Sears for Sheriff

USUALLY FEW PEOPLE in Boston are concerned about the election for Suffolk County Sheriff. But tomorrow's contest between Republican incumbent John Sears and Democratic School Committee Chairman Thomas S. Eisenstadt is not a usual election. For this election will determine both the future of the Sheriff's office itself, and the political futures of two diametrically opposed contenders.

Appointed Sheriff last February by Governor Volpe, after the death of the Democratic incumbent, Sears has innovated an imaginative "volunteer deputy" program to compensate for a lack of foot patrolmen in the city. His theory is that local leaders can cool a street fight or budding riot better than uniformed police, and people in Dorchester and Roxbury would undoubtedly agree.

As Sheriff, Sears has promised to make the best of a bad job--he plans to abolish it. The Sheriff oversees the Charles Street Jail, which the police commissioner could do, and the dispensing of patronage, which could be replaced by a merit appointment system.

Sears' election is vital, though, not because the Sheriff's office is so important, but because his defeat would probably both end his political career, and promote his opponent, Thomas Eisenstadt, into a front-running position for Mayor in 1971.

Eisenstadt is a political opportunist of the rankest sort. A "progressive" opponent of Mrs. Hicks when liberalism was popular, Eisenstadt now comes down hard for law and order, opposes community participation within Boston's Model City area, opposes the volunteer deputy program, and upbraids Mayor White for not calling in the National Guard to quell the disturbances at Boston English School last month.

Scars will have two things going against him Tuesday. The first is that he is standing against the rising sentiment for hard-line law enforcement; the second is that he is a Republican in a Democratic city. Democrats who value the most progressive traditions of their party should cross party lines tomorrow to vote for John Sears for Sheriff.