Barbara Ackermann+*

Long a favorite candidate of the "WASP ghetto" running out along Brattle St., reform incumbent Barbara Ackermann knows her constituency well.

Ackermann's involvement in Cambridge politics has been a 14-year affair, starting with election, and two successive re-elections to the school committee. Then, in 1967, she entered and handily won the contest for councilor, a post she has easily retained in later elections. In 1971, when reform candidates narrowly captured a 5-4 majority in the council, she was made the first woman mayor of the city. And last election, though an independent majority forced her to step down from the city throne, Ackermann helped engineer the famous "living room deal" which brought in James L. Sullivan as city manager.

Even without her reputation as a winner, Ackermann's strength as a reformer will win votes again for her in the "gentile liberal" Neighborhood 9. Particularly strong has been her involvement in housing reform and health care, both recurrent issues in Cambridge's political cycle. Like other incumbents, Ackermann has pointed to the $5.50 tax rate decrease as "a real gain," arguing that last year's $33 jump in the rate stemmed from the city's "total financial incapacity" under the old city manager.

Active, successful, and well-respected in her "district" and in City Hall, Ackermann will have little trouble defending her candidacy. And, unless her political strengths wane suddenly, Cambridge is guaranteed her return to council chambers for yet another term.

Denis Barber

In a city council race virtually laden with colorful personalities, Denis Barber '60 has got to be the most controversial. Barber was embroiled earlier this year in what he calls a witch hunt, when the Cambridge Convention voted to un-endorse him after he came out against strict rent controls. Barber has stuck by his guns and asked that the rent control issue be less of a sacred cow, because he claims rent laws discourage landlords from maintaining property, contributing to the decline of Cambridge housing.

But by no means is Barber a one-issue candidate. Although some would label him politically conservative, he says he agrees with much of the Cambridge Convention '75 platform. However, he says, unlike the rest of the slate, he's not an ideologue, but a "problem solver."

As for Harvard, Barber said that the school is a good neighbor, and is "over-maligned" by the current council.

Barber said he knows no reason to pay a city councilor $150 a night to discuss a United Farm Workers boycott when "Cambridge has so many goddamn problems that need attending to."

If elected, Barber says he will bring in some of his fiscally conservative policies and try to fight the polarization between extreme liberals and conservatives with politically practical suggestions.

John Brode*

When John Brode '52 lost his citizenship during the Korean War for leaving the country to avoid the draft, he could not have guessed that he would be running for a seat on the Cambridge City Council in 1975. But the McCarran Act, the instrument of Brode's exile, was declared unconstitutional in 1957, enabling him to return to the US.

An economist with a background in computers and statistical analysis, Brode is mainly concerned with economic issues. "Rent control is way and away the biggest problem," he said, while pointing out that it is only a part of the overall problem of "economic pressure" on the city. "A lot of money wants to come into Cambridge, to do things like buy land and build high-rise buildings." Rent control and zoning restrictions, he said, are potential means of preserving neighborhoods, "so that blacks and working-class people can afford to stay here."

Brode traces his ideas about government to being "impressed" with Communist-run villages in Frances, where he lived as an exile. "I'm not a liberal, but I don't think the radicals would claim me. I'm definitely left-wing, but I think that you can get something done through the political process."