Unassuming Pitkin Quietly Campaigns On Last Day

A tall, thin man in a red turtleneck hustles down the sidewalk wrapped in a dark overcoat, hauling a bag from Crate & Barrel and a canvas sack filled with pamphlets. The wind whips along Inman Street on a chilly morning as he nears a cheery group of Cantabrigians parked in front of a large red-brick building.

Inside, on the second floor of the city office building at 57 Inman, election workers are chatting away as a handful of voters cast ballots behind red-and-black striped curtains. Out in front, bundled in parkas and clutching colorful signs, a band of candidates and their supporters exchanges cracks about the cold and speculates about turnout.

It’s half past seven o’clock and Election Day in Cambridge is underway.

For John Pitkin, the man in the overcoat, it’s been underway for two hours already. Pitkin is one of a dozen challengers in a field of 19 candidates vying for spots on the Cambridge City Council. He rose at 5:30 a.m. and an hour later was making last-minute plans for a party at his house that night to celebrate the end of the campaign.

At the end of the day, when all the ballots have been cast, a complicated system of voter preferences will whittle down the field to nine councillors. Ahead of Pitkin between now and then is an entire day of visiting polling places, meeting voters and boosting morale among supporters. He will visit voting stations at the Agassiz and Peabody schools, Longfellow House and Youville Hospital.

“My goal was to talk to as many people as possible in my precinct,” he explains. “So I’d spend the day out in other precincts where people don’t know me.”

But the 57 Inman precinct is his home territory, just a couple blocks from his house in Mid-Cambridge. He made his name working on development issues in the Mid-Cambridge neighborhood. Now, his campaign is focused on citywide rezoning and closer ties between city government and neighborhood groups.

Pitkin will return to his home base twice more before the day is done, once around 12:45 p.m. to cast his own ballot and again for the last two hours of voting before the polls close at 8.

A car pulls up that Pitkin recognizes. For the next 12 hours, Rachel Faith will shuttle around the candidate in her 1987 silver Saab. She parks near the group of campaigners and gets ready for a day of holding signs. First things first, though.

“I’m going to go up and vote now,” Faith says. “I’m in a no-parking zone but that’s okay.”

Pitkin laughs.

“I don’t know,” he says. “No promises on any tickets.”

Faith got involved with Pitkin when he championed the cause of a 100-year-old tree that she had fought to protect. This is the first campaign Faith has worked on, but she’s the one who picked the color scheme for the campaign logos: an orange oval with large, black “Pitkin” letters outlined in black.

“Orange is the new black,” she explains. “It’s hip, it’s happening, it’s now.”

At the moment, two orange Pitkin signs aren’t the only campaign banners. At 57 Inman the crowd includes School Committee member Alice L. Turkel, who is running for reelection with a yellow, blue and red logo, and outgoing city councillor Jim Braude, who is passing out green brochures in support of a ballot initiative (see sidebar).

They speculate about whether Mayor Anthony D. Galluccio will garner a record tally of number one votes—Braude figures he’ll win “about a million”—and about how much turnout will drop off this year.

“[Turnout’s] been going down and now everybody says September 11 is a big distraction, so I’d be surprised if it didn’t go down,” Turkel says.

Candidates and their supporters alike compare notes and speculate as if they were standing over a common water cooler. It’s going to be a long, cold day for these political devotees, who are used to bonding over campaigns and elections. Some have come fully prepared, including Sara Mae Berman, a longtime and visible figure in Cambridge politics who is holding a sign for Pitkin.

“You have to know how to dress for this kind of thing,” Berman says. “I’ve got gloves and a hat. I’ve even got long johns under my pants.”

Pitkin stops to talk with friends as they come to vote, but he only says a brief “hello” to most of the strangers who walk by. His style on the street is understated to say the least.

Then a woman comes down the street, her arms spread wide.

“You get my number one vote,” she hollers.

It’s Pitkin’s wife Helina. The couple hugs and kisses. She can only stay a few minutes, then she is off to vote and to work before the party at night.

