While Cambridge Burns

For the fouth time in ten years, it has taken a political deal to elect a mayor of Cambridge. After two fruitless weeks of balloting, Councillor Edward J. Sullivan backed into the mayor's chair after he had persuaded fellow Councillor Thomas M. McNamara to climb off the political fence and into the Sullivan camp. Next week, Sullivan will appoint McNamara chairman of the Council's Finance Committee.

During the fortnight's balloting, other city business was at a standstill. For Cambridge's traditionally dilatory Council, however, the election was consummated in a remarkably short time. Two years ago, it took 167 ballots before another political deal, between CCA-endorsed councillors and John J. Foley, put the latter into office. Even this did not constitute the highpoint of Council deadlock: in 1948, the Council dallied into mid-April before Michael J. Neville emerged as mayor From the smoke-filled Council chamber. During those four months, no other City business was considered.

Despite the humor inherent in the situation, these deadlocks have their more serious aspects. Cambridge is not a village, and long delays in considering its business may cause serious hardships for Cantabrigians. During the previous balloting marathons, the city's budget, sewerage and street repairs, as well as other important municipal affairs were delayed while the Council fiddled with the mayoralty.

While a non-political city manager holds most of the city's executive power, the mayor is nevertheless much more than a figurehead. Sullivan, for example, will have the controlling vote on both the City Council--which must approve all municipal expenditures and improvements--and the School Committee which controls the community's elementary and secondary schools. The Council can also hire and fire the manager; Sullivan might be only too happy to get rid of the incumbent, John J. Curry '19, and install one of his own supporters, 200 of whom crowded the Council chamber yesterday to cheer him on to victory.

Plain common sense calls for a change in the present system for electing Cambridge's mayor. Some local citizens favor giving the mayoralty automatically to the councillor who receives the highest number of votes in the preceding election. But such a system, as Councillor Joseph A. DeGuglielmo '29 has pointed out, would defeat the purpose of the proportional representation system by which the council is elected. It would, moreover, encourage Council candidates to spend large sums of money on campaign folderol which serves no worthwhile purpose.

Another proposal, which CCA members suggest, would make the mayoralty election separate from the Council elections. The voters would elect one mayor and eight Councilmen--not nine potential mayors as at present. The delays and recurring political deals would vanish, and the mayoralty would cease to be a political plum, plucked in back rooms of the Hotel Commander. The qualifications for a mayor, after all, differ from those for a councilman; the separate elections would give the voters the chance to put the right man in the right office, and the city would not be forced to depend so much on shifting intra-Council loyalties. But, most important, it would give the city a mayor when it needs one.