MacNamara Likely Successor To Replace Francis Sennott

Cambridge will shortly have a recount of last year's city council election because of the death Sunday of one of the city's nine councillors, Francis L. Sennott.

Under Cambridge's proportional representation voting, Sennott's successor will be picked by tabulating the votes of the person with the most second choices on Senott's first choice ballots.

Last fall, the majority of Sennott's second choices went to Thomas MacNamara.

Although the mayor of Cambridge during the city's first reform years in 1941 and 1942, Sennott was always independent of the Cambridge Civic Association--a non-partisan reform organization.

Serving his sixth term in the city council, Sennott voted in favor of appointing John B. Atkinson as city manager, but last August was one of five councillors who voted his removal.

His probable successor--Thomas MacNamara--has always been hostile to both the city manager-city council and proportional representations systems. In 1938, he lad an unsuccessful attempt to separate Harvard from Cambridge because, he claimed Harvard was not paying enough to Cambridge.