The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 3

Bostoa Evening Globe Thursday, Oct 21, 1976 3 ALAN LUPO I Ar 1 ii '-i IIHIII- I It's low key, but race for Register full of classic Hub politics PAUL R. TIERNEY Those same sources that say that if a teaching job can be arranged for Ellison he will bypass the committee if Tierney wins and thus open the seat to the seventh-place finisher, John D. O'Bryant. O'Bryant is black and Tierney has been trying to make some inroads into those voters. Tierney is known to have collected a rather wealthy campaign treasury chest and has spent much of it on house signs and bumper stickers.

Hicks, with significantly less money, has fewer signs and campaign paraphernalia. Neither candidate has advertised extensively in any medium. Whatever the outcome of the race, the election will neither propel or expel either candidate from public life since both have a year remaining in their current offices and have been consistent winners for those jobs in the past. Said one politician in the Mayor Kevin H. White organization, which finds itself in the ironic position of not being able to help an ally because Hicks is more important to the administration in the Council: "As a pure campaign it really doesn't matter much and I don't think most people are all that interested; but it's a classic example of Boston politics, not what you are but who you and your friends are." LOUISE DAY HICKS By Gary McMillan Globe Staff The campaign for Suffolk County Register of Deeds has been disarmingly quiet to the public eye but still filled with the behind the scenes machinations of classic Boston politics.

In fact, the strategies of both candidates are as much indicative of the current power relationships among local politicians as they are for winning the election. City Council President Louise Day Hicks is the Democratic nominee for Register. School Committeeman Paul R. Tierney bypassed the September primary to run against her as an Independent on the Nov. 2 ballot.

The job they are seeking pays $27,152 annually for the six-year term and has control over about 100 patronage appointments. Both candidates are qualified lawyers, both have served in public life for some years and both have promised to resign their present offices if elected. Since the Register's position is more administrative than political, neither candidate has indulged in grandiose promises and the normal Boston issues of busing and money have hardly entered the contest. Because it is a Suffolk County office, residents of Chelsea, Winthrop and Revere will vote and in the past those votes have often made the difference for a candidate. Mrs.

Hicks, of course, wouldn't be much of a politician if she admitted to that strategy and in conversations with reporters over the last few weeks she has kept her cards to herself. Whether the strategy is working won't be known for two weeks but one informal poll taken this week by a seasoned political observer in Boston shows Hicks slightly ahead of Tierney. Tierney's strategy is a bit more complicated and the candidate and his helpers are even less willing to discuss it. Tierney, a School Committeeman from Hyde Park since 1968, has the active support of two of Hicks' one-time allies and now ardent foes, School Committeewoman Elvira Pixie Palladino and City Councilman John Kerrigan. Both Palladino and Kerrigan, who helped form a splinter antibusing group called United ROAR after a rift with Hicks over control of the original Restore Our Alienated Rights group, have been campaigning and collecting funds for Tierney.

Tierney also has the support of former School Committeeman Paul Ellison, who stands to return to that board if Tierney wins, since Ellison finished sixth in 1975. Ellison, according to some politically knowledgeable people, is more interested in getting his old teaching job back than returning to the unpaid Committee job. That, basically, is the public perception of the campaign. There is much more to it. For one of the few times in her political life.

Hicks is not running on her name; in fact, assiduously trying to avoid a referendum on her. She has done little campaigning for the job but has effectively used her position as a Councilwoman to get around the city. Over the last month, for instance, she has chaired a number of council hearings in the neighborhoods on the city's tax rate. Her position against moving the Charles Street Jail to Deer Island has won her support from neigboring Winthrop and she has cultivated that stand. Still, it's been a low-key campaign for.

Hicks, who has been in public life since the early 1960s. Last year she garnered more votes than any other local candidate, but in the September primary against the relatively unknown incumbent Register, Joseph D. Coughlin, she won by just 3546 votes out of 100,278 cast. "She knows there are a lot of anti-Hicks votes out there," said one politician who is aware of her strategy, "and she doesn't want to turn this into a vote on her. So the idea is to stay fairly low, use the Democratic endorsement and figure she'll get in on the votes of people who bother to pull the lever that far down the ballot." Every once in a while, it is important to say this.

Black people may find this so obvious that it's patronizing, and liberals will find it so obvious that it's boring, but where I live and often hang around, there are hardly any black persons and only a few liberals. As Garrison once said of Abolition, "On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak or write with moderation." A woman named Esther was going home to Win-throp on a bus. Now this woman never had a chance to go to any college, but she has more common sense than most who did grace the halls of academe. The only other persons on this bus were the driver and three men, and they were talking. The way she remembers it, they were pretty down on everything in the country.

