Campaign Workers Lure Voters

Campaign workers turned the ground outside each polling site into a colorful marketplace of candidates during yesterday's election.

At the Harrington Elementary School, incumbent Independent Alfred E. Vellucci and challenger Tony LaFuente accosted entering voters in Italian and Portuguese respectively. "Numero Uno," "Numero Um," they called. "And the Irish are yelling `Number One!'" said Vellucci.

One voter approached Vellucci and LaFuente, saying in jocular accented English, "I'm Portuguese--how should I vote, Italian or Portuguese?"

Vellucci's supporters included George Rose, who said he had flown back from his retirement home in Fort Myers, Florida in order to help Vellucci's campaign. Last night he was cheerfully holding up a campaign placard outside the Miller's River Apartments in the heart of East Cambridge.

The East Cambridge voter turnout was among the city's highest. According to former Council candidate Frank Budryk, voters were more conscientious because "this is the last genuine neighborhood in the city--the others are yuppie little enclaves."

City Council challenger Ed Cyr, of North Cambridge, offered another reason--the gratitude owed for personal favors from the more traditional candidates. "It's not like it is with liberals--a cerebral, philosophical decision," he said.

Rather, he said, voting is a matter of tradition and loyalty. "There are families that have been voting for the. Sullivans for 60, 70 years," he said referring to the family of Mayor Walter J. Sullivan, Jr.

Cambridge uses the Hare proportional representation system, a method touted by John Stuart Mill as a means of enlarging "the marketplace of ideas" by ensuring minority representation.

Its philosophical value aside, though, the system is unusually hard on candidates' nerves. The ballots must be counted, transferred, and re-counted more than a dozen times before the winners are all identified. And the margins of victory or loss can be hair-raisingly slim, so even relatively secure incumbents have reason to be nervous.

Councilor Alice K. Wolf, who finished fourth of nine Councilors in 1985, said last night that she feared she might get too few vital numberone votes. "I heard a lot of people saying, `you've got my number two vote,'" she said.

"You just maintain a certain panic mode until you hear what happened," said Donna Bresica, a first-time candidate for School Committee. Michael Nussin, working the polls for City Council challenger Jonathan Myers, agreed. "This'll test the candiates' stress management capabilities."

And not only neophytes were feeling the stress--long-time Ward 10 Democratic boss Francis "Red" McGrail agreed that "the suspense is awful."

Old Hands

Old hands said the real drama in the Cambridge election starts today, when the public "count" will take place at the Longfellow School. Such events draw scores of "Cambridge political junkies," said Cyr, who added that the event briefly reconciles even bitterly opposed politicians because all of the spectators will want the same information. "They'll be postulating and posturing...but they'll all be doing it together," he said.