Since the end of the last election, there has been a vague, often unexpressed, feeling among some city liberals that Cambridge's progressive consensus might someday crumble over issues of style and substance that found their sharpest focus on housing questions. That someday may have arrived.

The outcome of tomorrow's election could be the preface to a softening in the stand of the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), which currently strongly supports rent control and limitations on condominium conversion. If Mary Allen Wilkes, the "condo candidate," runs well or even wins, or if she loses and her votes transfer to Wendy Abt, the CCA candidate viewed as most flexible on housing issues, change will very definitely be in the air.

At least 2000 Cambridge apartments have been converted to condominiums in recent years. What the Wilkes and Abt vote could show is that condo owners have emerged as a distinct political bloc in this city. Two years ago it appeared they hadn't, no candidate appealed directly to them, and none benefited from their support. This year, though, Wilkes identified herself from the start as a liberal, except on housing issues, where she favors the right of some tenants to buy their own apartments as condominiums and is at strongest equivocal in her support of rent control.

And Abt--though much less directly, and perhaps not by her own choice--seems to be appealing to similar feelings. She is the first CCA candidate not to win the endorsement of the city's tenants, a rebuff delivered at a late summer convention. Abt has promised not to vote against rent control. But she also told city tenants that "rent control may not be the best or only way to protect low and moderate income people," and said that many condominium purchasers who wanted only to own their own homes and had "injured no one" were being caught in "complicated regulations." If elected, Abt will have to stick by the CCA platform on the big votes; on more particular enforcement questions, though, she may not be as tough. But what Abt will actually do is less important than what voters think she will do. She seems to be commanding support from many on the assumption that her commitment to rent control and condo limits are soft; a large transfer vote from Wilkes to Abt would indicate just that.

The buzz word for Abt and Wilkes supporters seems to be "flexibility." "We want to send a message to the CCA," says John Hudson, chairman of the Cambridge Condominium Network Steering Committee, who sports a Wilkes button on his lapel. The message, he adds, is that the CCA has been "inflexible" on housing issues. And as Abt wrote in her statement to tenants, "without better data, it is irresponsible to dismiss alternatives and to insist on Rent Control and condo controls in exactly their current forms."

The problem is--as the Rent Control Task Force convention vote showed--that tenants do not feel that wholehearted support of rent and condominium controls are irresponsible. For Abt (and for every current member of the city council save David Sullivan, who rents his home) economic necessity is not an issue. Tenant activists see charges that rent control subsidizes the rich--which in some cases it surely does--as a rhetorical cover for attacking the program which protects them. "If debate is ever opened on rent control, the forces against it are so strong that it will emerge irrevocably weakened," one tenant activist says. Compromise, they insist, is impossible, and they view those who suggest it as greater enemies of rent control than those who oppose the program all together. In a contest between those who support rent control, and those who reject it absolutely, tenants have won. Calls for compromise, for mediation of differences, introduce a new variable and reduce the polarization of city politics around the issue that has served tenants well.

But, like it or not, compromise seems to be on the agenda for many in the city. About a week after the election, the Cambridge Chamber of Commerce will release a detailed study of rent control in the city. Though the Chamber has traditionally been a staunch opponent of rent control and an advocate of condominiums (eliminating the first and encouraging the second was the best answer to Proposition 21/2, they insisted last year), the report will "surprise people with its balance," one source in the Chamber said recently. The study is expected to agree with an earlier report done by MIT researchers, that showed many upper-income people lived in rent controlled units; it may well serve as a rallying point for those looking for "middle ground" on the housing issue.

And the searchers after that middle ground may be many. There are the condo owners, who though secure in their homes may feel a psychological identification with others trying to circumvent the regulations limiting such purchases. There are the tenants who want to buy their own homes. There is that, perhaps large, segment of the population that can be persuaded that a "rational, ordered" approach is the best way to deal with any problem. An earlier test of the size of this group--the can-didacies backed in 1979 by a group of self-proclaimed moderates, the Concerned Cambridge Citizens--failed because the group was widely perceived as a front for local developers, a problem Wilkes and especially Abt do not seem to be encountering. And the final group supporting "moderation" are just those developers and landlords, who stand to make a great deal of money if condominium restrictions are relaxed even enough to allow tenants to buy their own units. A tenant's "right" to purchase his own home is likely to become a key issue, one which "moderates" could someday win.

