In researching material for blogging about today’s at-large D.C. council special election, I stumbled upon a pic that I bet Sekou Biddle might have mixed feeling about a voter seeing on election day.
I snapped this pic moments after the D.C. Democratic State Committee voted to appoint him to the seat that Kwame Brown had vacated when he was sworn in as council chair. It took then the pre-SUV scandal scarred Kwame to work his magic and break the logjam in Biddle’s favor, and against his September primary adversary Vincent Orange, and deliver the seat to Sekou.
I bet Biddle now regrets Marion Barry in the shadows after he threw up hands and told WaPo’s Tim Craig yesterday: “At the Ward 8 Democrats [endorsement meeting], it was 141 for Orange and six for Biddle…and I was one of the six.” So, Biddle gains none of the cred that Barry’s blessing can bestow, but now can be tarred by association, as Barry remains anathema to the reform-starved voters that look to turn out in force today.
As for Kwame Brown, his once-sky high popularity has taken a hit citywide, but not as badly in the wards his father, former Biddle campaign advisor Marshall Brown, vented on behalf of to the Washington Post, wards where Vincent Orange’s campaign is working hard. However, more than Marion Barry, a politician in career eclipse, Kwame Brown is much more salient to voters today. Pictured next to him, moments after he helped engineer his appointment, might reinforce the image – as an ally of Kwame Brown and Vince Gray, a candidate in the pocket of the D.C. Democratic establishment – that his opponents have sought to saddle him with throughout this campaign.
