Thomas Coates is the mystery man of this year's city council race. He has almost no campaign organization to speak of, not printed any campaign literature, and is woefully short of money.

Coates's only hope for a council seat on November 4 lies in the voters' memories. He was a city councilor for six years, and during that period was one of Cambridge's few black elected officials. In 1973 he was defeated for re-election.

Coates was once endorsed by the Cambridge Civic Association but sources said that the Independent councilors want him to run to draw votes away from Saundra Graham, a black incumbent city councilor who is a strong advocate of rent control. Those sources cite Coates's position on rent control as evidence of his sympathy with the city's landlords and big real estate developers.

Now director of administrative services at Fitchburg State College, Coates is mired in a budget war with Governor Michael Dukakis and the legislature. He may win that war, but odds are he won't get a chance to use his fiscal expertise on the Cambridge City Council.

John J. Courtney

John J. Courtney, who has lived in an Irish working-class neighborhood just northwest of the Radcliffe Quad for all of his 36 years, feels that the College always considered his neighborhood somewhat of a "blight." Now that he's running for city council, he hopes that both the Independents and the Cambridge Convention '75 slate will find him to be a bit of a blight himself.

Courtney's main complaint about the Independents is that they are too tight with the big real estate developers in the city, and he said he doesn't like the Cambridge Convention people because he thinks they are too removed from the working-class people from Cambridge. Courtney points out that while 80 per cent of the families in Cambridge are tenants, all of the candidates on the Cambridge Convention slate are property owners.

Billed by his campaign manager as an "urban populist," Courtney said his constituency consists primarily of working class tenants, and unemployed workers throughout the city. Courtney also said that his primary issues are rent control, which he supports, and the deterioration of Cambridge's neighborhoods, which he opposes.

Courtney is not trying to appeal to the student population of Cambridge. "A student blitz on election day is not my idea of reform," he said. He feels that was possibly because he knows Harvard students so well, having worked four years in the Winthrop House dining hall.

Thomas W. Danehy +

Independent Thomas W. Danehy is a five-term council incumbent. A drugstore owner who would rather watch the Red Sox than talk to a reporter, Danehy said he sees a good chance for an independent majority on the new council. "There are no issues above the surface," in this year's campaign, he said, though "some have tried to create them."

Danehy's first priority is development in Kendall Square, to lift the tax burden and unemployment. After that, he stresses his vociferous opposition to rent control and public housing. "Rent control has made tenants and landlords combatants," Danehy said, "and has hindered development in Cambridge."

Danehy's proposed rent control revision would do away with the present board, and set up instead a review committee "with teeth in it" to prevent unfair rates. He is against more public housing, and feels that some projects should even be torn down because the city is so "super-saturated" with them.

Unlike most of his fellow councilors, Danehy is a strong supporter of the universities in Cambridge. He feels they work well with the city and are an integral part of it. Something else rare for an Independent, Danehy has a small pro-student plank: the universities, he said, should not be taxed by the city because the costs would only be passed on to the students.

Eric L. Davin *