"Everything was bad," she said. "Nothing was good." "Excuse me," she said to them, "but are you going to vote?" No, they said. They didn't like either candidate, and I can certainly sympathize with that feeling. "Well, you have no right to criticize, if you don't vote," she said, and maybe she is right and maybe not. At least one of them thought she had a point, because when she got off the bus with him, he kept her on the corner to talk.

Now, these are white people in their 60s, and they do not normally jet to Monaco. They got to talking about the cost of living, which is hitting them pretty hard. She shocked the man, when she told him how much some dental work was going to cost, and he said, "What can you do?" She said either you've got to be very rich or be on welfare, and he shook his head and said, "No, you can't be on welfare. You're the wrong color." That's when she got angry. Esther has never been one to withdraw into a wall, when somebody says something she doesn't think is right.

When punks act up on the Blue Line, Esther tells them to can it, and the other adults shuffle their feet and smile at her and thank her for doing what they don't have the guts to do. She's like a colonel down at Fort Knox who was fond of saying, "Stand tall and stand up for what you stand for." Esther doesn't know any colonels, and she doesn't really know any black people, but she knows a crock of malarkey when she sees one, and she told the guy he was wrong, that if he was going to say things like that, he ought to get some statistics. The way she remembers it, the once friendly man turned and walked away. You can bet that guy didn't have any statistics. You can bet that guy never talked with the likes of a black cabbie in Washington who works hard for a living, whose wife works for a living and who had to fight like hell to get Medicare money for the bandages and pouches his 86-year-old mother-in-law needed after her colostomy.

You don't have to go to Washington to find that. It just happens to have been a recent episode. You don't even have to leave Winthrop, because there are a few blacks there, but you can bet that guy doesn't know them very well. Most of all, you can bet there are thousands of guys like that in every town and city. They've got their images, and they don't want to hear about anything else, no sir.

They know all right. They're really bright. A funny thing happened in the Winthrops and Scituates tuates and Melroses. The Irish, Italians, Jews, Greeks, Poles, Syrians, they didn't destroy the communities. How do you like that? It is indeed an obvious point.

You grow up with your own kind, and you grow up ignorant of others, unless you've got a lot of common sense, and there's precious little of that around. Instead, we've got guys standing on corners and mouthing off that you can't get on welfare because you're the wrong color. So here's some statistics for them. They come from the State Dept. of Public Welfare, and they don't even include Federal figures for Old Age Assistance and disability payments.

The statistic are about two months old now, but they'll do. In Winthrop, where just about everyone is white, 778 persons get Aid to Families with Dependent Children; 121 get General Relief, and more than 700 others get some form of medical assistance from the state. That means Winthrop has 1636 state-aided welfare recipients, or about eight percent of the estimated 21,000 persons in town. Those poor people. Wait until Massachusetts finds out they're the wrong color.

(Alan Lupo is a contributing columnist) Markey's problem is to keep the voters in 7th District interested in campaign 1 jryrv I is! lyl jijf Simply by virtue of being the only alternative on the ballot, Murphy received in 1974 some 30,000 votes more than Markey received in the primary. Daly moved into the district, he said, because "it seemed crazy to me that there was no Republican candidate for an open seat." He said he hopes to spend about $10,000, working out of a President Ford headquarters in Melrose. The question is whether I can get across the idea of keeping taxes under control," said Daly. He is trying to paint Markey as a liberal. Murphy said he will spend less than $1000.

"We are letting the media and public relations people sell us candidates," he said, adding that Markey' is "too young to really look at life." Murphy has attracted some attention with one proposal that Congressional salaries decrease in proportion as unemployment and the rate of inflation increase. Chickles is a perennial candidate who has run on the Republican ticket for Executive Council, Secretary of State and Congress. Spending some $600 of his own funds, Chickles is sympathetic to Markey's candidacy but differs with the Democratic nominee on proposed constitutional amendments banning abortion and busing which Markey supports. The lopsided Democratic registration and strong visibility make it unlikely Markey, who has been endorsed by his primary opponents, can be defeated. In fact, preparations are already being made at the State House and in Washington to have Markey sworn in after the election to fill the last two months of Macdonald's term.

Although Congress will not be in session until January, Markey could gain seniority if he is sworn in in November. By Stephen Wermiel Globe Staff For state Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Malden), the problem is to make sure voters in the 7th Congessional District stay interested in a race that is no longer interesting. The 30-year-old Markey was the victor in a 12-way Democratic primary last September.

By all rights, he should be an obvious favorite to defeat a Republican and two independants on Nov. 2 and fill the vacancy created by the death last spring of US Rep. Torbert H. Macdonald But the primary attracted so much interest and attention a record 102,000 votes were cast for Congress in the 7th District that many voters are baffled when they see Markey back out on the street campaigning. Standing in Maiden Square in a recent blustery afternoon, Markey shook hands with well-wishers who treated him more like a triumphant Patriots' star returning home than a candidate for Congress.

