Sullivan Tries To Keep Political Dynasty Alive

In a city divided between newly-arrived professionals and old-timers, there are few families that represent “old” Cambridge better than the Sullivans.

Edward “Eddie” J. Sullivan Jr., the newest scion of the city’s 70-year-old political dynasty and a candidate for city council, knows this well. When asked where he will win his votes—a question most council candidates duck out of fear of alienating a constituency—Sullivan answers with a grin: “From the people who have been here a long time.”

Though he hails from a political family, Sullivan’s personal experience in government is negligible. His one stint in elected office was in 1996, when he won a seat on the Middlesex County Board of Commissioners, holding it for just a few months before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dissolved county governments.

As a council candidate, Sullivan lacks—or declines to show—specific policy knowledge of the city government. And since he makes his living selling environmentally-friendly cleaning supplies, he can’t claim to have much professional experience that is directly applicable to governing a city.

But since Cambridge’s day-to-day operations are in the hands of an appointed city manager, Sullivan says a councillor’s job is not to legislate but to act as a liaison between residents and the city government.

“Our job is to make government work for people,” Sullivan says. “I have customers in my business, and I have to get back to them right away. The city should work the same way, and a councillor’s job is to do the leg work, respond to the people who have issues, and give them honest answers.”

The fact that Sullivan is positioning himself as an heir to “Sullivan Service”—the tradition of caring for constituent needs that began with Eddie’s grandfather—is hardly surprising. But whether this appeal to the hearts of longtime residents will win him a council seat is still an open question.

THE LOVE OF THE GAME

As he waits to meet a reporter at Harvard’s Science Center, Sullivan reminisces with a Greenhouse Cafe employee, a former football teammate from his days at Cambridge Rindge and Latin in the early 1980s.

It’s hard to overstate how important sports and other youth activities are to Sullivan, a towering man who continued his gridiron career at the University of Iowa. He is a self-proclaimed believer in the theory behind the “Boston Miracle”—a strategy of using youth programs to prevent anti-social behavior and to unify the city—and would like to bring it to Cambridge.

“We used to mill around when I was young too, but the difference was that we didn’t jump people going down the street,” Sullivan says. “And while the divisions—North Cambridge versus East Cambridge—have always existed, the rivalry has changed. Now it’s all about violence.”

He says much of the blame for this violence rests with the Cambridge Housing Authority, which has cut back on both security and youth programs in response to a drop off in federal funding for public housing. Without after-school activities, Sullivan says “restless youth” have few things to do, and ultimately get into mischief.

“People don’t have the money to play sports because of the cutbacks, but if we could get them involved in the Pop Warner [Football] program, for example, then the kids would all know each other by the time they get to high school,” Sullivan says. “It becomes a sports community that breaks down neighborhood lines and class lines and race lines.”

But he admits that Pop Warner, the nation’s oldest and largest youth football league, isn’t for everyone—as a child, he was told he was “too big” to play.

A ‘TOWNY’ AT HEART

Sullivan grew up in house on Ellery Street, watching his grandfather “Mickey the Dude,” a canny political player in Depression-era Democratic politics, dispense patronage and navigate local politics.

His mother, father, and one of his sisters still live on the same street in mid-Cambridge, while Sullivan himself lives on Homer Avenue in West Cambridge. (His ex-wife and teenage son and daughter live in nearby Belmont; he takes pride in noting that his 6’1’’ daughter is a varsity athlete at Belmont High School.)

But despite their deep-rooted ties to the community, the Sullivans say that their golden name is no guarantee of success.

“You benefit from the doors that have been opened for you, but ultimately you have to stand on your own two feet,” says Michael A. Sullivan, Eddie’s cousin and a veteran city councillor whose recent retirement prompted Eddie to run.

So Eddie has campaigned furiously, reaching out to those older voters who are likely to come from families that have lived in Cambridge for generations. His diagnosis of Cambridge’s ills, violence and division, reflects the dozens of hours spent in the city’s senior centers, whose residents, he says, are often too scared to leave their rooms in the evening.

Sullivan’s views on other issues are similarly informed: when asked about affordable housing, for example, he frames the issue in the context of making sure longtime residents are not priced out of the city. And even when he emphasizes the need for youth sports and activities, he seems to be guided by a desire to see Cambridge remade as the city of his childhood.

“It’s sad to see the old neighborhoods redeveloped and sold off,” Sullivan says, a nostalgic note audible in his voice. “The community spirit of the old Italian neighborhoods of East Cambridge or the French neighborhoods of West Cambridge just go when the people leave.”

Sullivan’s candidacy taps into a deep vein of longing for a city that was.

And if he wins, he will have a chance not just to continue the family tradition, but to represent old Cambridge in the city that will be.