New vs. Old

Take a look at the Councillors who voted for Hayes and DeGuglielmo: Hayes has only been on the Council since '62; Goldberg since '62; Coates since '64; Maher since last week; and Mrs. Wheeler, with an interruption, since '60. Of the Curry supporters, Crane, Vellucci, and Sullivan have the longest tenure of any current Councillors. Thomas H. D. Mahoney, first elected in 1963, is the sole newcomer, and his loyalty to Curry can be explained, to a large extent, by a long friendship with Crane.

From a feeling of relative isolation and impotence there evolved more purely political complaints. Perhaps Crane and Curry, having worked together so long, actually did pay less attention to the other Councillors (or to some of them). At any rate, it was said that Crane, Vellucci, and, to a lesser extent, Sullivan were getting too many jobs from the city manager's office. Some of the other Councillors wanted in.

But there had to be a common element of irritation and animosity against Crane and Curry for DeGuglielmo to have united Councilors of such divergent political backgrounds. Had this element been missing, the desire, and probably the courage to challenge Crane would have been missing, too.

The more one watches this battle, the more one becomes convinced of the importance of personal as well as political relationships. For example, Councillor Maher's dislike of both Crane and Curry--particularly Curry--stretches back to 1963, when Maher first ran for the City Council and finished tenth, one place away from being a winner. A policeman then, Maher was switched from the detective section to the traffic division. He labelled the transfer political punishment and blamed both Curry and Crane.

Sullivan had strongly supported Maher's right to campaign, and now expected Maher's support in the mayoralty fight. But Sullivan wanted Curry for city manager, Maher reportedly felt that his own efforts, rather than Sullivan's, had gotten him elected, and therefore considered himself free to switch his vote.

The antagonism between Maher and Curry was clear on Monday. Curry sat silently through most of the hearing, and only Maher could provoke him to visible anger. "When you took office in 1952," Maher asked accusingly, "did you expect you had a civil-service obligation to stay there forever?" Curry jumped to his feet, and gesturing angrily toward Maher, shouted his reply, concluding: "I let it be known that when I came to my 70th birthday, I would gladly walk out of office." There was, one feels, a fundamental irony, in Hayes's appeal to the other Councillors to avoid discussing personalities during the stormy meeting. For personalities was the name of the game, and, more than anyone else, Mayor Hayes should have known. They are largely what made him the mayor