"Congratulations, you did a great said one voter passing by the candidate. "I would appreciate your consideration on Nov. 2," said Markey. The two were on different wave lengths; and that exchange was echoed often in Maiden, Everett and Woburn as the candidate made his way around the district located due north of Boston. One problem Markey does not have is recognition among voters in the 7th District where some 51 percent of these registered are Democrats and fewer than 15 percent are Republicans.

Markey estimates his own visibility as the result of the high intensity primary at upwards of 90 percent. The same cannot be said for Richard W. Daly, the 40-year-old Republican candidate who recently moved into the district to Mel- win i mat REP. EDWARD MARKEY maintaining interest rose from Wellesley where he was a state representative a few years ago. Daly has little visibility in the district.

There is also little apparent recognition for two independents, James J. Murphy, 50, of Melrose, and Harry Chickles, 34, of Wakefield. But the Markey campaign is anxious to take nothing for granted. The 12-way split in the Democratic primary has produced one irony which highlights Markey's situation. Markey was the victor in the primary with 22,014 votes.

Murphy, the independent on the November ballot, also ran as an independent against Mcdonald two years ago. Roger Parsons, 9, doesn't let a little rain keep him from pedaling about. (Globe photo by Bill Curtis) Cured' of Hodgkin's disease, he's denied firefighter job By Kay Longcope Globe Staff cancer be given their due consideration for job opportunities." Silvia's views "don't hold water," Arthur (Ace) Hardy said as he and his son talked with a reporter at the family's dining room table. "Everything the boy has ever done has been public service, ever since he was old enough to do anything." Young Hardy, a solid 170-pounder at says Silvia is denying the town's taxpayers the best-qualified man for the job himself. For the last three years he has been the only firefighter trained to administer emergency health care.

His performance on the 48-hour-a-week job and qualifications as the department's only registered medical technician are widely acknowledged, even by Silvia, who denied Hardy one of seven fire force openings last week. "The majority of people on the force don't have the qualifications he does," Silvia said. "If I could revamp the whole operation and, all things being equal, I'd take Jeff Hardy, but all things are not equal." bile than having another attack" of Ilodgkin's, a disease that affects lymph nodes in the neck, armpits and groin. The disease affected only Hardy's neck. Four doctors, who independently examined Hardy after three months of radium treatments and removal of his spleen as a preventive step last year, said they found no evidence of a recurrence.

"On multiple follow-up examinations and testing, he has no evidence of residual disease," Dr. F. John Bargoot Jr. of Lynn Hospital said. "There is no limitation on the amount or kind of work he can do." Dr.

Robert F. Sanncr of Cable Medical Center in Ipswich said Hardy's prognosis "must, of course, be indefinite, but the general outlook for people who have localized the disease with adequate treatment is good." Dr. Herbert 11. Levenlhal of Lynn Hospital said Hardy "is fully capable of gainful employment. It is our responsibility to ensure that patients who have recovered from That affiliation, however, has prompted Silvia to say: "Ilodgkin's disease aside, nepotism would have heen enough." On that he said, he did not hire Bowen's son, who is now working as a paint stripper in Amesbury.

Nevertheless, the issue is shaping up as a civil-rights fight centering on job discrimination against those persons who will have Ilodgkin's disease in their lifetime. The American Cancer Society has taken up Hardy's defense, and the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts is viewing his situation as a possible test case. Sen. William Saltonstal) testified in his favor at a medical heal ing in June, and so did Rep. David Lane.

"I've got more personal mail on this than anything," Silvia said, his dark-suited shoulders slumping over a clean desktop in a recent interview. lie said an American Cancer Society representative told him that Hardy "has a belter chance of getting hit by an automo IPSWICH This town of 12,000 is di- over whether Jeffrey Hardy, 22, a provisional firefighter who seemingly has conquered a cancer-related disease, should be permanently appointed to the 18-man force. The Board of Selectmen would hire him. would Fire Chief Theodore Mozdziez and Capt. Mel Bowen, for whom Hardy has worked the last three years.

Town Manager Leonard Silvia will not. He is afraid that Ilodgkin's disease, which struck Hardy last year, will recur and that the town will he responsible for long-term disability payments to a permanent Civil Service employee. The issue is tinged with some sentiment. Hardy is a home-town boy whose father has been on the force nearly 18 years, and the younger Hardy has been training to be a fireman since 1970, JEFFREY HARDY qualifications not at issue. (Globe photo by Bill Curtis).