After a few more minutes, Pitkin gets ready to head to his next stop, Youville Hospital. But because there are so few voters, Pitkin spends his time talking to people holding candidates’ signs.

As he’s making rounds among the sign-bearers, Pitkin meets Kevin Burke ’66, who’s carrying for incumbent Councillor Henrietta Davis. Though he has known Davis as a friend for 30 years and supports her politically, Burke knows Davis is secure in her seat—and says he’s looking for another new councillor to help with his top preference.

Burke and Pitkin talk about how the City Council functions and what Pitkin would bring to the body. Later, Burke says he was impressed by Pitkin’s straightforward style, even though, as a North Cambridge resident, he did not find many issues in common.

“I didn’t really match up with him in his immediate concerns,” Burke says. “He wanted to talk about the Broadway Market. I really don’t know about that.”

It’s 9 o’clock and Pitkin’s back in the Saab, heading for the Agassiz School. Here he meets up with School Committee member Susana M. Segat, who plans to spend the entire day in front of the school. So far turnout “feels low,” she says.

Around the corner rolls a pickup truck that looks like it just came in from the Iowa State Fair in the 1920s. On the red cab doors are yellow Turkel posters—it’s her husband, who has come to deliver Carberry’s coffee and croissants to Segat and to a volunteer with a Turkel sign.

The two School Committee members both have the endorsement of the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), the activist establishment of local politics. In front of the Agassiz, the CCA crowd is hanging out together; at one corner of the school all the signs advertise their candidates. Down the street, two young men in blue jeans and work boots look lonely holding signs for incumbent Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves ’72, who dropped out of the CCA in 1996. They’re members of Carpenters Local 40. Reeves supports their union, the two men say, and the union supports Reeves.

“We’re trying to show Ken Reeves stands alone in Cambridge politics,” says Patrick Cochran, one of the carpenters. “He’s an excellent guy. He really supports the community.”

Traffic is slow for the Reeves duo but it’s not bustling for the CCA candidates either. After a while, Pitkin moves over to the nearby Peabody School, where he stays until almost noon. Then he goes to the Longfellow House precinct on Brattle Street, where a warden shoos him out of the precinct as he tries to check the vote.

After returning to 57 Inman to cast his ballot and then going home for a bite to eat, Pitkin hits the streets again. First he heads to the Fitzgerald School in North Cambridge to encourage his supporters.

Then it’s back to the Agassiz and the Peabody, where State Rep. Alice K. Wolf (D-Cambridge) stops by and is taken aback by some of the campaign strategy. A pair of supporters holding the same candidate’s sign are standing together, even though there are two entrances to the polling place.

“You two, what’s the matter with you?” she says in mock disbelief.

“You’re not the boss,” one replies in jest. “This is more social than anything.”

“I’m not the boss,” Wolf says. “I’m just sharing my political wisdom.”

Wolf directs them to split up, one covering the front sidewalk and one covering the back pathway.

As for his own political wisdom, Pitkin actually meets face-to-face for the first time during the day with his campaign manager, Cecily McMillan ’79, who has worked full-time the last 10 weeks to pull off an effort that got off to a late start in July.

She pulls a cell phone out of her pocket. McMillan has never used a cell phone until today and she’s been wrestling with it, redialing numbers when she means to turn off the phone.

By 4:15 p.m., after a day of driving around, McMillan is tired. As she drives back to Harvard Square to cast her vote at Gund Hall, she listens to the soothing jazz sounds of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

But the candidate’s not done—he still has to visit precincts and rally his supporters’ spirits. At 8:15 p.m., nearly 13 hours after he arrived at 57 Inman Street this morning, Pitkin is ready to call it a day. He’s at home getting ready for his party and for the time being he’s inclined to watch the vote count on television.

“I was optimistic but not confident this morning, and now I feel a little more optimistic,” he says. “I feel a little relieved and I’m glad to sit down and not have to think about what to do the next minute.”

The candidate’s biggest frustration at the moment: not getting through to his e-mail account so he can catch up on the messages that accumulated during his last, long day on the campaign trail.

—Staff writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.