Word: states
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...been taken to Boston's streets--particularly into the homes of the 58 per cent of voters who, as Timilty's latest ads tell us, "voted against Kevin White" in the preliminary. Back in September, there were four major candidates for the mayor's office, including Finnegan and State Rep. Melvin H. King. And if the campaign managers disagree on most points, they'll both readily admit that somebody will be elected mayor on November 6--and the key to the election is the King/Finnegan vote...
...needs endorsements from the King and Finnegan camps. And he just hasn't gotten them. King, who supported Timilty in 1975, agreed with the Black Political Task Force's assessment of this year's race: vote against White, but don't endorse Timilty. The city's other leading liberal--State Rep. Barney Frank '62--gave his support to Timilty. But with the major papers lined up against him, it all seems too little and too late. The Finnegan people, meanwhile, are keeping pretty quiet. While Bill Ezekial, the man who ran Finnegan's preliminary campaign, has switched to the Timilty...
...there are important issues in the campaign. Violence in Boston has candidates worrying over racial imbalance in Cambridge schools. Twenty-five per cent of Cambridge high school students are minorities (40 per cent if you use federal, not state, guidelines). Incumbents nervously defend the committee's "Racial Balance Plan." Passed last year, the plan attempts to avoid forced busing by encouraging parents to voluntarily send children to racially-imbalanced schools by providing special "magnet" programs...
Affirmative action will have trouble making headway in a year when budget cuts affect hiring at all levels. Those cuts became necessary last year when the state imposed a cap on spending increases. Candidates argue over just where those cuts will fall, since contract negotiations with the Cambridge Teacher's Union are coming up this year. Declining enrollments suggest that it might be necessary to close schools, but few candidates actively support giving up classroom space to save money. They talk of renovating older schools before closing them completely...
Proportional representation in the Cambridge sense of the phrase is a dying art--the Cambridge law, thanks to a glitch somewhere in the state processing system, was never officially published as a law and no recent statute exists which adequately lays down the rules. But Cambridge politicians adore it, even if they have to spend the week in an elementary school...