Word: condoe
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Dates: during 1979-1979
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Every Cambridge election is hard to call, but this year the job is especially difficult. An influx of condominium owners (and a correspoinding shrinkage in the number of tenants) has changed the city's demographics, and anti-rent control candidates are pushing hard for the votes of condo owners. Meanwhile, Cambridge's residents, most of them Democrats, are becoming increasingly wary of big-spending city government, and they demand to know why stratospheric tax rates haven't dropped because of new state...
...area have ended rent controls. When they were lifted next door in Somerville, rents soared--a fact to which CCA politicians frequently refer. At the same time, the number of condominium conversions in Cambridge has increased dramatically. Only the frantic legal scrambling of CCA councilors slowed down the condo boom this year, and the prospect of renewed conversions may scare many tenants to the polls. Finally, the usually ephemeral student vote could help liberal candidacies this fall. CCA candidate David Sullivan, who has campaigned dorm-to-dorm this year in his second bid for a council seat, points...
...likely grab one of the nine seats--perhaps at the expense of a brother CCA councilor. Sullivan's large organization, student support, and $10,000 campaign budget have added name recognition to the widespread support earned by ten years of tenant activism, including the drafting of the council's condo control bill. Should Sullivan win, CCA veteran David A. Wylie may be closest to the door. Wylie and Duehay appeal to much the same constituency as Sullivan, and Wylie has spent half as much on his campaign as the other two. Both Duehay and Wylie were also hurt...
...camps, may also affect the balloting. David Agee and Douglas Okun don't have the ethnic and neighborhood bases that Vellucci, Danehy and their ilk draw on; their support of a "depolarized" city council may draw some votes, though, from new arrivals in the city--for the most part condo owners, who are less a part of Cambridge machine politics...
...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...