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Candidates Campaign on Campus

Council Hopefuls Target Students' Votes, Look for Volunteer Help

Searching for every vote they can find, candidates for Cambridge City Council and the Cambridge School Committee are sending mass mailings and visiting Harvard to registered to vote in the November 7 city-wide elections.

"I've always gone door-to-door on the Harvard campus," said 12-term incumbent Councillor Francis H. Duehay '55. "This year should be no different."

City Councillor Anthony D. Galluccio held an informal meeting with approximately 20 students at Eliot House last Saturday, where he discussed election issues and held a voter registration drive.

"If we can pick up a dozen votes, it's worth it," Galluccio said. "Meeting personally with students gives them an incentive to vote."

Galluccio said he is also using student labor to disseminate information on campus.

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Wayne Marshall '98, an Eliot House resident who lives in Cambridge, will be distributing leaflets and information packets to registered voters, he said.

Council candidate Jonathon D. Spampinato, 26, expects to mail 3000 campaign brochures to newly-registered voters--including 300 Harvard undergraduate and graduate students--sometime next week, according to campaign chair Michael T. Duffy.

"As a recent college graduate from Northeastern University, Jonathon can identify with the concerns of college students," Duffy said.

One problem for candidates is that students' addresses change every year and many fail to report the changes to election officials, making it difficult to locate voters.

"I would love to do more at Harvard, but it's tough to find where students are," council candidate Marty Connor said.

In addition to courting individual students, some council hopefuls are turning to similarly-minded political groups for help in getting their message to students.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance has invited some contenders to speak at Harvard and has pledged to provide volunteer labor to their campaigns.

"[We] will be helping Cambridge City Council candidate Jonathon Spampinato in his quest for a seat," said William D. Zerhouni '98, vice-president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance. "We'd like to help Republican candidates get elected across Massachusetts."

Other candidates are communicating specifically concentrating on issues which directly affect Harvard University.

Efforts by Harvard to acquire property in Cambridge, and thereby remove the land from city property tax rolls, has been a continual topic of debate among politicians.

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