent control, which

"The sixties... were influential in turning CCA attention to social policy stead of just government." --Former CCA President Frederick C. Levy dominated city council debate and the CCA platform for several years. The CCA-supported policy which regulates rent in low- and moderate-income city housing, was finally passed into law in 1969, but the liberal party lost substantial support in the process.

"Towards the end of the 60s, most people became more socially conscious, and the CCA simply joined this enlightened awareness," says Elaine Kistiakowsky, active in the association for 25 years and currently one of its vice presidents. "To have not changed meant you had to be very unconcerned with people."

Since then, the CCA has continued its support of progressive policy by endorsing slates of candidates for election to the nine-member city council and the seven-member school committee.

Recent issues of concern for the group have included a civilian review board for the Cambridge Police Department, in the wake of charges of racial discrimination by the force, and the perennial problems of Cambridge's tight housing market.

"We haven't lost our focus on government, we've just added the concern for social issues," says City Councilor David E. Sullivan, a CCA-endorsee.

This year, however, the association is facing yet another split in its supporters. A new group known as Coalition '85, many of whom live in rent-controlled buildings and have traditionally supported CCA-endorsed candidates, are running three candidates of their own this year.

In addition, the CCA is faced with increasingly hostile attacks from Cambridge realtors, who say that rent control policies actually force up city rent levels, and urge residents to vote for one of the Independent candidates. The Independents, who form a looser coalition, are generally more conservative and tend to have deeper roots in city neighborhoods.

The issue of rent control becomes crucial because of the form of city government. Most legislation requires a five-member majority on the city council, but rent control issues require six votes to institute change. For years, neither the CCA nor the conservative faction has been able to gain a majority on the council.

Before 1953, the CCA regularly elected five of the nine councilors, yet since then the number has averaged four--not enough to engineer any major legislation. All four current members of the council who received CCA endorsements are running for re-election, along with two newcomers. Outside competition for the liberal votes of Cambridge could result in several of the candidates losing the election, or even the CCA losing one of its four council seats.

"It's a major challenge, but I think the CCA will meet it," says Sullivan. "A lot more heat is being generated by a few defectors from the CCA than is merited by their political clout."

"They're people who haven't participated in the CCA for years--they're relics of a past generation," Sullivan says, adding that in his opinion the controversy has proven beneficial to the CCA by forcing the association to define its position on issues such as condominium conversion; issues on which the organization earlier was reluctant to take a stand