The Bay State Shuffles to the Center

George Bachrach, Democratic candidate for the Eighth Congressional District, was confident on election night last September. The candidate who had coined himself an "unrepentant, unabashed and unreconstructed liberal" thought he was going to pull out a close victory.

He lost. And like Bachrach, Cambridge, also known as Kremlin on the Charles, and Massachusetts, the only state to vote for McGovern in 1972, is not as liberal as it once was.

Republican Governor A. Paul Cellucci, acting governor after William F. Weld '66 left his post early, defeated Attorney General Scott L. Harshbarger '64 in a tight gubernatorial campaign last fall.

And Cambridge is still feeling the aftershocks of the decision to lift rent control, creating essentially a hemorrhaging of lower-income, usually minority, residents leaving the city in search of affordable rents.

"Everybody is moving out, and it is very sad, because you're losing the world of working-class folks," says State Rep. Jarrett T. Barrios '90 (D-Cambridge).

And since Cellucci has stepped into his State House chambers, he has acted in a nearly belligerent tone with attempts to bring back the death penalty. The governor also supports stronger use of teacher tests and the appointment of James Peyser, a vocal advocate of school choice, to chair of the state Board of Education. Cellucci has not been without his critics.

"There has been entirely too much political bickering going on," says Stephen Gorrie, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. "We need to move from that and move on."

But rest assured, young liberals, Cambridge and Massachusetts has not gone GOP just yet.

Michael Capuano, former mayor of Somerville, won the Eighth District Democratic primary and went on to trounce his Republican opponent in the general election.

--M. Douglas O'Malley