AL VELLUCCI made good use of last week's city council meeting for a little last minute campaigning before Tuesday's council elections. First he called the City Manager over to hear the tale of an East Cambridge family caught in a home where the heating had failed, then grilled the Traffic Director over traffic problems on Third Street and finally wrapped up the evening with his traditional blast at Harvard and M. I. T.

Vellucci is a past master of the Cambridge political style take care of the small things voters want make sure that the people in your area get their share of city services and milk ethnic and neighborhood sentiment for all the votes they're worth. That's the way it's been in the City-at least since 1941, when Cambridge adopted the Proportional Representation (PR) system, which places a premium on getting a solid-not necessarily large-group of voters to back a candidate year in and year out.

Over the years, this system has shown an amazing durability, if not too much dynamism. Nine councilors get elected-almost always four from the "good government" Cambridge Civic Association (CCA) and five "independents." Together they apportion the City's bounty to their respective constituents try to keep the tax rate as low as possible, and sometimes, as from 1965 to 1968, break up in bitter fights over the choice of a city manager.

This time around, however, a new ingredient has been added to the pot of Cambridge politics: whether it will much change the flavor or the outcome remains to be seen. The new ingredient is rent control, which the council defeated this summer by a five to four vote while two hundred rent control backers sat in the chambers and fumed. Once outside the rent control advocates vowed to venge themselves in November on the "faithless five" -their term for the five councilors who voted against the rent control bill.

THOSE PLEDGES of vengeance have produced a number of splinter candidates running on the rent control issue: they include Cynthia Kline (Peace and Freedom Party), Steve Nelson (a hip graduate of the Law School and the Kennedy School), Jessie Gill (a nurse's aide who has made a small career picketing Harvard), and Daniel Connelly (the first chairman of the pro-rent control Cambridge Housing Convention).

The number of citizens who make one of these splinter candidates their first choice on the ballot will provide a rough estimate of the amount of discontent with the traditional patterns of Cambridge politics: it is a total which political veterans-especially the present City Councilors-will probably be watching closely. At the moment, however, it does not seem that the impact of the rent control issue will be great. There has been councilor-which would amount to a minor relatively little agitation over rent control during the council campaign: registration is actually about 2000 less than in 1967, indicating that the issue has not attracted a flood of new voters.

Four of the five councilor who voted against rent control are running again; they seem to feel that the issue-volatile though it may be-has not eroded their traditional bases of support. "The people who sit out there and yell at you to do something are never the ones who really vote for you anyway," says one of the four.

Whether the rent control advocates play the rules of the PR system will determine in large measure how much impact they have on the election results. If they cast "bullets" (voting only for a first choice candidates, without listing other choices), their impact will end once their first choice candidates are eliminated as most probably will be.

BUT IF THEY cast ballots with later choices, their votes will be redistributed to other candidates once their first choices are eliminated. Likely as not, those ballots-however many of them are thus marked-will ultimately end up in the pile of Barbara Ackerman, (CCA), one of the current council's strongest supporters of rent control. Unless the vote for splinter control candidates is unexpectedly strong, Ackermann's base of "number ones" among more liberal City voters should give her more than enough to make it on the council again.

The case is much the same with most of the other six incumbents in the race. Though their anti-rent control position may hurt them a little, Walter J. Sullivan (Ind.) and Edward A. Crane '35 (CCA) will probably top the ticket again and win election on the first round with votes from their respective bases among lower-income Irish and more affluent Irish. Vellucci will sweep up East Cambridge "number ones," add a few votes from Sullivan's surplus, get some more when weaker Italian and Portuguese candidates are eliminated, and make it into the winner's circle after a couple of days of counting the vote.

Incumbent Thomas W. Danchy (Ind.) may also sweep into office on the surplus of Sullivan (a relative), if he hasn't already garnered enough "number ones" to win from his own North Cambridge base. Thomas H. D. Mahoney (CCA) should also win re-election with his "number ones" from the same base as Crane and a scattering of elderly votes from throughout the City.

THE REAL question mark among the incumbents-and a big one-is Daniel H. J. Hayes Jr. (Ind.). Though a former mayor and probably the most competent of the Independent councilors, Hayes has never been a strong runner (he finished eighth last time) and is locked in a struggle with Danchy for North Cambridge votes. Though as mayor Haves began the first real move to get the universities to ease Cambridge housing shortages, he became the local point of the rent control bitterness, probably because rent control backers felt his vote was the one they could swing. This combined with his prominent role in the City Manager struggle of 1965-68, has made Hayes a controversial figure. He has been running scared this time taking half hour radio spots over local radio, and talking himself hoarse to voters at rallies and over the telephone. Hayes may make it again this time, but it will be close; if he fails, Leonard J. Russell (Ind.)-who got a respectable total of 9-10 "number ones" last time-seems as good a bet as any to take his place.

Two members of the current city council-Cornelia B. Wheeler (CCA) and Bernard Goldberg (Ind.)-are not running for re-election; where their votes go will be important in determining the other two members of the new council. In Wheeler's case, it is pretty clear: By a process somewhat akin to a laying-on of hands, she has been backing Robert P. Moncreiff, a former Rhodes Scholar and like her, CCA and a Republican. With this vote, Moncreiff seems to have a pretty good chance of election. The old Goldberg vote, on the other hand, will probably scatter; some may go to James W. Caragianes (Ind.) who, like Goldberg, draws a lot of support in Mid-Cambridge; others will flow towards School Committeeman Daniel J. Clinton (Ind.) who, with this new support and an old base of votes from his School Committee races, may make it onto the council.

GIVEN PR's aim of increasing minority representation, one of the more interesting questions about the race is the fate of the three black candidates: Thomas Coates (CCA), School Committeeman Gustave M. Solomons (CCA), and Henry F. Owen III (Ind.). Of the three, Coates appears to have the most strength. A former councilor, he began running again moments after he was defeated in 1967. Yet, if he or another black is to win, the black voters will have to mark their ballots one, two, three for the three black candidates. The frontrunner will probably still need some more support from white-mostly likely CCA-voters.

The three are reported to have decided a week ago not to campaign for a one, two, three vote from the blacks. Whether the severely split black neighborhoods will do this without such prodding seems doubtful. Moreover, Coates or Solomons, in order to win, must either grab one of the four traditional CCA seats (an unlikely proposition considering the competition) or win as a fifth CCA revolution in City politics. So, at the moment, it is likely that Cambridge's blacks will fall just short of re-gaining representation on the council.

Thus, when the votes are all tallied a week or so from now, chances are that the resulting council will be similar to the present one. That in turn bodes well for the future of City Manager James L. Sullivan. Though the two retiring councilors were part of the coalition which hired Sullivan, the manager seems to feel that he can gain the support of a majority of the new council, and he is a man sensitive to the way the political wind is blowing in the City. For the first time since 1963, then, the council elections may not presage the firing of a city manager. Considering the havoc the successive city manager fights brought to City government, that would be no small blessing.