The Crayola candidate

Part 2

Campaign Trail by Jason Gay

MacKinnon was born two days after Christmas 1962, in Hartford, Connecticut. Since then, he's attended prep school, formed a rock band called Nietzsche and a Horse, enrolled at Columbia University, dropped out, worked construction, sold wine, hawked raffle tickets, joined a theater ensemble that performed for prisoners, moved to Boston, served as a caseworker for a cerebral palsy patient, earned a BA at Harvard, gotten married, answered the phone at help line for the elderly, fact-checked at a magazine, worked at a Buddhist foundation, and recently, for the first time, ended up on the unemployment line.

It's been a busy life, to say the least, and throughout, MacKinnon has maintained a passion for the arts. He played music, wrote plays, and established his own drama company, the Artezani Theatre. He joined his current rock band, the Burrs. He also developed a reputation as a brutally funny political satirist and street performer, using humor to protest the war on drugs and US involvement in Central America. His confrontational performances sometimes landed him in trouble. In 1990, he was arrested outside a Boston rally for Nelson Mandela; the following is an excerpt from the police report:

A white male, later identified as Ian M. MacKinnon, was causing a disturbance . . . by causing a large crowd gathering . . . by displaying an obscene object (a Nixon plastic face) in groin area while zipper is down.

For the record, MacKinnon says that the Boston police had it all wrong; the mask was in his groin area, but it was Ronald Reagan's face, not Nixon's. But he proudly used his arrest to publicize the way he felt the city mistreated and misunderstood artists, particularly street performers. He continued to wage this war in Cambridge, where he moved three years ago with his wife (and fellow Burr), Rebecca Ostriker. MacKinnon publicly criticized the city's outdoor permitting process for street performers, which he viewed as too restrictive and too expensive for low-income artists.

MacKinnon's outspokenness earned him some political notice, especially among creative types and younger Cantabridgians. Earlier this summer, prodded by friends who wanted to improve the relationship between City Hall and city artists, MacKinnon decided to throw his name into the crowded council race. His wife wasn't surprised at his choice.

"He's always been very extroverted, very willing to stand up and talk," says Ostriker, an editor at the magazine New Age Journal. "But I think he really likes the idea of politics, and doing more for the community."

Indeed, MacKinnon does possess a certain political polish. Beneath that wild-child exterior is an articulate candidate with an Ivy League degree in government and a wide-ranging knowledge of political and art history. He's modeled parts of his campaign on that of Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theater director who, upon being elected to his country's parliament, installed his drama company as his legislative staff. Though MacKinnon doesn't plan the same for Cambridge -- in fact, he says he's eager to work with the current council members -- he is determined to bring the artistic and political worlds together.

And MacKinnon doesn't mind a little rabble-rousing to make his point. In late July, he wrapped City Hall in red tape (literally: he ran around the building, tape in hand) to lampoon Cambridge's political gridlock. Future campaign events will include a life-size game of Monopoly to protest ongoing Cambridge development, the unveiling of a "community art board" at the Harvest Food Coop in Central Square, and an outdoor city council debate on October 18, organized by MacKinnon's campaign manager, Zeitgeist Gallery director Al Nidle.

"I think Ian's the only candidate out there who's being proactive, who's talking about new ideas," says Nidle, who has never worked on a political campaign until now. "I think everyone else stands for the status quo."

To date, MacKinnon has pretty much ignored the status quo. His maverick campaign is driven by a belief that with the loss of rent control and the influx of new businesses and apartment complexes, Cambridge may lose what's left of its shrinking creative community. "I really have deep sympathy, and it springs from experience, for people who are trying to create real culture," he says.

MacKinnon thinks it's real culture, not politics, that will ultimately save the Cambridge way of life. He's encouraging increased arts spending in local schools, community centers, hospitals, homeless shelters, even halfway houses. He wants the city to hire more arts teachers and develop programs to create job opportunities for Cambridge's youngest artists. And, of course, there's his free-money pledge -- a formidable $41,000 over two years, which MacKinnon will attempt to match with an equal amount in foundation, individual, and corporate grants.

How this will play in City Hall, MacKinnon isn't sure. He remains a true outsider, an unknown quantity in a city that teems with old-school politickers. There are rivals who see him as a playful jester with some interesting ideas. There are others, no doubt, who view him as a fruitcake. But MacKinnon's been getting some ink in local papers (including a profile in the Cambridge Chronicle), and more important, he's attracting a band of merry pranksters capable of stealing some important votes.

The other candidates may look at me as a flake," MacKinnon says proudly. "But I'm a flake they can no longer ignore."

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Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.