Yvette Alexander, a once-obscure city bureaucrat and now freshman D.C. councilwoman, represents a key vote over whether to confirm Mayor Adrian Fenty’s controversial attorney general nominee.
Alexander, D-Ward 7, is apparently the only undecided vote on the five-member Public Safety and Judiciary Committee on whether Peter Nickles should be the city’s full-time attorney general. The other four members have split.
“Everybody wants to talk to me,” she said, sighing before a sometimes contentious public hearing over Nickles on Friday. “I guess I’m the one who gets to decide.”
It is a critical vote in Alexander’s young political career. Nickles is one of the key advisers in the Fenty administration and chairs dozens of working groups and committees carrying out what Nickles calls Fenty’s revolution. Alexander, 45, is also a protégé of Council Chairman Vincent Gray, so many city hall insiders view her vote as a barometer of relations between D.C.’s top two elected officials.
Nickles, 70, has served as an interim attorney general since January, shortly after then-Attorney General Linda Singer resigned. The hard-driving Nickles was accused of driving Singer out of office. He has had a role in nearly every controversy of the Fenty administration, from its neighborhood quarantines to its disastrous defense of the city’s gun laws at the Supreme Court.
Nickles has lost the support of Judiciary Committee Chair Phil Mendelson, D-at large, and Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, who said Friday that Nickles is more loyal to Fenty than to the rule of law.
He has the support of members Jack Evans, D-Ward 2, and Fenty’s protégé, Muriel Bowser, D-Ward 4. That leaves Alexander in the middle.
If she has made up her mind, she kept it secret at Friday’s hearing.
“I have a lot of questions,” Alexander said.
One of them was whether Nickles was too arrogant for his own good.
“Do you feel in any way that you need to make any adjustments?” she asked Nickles.
No, Nickles said: “Believe it or not, Council Member Alexander, I’ve mellowed over the years.”
It’s not clear whether Nickles’ charms worked on Alexander. Reached after Friday’s hearing, she said: “I haven’t made up my mind yet. But I am keeping tally.”
