Mr. Kraus Goes to Boston

When then-President Lyndon B. Johnson denigrated "pointy-headed intellectuals who can't park a bicycle straight," he wasn't counting on Richard A. Kraus. The former Harvard financial aid officer and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) dean has been defying stereotypes beneath the glided dome of the Massachusetts Statehouse since January as Senator from the state's Fourth Middle sex district.

"It's very clear that I'm a very different creature than most of them expected-they expected a pipe-smoking guy in a tweed jacket," he said in a recent interview in his modern, half decorated office.

Kraus received his Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard in 1968, and has since built a reputation on campus as a precise, efficient Harvard bureaucrat. Although the demands of his new job are entirely different. Kraus has apparently brought his appetite for detail to his political life. When he announced his candidacy for the State Senate seat vacated by his predecessor in an unsuccessful bid for Lieutenant Governor, he faced a crowded seven man Democratic primary. But by analyzing voting patterns to past elections, his staff predicted election results to within a surprising 100 votes out of 35,000 cast. The staffers also believed Kraus would beat his chief opponent, James Lyons, by 200 votes-he won by 161.

Kraus is above all an administrator, who sees efficiency as a crucial element of his "compact with the voters." "You are witnessing one of the failures of that compact," he says point to the open windows in his overheated fifth-floor office. Grinning, Kraus explains the state renovated the building a few years back and put the heating system on the roof, where it must fight the natural tendency of heat to rise and force water down five floors into the freezing basement. It is with that kind of administrative inefficiency that Kraus feels his experience at GSAS best equips him to deal.

Yet overheated offices are hardly the most serious problem Kraus has had to face as he attempts to operate within the loosely structured guidelines of Massachusetts politics. Coming from the decentralized administration of Harvard. Klaus said he had been warned that the Senate was a highly centralized organization, where arm twisting leadership would mandate voting patterns. However, he didn't find the legislative power-brokers he expected, he discovered instead "a building which runs entirely on rumor. It's the only place I've been where you can get rumor first-hand from the principal of the rumor."

One example of dark intrigue which Kraus recalls from what seems to be a generous supply is the day he arrived and found that all the furniture save his desk, chair, and bookcase had been stolen in the middle of the night by a covetous fellow Senator. Having tracked the furniture, after receiving "at least six" stories about where it was and when it would be back. Kraus found that he couldn't simply retrieve it but would have to wait for the Senate President to reassert his authority. "Ultimately, they did have the confrontation," and the furniture was recovered.

Kraus has found that organizational, chaos has affected him in more serious matters than missing furniture. Freshman Senators must file all the bills they want considered in their first year by December, one month before their inauguration. But when Kraus asked if there was a program to help him learn his way around in the critical pre-inaugural months, everyone said no. However, on his third day in the Statehouse, he found that there would soon be a two week long orientation program, dating back to 1931. More recently, he pulled a muscle going to work and missed the day. The next day, he found that he had missed one of his first committee meetings, held without warning on the day he was out.

Despite the difficulties of adjustment, the Senator has moved swiftly to address the critical issues he sees facing the Commonwealth. Balancing services with the need for far reaching tax reform was the heart of Kraus's campaign. He said he decided to run when he saw the "irresponsible" press releases announcing the candidacies of two opponents release that promised simultaneously to cut taxes and preserve services. Kraus believes the voters when forced to choose between cutting services and paying taxes, will choose the latter.

Virtually all legislative initiatives in Massachusetts take shape in point Senate House committees, and it is here that Kraus ha focused his early efforts. He received his top two choices: Taxation, where he will serve under Senate Chairman John W. Ulver, the only other Ph.D. in the Senate, and Human Services and Elderly Affairs.

On the services side, the Senator wants to specialize in elderly affairs, hoping to divert a showdown between the elderly and the other residents of the state. Kraus has also begun a fight for a commission to study ways to reduce Massachusetts over reliance on the property tax, a tax that hits the poor and the elderly out of proportion to their income. Despite Proposition 21/2--a sweeping tax cut passed in 1980. Kraus guesses that property revaluation which often shifted the tax burden from businesses to homes means that 85 percent of Massachusetts homes will pay more property tax than before the law passed. When this takes effect, he says, taxpayers will come back with a far more disruptive tax cut. Kraus hopes to avert such a backlash.

Kraus's thoughtful, long run approach to these issues seems to have committed him to a political life as long as the voter, of Lexington and other towns are willing to let it last. He has scrapped early plans to remain with GSAS part time. For now, the only connection between Kraus and Harvard is that which exists in the minds of his colleagues and in the skills he perfected as an administrator here. As for its effect on others. Kraus is ambivalent, "It's both a plus and a minus."