CCA Executives Detail Problems Within Party

In a stunning self-criticism, Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) President R. Philip Dowds and Vice President Dick Clarey detailed the problems of their political party in a published interview yesterday.

In the interview, which appeared in The Boston Sunday Globe, Dowds acknowledged significant dissent within the association, which is Cambridge's liberal political party. Four city councillors are affiliated with the group.

"Our CCA team has had wildly divergent views on many important issues," Dowds said.

"The CCA is going through a bit of soul-searching right now," he said. "During the next several months, we will be meeting to discuss the nature of our coalition. We have to decide for ourselves what the minimum requirements are for being in the CCA."

The CCA has traditionally been united most strongly behind its support for rent control. The group has maintained a slim majority on the council, and that majority has been vital to opposing initiatives by indepenent members over the past quarter century to reverse rent control.

But last month, voters approved Question 9, a ballot initiative to abolish rent control, effective January 1.

"Now that rent control is gone, we must decide what will be the defining moment of the CCA," Dowds said.

Dowds also acknowledged that the CCA had not been holding regular meetings.

"In terms of regular meetings where everyone comes together and tries to hammer out the compromise of the day and not be contradicting each other and tramping over each other on the council floor, I wish there had been more of that during the year."

Dowds and Clarey said the city council as a whole is in part to blame for the party's problems. The entire attitude of the body "has been totally reactive," Dowds said.