Until the votes are counted, it will be unclear how large and how united the "flexibility" sentiment is. But the Wilkes candidacy--her ability to raise money--has proved that there is at least some semblance of such a voting bloc. And, with the organizing efforts of the Condominium Network and the continued attention of well-financed real estate interests, it is unlikely such sentiment will disappear until the next election. There will be more test cases like the 1572 Mass Ave and Linnaean St. controversies that have drawn large crowds to the city council chambers in recent months.

Such attention most likely will exacerbate a trend seen in recent months--the increasing disenchantment of many, even in the traditional CCA coalition, with "extreme stands" on housing issues. The question first arose when David Sullivan last spring tried to add new teeth to the anti-condo ordinance. Grumblings about "going too far" were soon heard, and the furor that surrounded attempts to prosecute some condo purchasers were effective weapons not only for Independent slate councilors but also for Wilkes. Though councilor Saundra Graham stuck staunchly behind Sullivan, West Cambridge representatives of the traditional CCA like Francis H. Duehay'55 came under pressure to back off. If this election shows that such moderate sentiments have electoral appeal, that pressure will grow much greater.

Four or five years ago, there would have been few outsiders to challenge moderation in the CCA on housing issues. In the last few years, though, tenants--not the homeowners that make up the traditional CCA--have become well-organized and increasingly politically powerful. David Sullivan can claim credit for much of that transformation; he will reap the fruits of it tomorrow with a strong showing. But the new power means the CCA will not be allowed to drift slowly to the right. If it does, tenants will increasingly distance themselves from it--there will be more Wendy Abts in 1983.

The recipe for making three power centers where only two exist today is obvious. Tomorrow's election will begin to show if it is going to happen; the momentum that seems to be developing, however, would indicate that only tremendously strong showing by David Sullivan and other tenant candidates like John St. George, coupled with poor performance by Wilkes and Abt would quash notions of a liberal shift to the center. If the 1981 campaign has proven anything. it is the fragility of the progressive consensus in Cambridge.

1979 Council Transfer SheetNO. TO BE ELECTED Quota 2638  1st Count  2d Count W.Sullivan Surplus  3rd Count D Sullivan Surplus  4th Count McGurk Ruma-Jones  5th Count Hunt  6th Count Okun  7th Count LaTrem-ouille  8th Count Agee  9th Count CaragianesAgee  212  2  214  0  214  2  216  15  15  231  28  259  7  266Bentubo  271  5  276  0  276  3  279  1  280  1  281  3  284  35  319  11  330Caragianes  289  5  294  1  295  1  296  1  298  3  301  1  302  5  307Clinton  1527  22  1549  1  1550  4  1554  10  1564  4  1568  1  1569  31  1600  71  1671Crane  1958  46  2004  3  2007  5  2012  14  2026  19  2045  4  2049  30  2079  33  2112Danehy  2262  36  2298  1  2299  2  2301  9  2310  6  2316  3  2319  9  2328  22  2350Duehay  2431  5  2436  25  2461  1  2462  3  2465  8  2473  17  2490  22  2512  18  2530Frisoli  983  15  998  0  998  10  1008  15  1023  11  1034  6  1040  53  1093  12  1105Graham  2184  7  2191  67  2258  4  2262  2  2264  4  2268  32  2300  12  2312  23  2335Hunt  102  0  102  1  103  1  104Jones  24  1  25  0  25La Tremouille  158  1  159  4  163  5  168  4  172  3  175McGurk  23  0  28  0  28Okum  123  0  123  1  124  3  127  7  134Preusser  1211  2  1213  39  1252  8  1260  1  1261  6  1267  35  1302  8  1310  14  1324Ruma  4  0  41  0  41Russell  1953  43  1996  0  1996  9  2005  10  2015  10  2025  6  2031  12  2043  9  2052Singleton  547  2  549  12  561  5  566  12  567  3  570  10  580  5  585  4  589Sullivan, D.  2871  +  2871  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638Sullivan, W.  2891  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638  +  2638Thompson  1001  3  1004  15  1019  2  1021  1  1002  4  1026  13  13  1039  14  1053  11  1064Vellucci  1671  52  1723  7  1730  15  1745  0  1745  4  1749  7  1756  2  1758  33  1791Wylle  1631  6  1637  56  1693  2  1695  5  1700  1713  21  1734  19  1753  7  176