The Style of Things to Come

AMERICAN ELECTIONS are all too often triumphs of style, not substance. We elect our presidents not because we know what they stand for, but because of how well we think they stand: Are they leaders? Do they have moral courage? Can they instill trust in the people? But national candidates, with their image advisers and make-up men, are matched almost step for step by big city mayoral contenders, who play at being gruff or Irish or aggressive or "old town," while hiding issue stances, when they have them, safely away from the prying eyes of the electorate.

In Cambridge, for the last ten years, substance has ruled. The voters in this small city split fundamentally over two basic issues--continued controls on rents and regulation of condominium conversion. For more than a decade, almost every election flyer has featured discussions of those issues. Factions line up on each side, clearly defining their stands--the Rent Control Task Force boosts tenant's rights, The Cambridge Home Owners and Taxpayers Association demands that everyone on its slate of candidates vote against rent control. And the system works. For ten years, liberals have held tenuous majorities on the council, just enough to insure that rent control continue, with many compromises to protect landlords.

Last week, though, this system, which must elect a new city council in ten days, was threatened. A new group, calling itself the Concerned Cambridge Citizens (CCC) endorsed a slate of candidates for the office. What it didn't release were position papers or issue stances. We are "dedicated to dynamic government," they said, issuing calls for "intellectual open-mindedness." But they offered no position on rent control, no mention of condominium conversions. "We have no plans to issue a platform," Nancy Goetz, treasure of the CCC said last week.

The story of the CCC actually begins last summer, when, according to Goetz, "a bunch of us got together to talk about Cambridge." The group particular about issues, instead it wanted to "depolarize" the city council. "There at least two sides to all these issues," Goetz reasons, adding that "city councilors aren't even willing to talk to each other." With the hope of getting Cambridge City government out of deadlock, they endorsed a "moderate slate, filled with people willing to talk and talk until they reached fundamental agreement.

The premise is as wrong as the solution is unlikely. The councilors are not divided on anything except the issues, on which they represent their constituents. They laugh, they dance, they eat, they even talk together, sometimes until 2 a.m. at council meetings. But all the jovialty and talking does not shift their positions, and it shouldn't. Walter Sullivan piles up votes year after year in large part because his constituents don't want rent control at all. If Mary Ellen Preusser ever "moderated" her pro-rent control stand, she would be stealing the apartments away from those who elected her.

The CCC could easily be dismissed as a collection of very naive and impressionable better-government types. But most people in this city, especially those who get themselves involved in elections, are savvy--opponents have labelled the depolarization campaign a smokescreen, charging that behind it lies a well-financed arm of the city's anti-rent control, pro-condo conversion faction.

ONE PIECE of evidence they use is the CCC's slate. Although there were three pro-rent control liberals on the original CCC slate, (all three--Francis Duehay, Alvin Thompson and David Wylie have since withdrawn), there is no question that if the CCC slate does triumph rent control will be in trouble. The four incumbents for which the CCC will campaign all voted against rent controls and attempts to control condominium conversion, and none of the challengers picked by the group was willing or able to gain the support of the Rent Control Task Force. City council meetings might be more pleasant if the CCC were to succeed, when the votes were counted, but rent control would probably go out the window with a speed belying "moderation."

Another clue to the philosophical makeup of a group which claims to have no philosophy lies in its membership. The CCC, Goetz said in an interview last week, is made up of tenants, small landlords and homeowners." The CCC deeds on record at the Middlesex County Courthouse show, was actually founded and is led by a group of condominium owners. Of the seven original officers and members who registered the group with City Hall September 20, five have purchased condominiums since August 1977.

If you were suspicious, you might also notice the group's friendship with William H. Walsh, a Cambridge attorney who is among the most skilled and the most vocal opponents of regulation of condominium conversion in the city. Walsh who said in an interview early last summer that God gave each and every American the right to own a condominium, served on the CCC housing committee. "Does that make him a member?" Goetz was asked. "Yes, you have to belong to work on a committee," she responded. Walsh said minutes later that he is not really a member, that he had simply donated "six or seven hours of my time," and that he didn't want to "cause the group any trouble." Days later Goetz explained that Walsh definitely was not a member, although the group "appreciated (his) time and effort in clarifying the pro-condominium viewpoint." Walsh may not be a member, whatever that legally means, but his ties with the group seem strong. An interesting footnote: Walsh, a trustee of Harlow Properties, was involved in several of the condominium sales to group members.

The "abbreviation factor" is the final piece of circumstantial evidence pointing to the CCC's basically conservative stand. For 40 years, the Cambridge Civic Association, known to all as the CCA, has dominated Cambridge liberal politics. Each election year it runs a pro-rent control, anti-condo conversion slate. This year, once much of the CCA '79 literature was back from the printers, the CCC emerged, with similar slate tactics. To further complicate things, the CCC endorsed the three CCA candidate who later demanded to the unendorsed. Duehay demanded to be left off the CCC ticket because he feared "there would be confusion among the electorate between the CCA and the CCC." And Wylie said, "This could be an exercise in confusion."

IN DISRUPTING the Cambridge electoral system, the CCC is doing a disservice to Cambridge voters, who for a decade have participated in a healthy representative system complete with identifiable candidates who are easily held accountable for their issue postions. Now, instead of comparing pro- and anti- rent control and condo-conversion candidates, Cantabrigians will have to figure out what to make of the CCC. Since their "deplorization" stand makes little sense, they are a monkey wrench in the system. If Cambridge's landlords and real estate brokers are responsible for that wrench, it is a low blow. If it is only naivete of glacial proportions, it still serves as a scary notice of the encroachment of style on the substance of American politics.