Something New in Boston

For 40 years, political reform movements have been drifting across the Boston scene without leaving so much as a white splotch on the grimy City Hall. When a reform organization called the New Boston Committee began to make noises this year, many an old politician discounted it as just another collection of do-gooders going nowhere. Boston was in for a surprise.

The New Boston Committee was started by Jerome L. Rappaport, a determined Harvard Law School graduate, now only 24. Lawyer Henry L. Shattuck, former Harvard treasurer, became Rappaport's mentor. The committee grew into a political phenomenon--a nonpartisan movement of more than 2,000 citizens from every corner of Boston. It represents the Boston Irish, the Boston Italians and the Boston Brahmins. Among its directors are a leading Republican lawyer, a Democratic women's leader, a C.I.O. official and a real-estate operator.

After checking on the 65 City Council and 37 School Committee candidates, the committee picked its slates. Then it sent sound trucks blaring around the Boston Common, put on a television drama, sent members to political house parties from Back Bay to South Boston.

Last week Boston voters went to the polls in a nonpartisan preliminary election to nominate 18 candidates for nine seats on the City Council, and ten for five places on the School Committee. Results: all of the New Boston candidates, a complete slate for the Council and the School Committee, were nominated. The committee's candidates won five of the top six places in the school race, five of the top nine in the council contest.

Said Antonino F. lovino, chairman of the committee: "Our success is an exciting recognition that Democrats, Republicans, independents, labor, business and professional men, Catholics, Jews and Protestants can unite when their community is threatened by decay."

Boston voters also gave a 31,000-vote majority to Mayor John B. Hynes over Boston's former mayor and political boss, Ex-Convict James Michael Curley.

The New Boston Committee's candidates and Mayor Hynes now face the test of the final election November 6. But Bostonians who would like some new hope and vision think their chances are excellent.

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