Those who care about the District had hopes for a different kind of mayoral campaign when D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray announced his candidacy with the slogan “We Can Do Better.” The contest, however, spiraled downward.
Now it’s in the gutter.
Both candidates — Gray and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty — are responsible. Rather than having a mature conversation about the future, the duo and the Democratic State Committee have flaunted meaningless straw polls and held unfocused, sometimes shrill discussions.
Things declined further last week as both campaigns unleashed negative ads — though neither camp would describe its offerings in such terms.
Fenty has spent inordinate time, energy and money tagging Gray with the failures of Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly’s administration when Gray was in charge of the Department of Human Services. That already troubled agency grew worse during his tenure.
More relevant surely is Gray’s service on the council. What public policies did he champion? How did he manage the legislature? What mistakes has he made?
If Fenty has done that assessment, he hasn’t presented it — although there’s enough in Gray’s work on the council, first as Ward 7 representative and then as chairman, to raise questions about his readiness to be mayor.
For his part, Gray has tried to paint Fenty as corrupt. Last week, the chairman called members back from summer recess to grant special counsel Robert Trout authority to traipse through the private affairs of Omar Karim. Karim heads Banneker Ventures, which won a now controversial recreation contract from the D.C. Housing Authority through a competitive bid.
Trout wants to compel Karim to reveal the fiscal affairs of Liberty Law Group, a firm also owned by Karim, But Liberty has never received a government contract and there isn’t any evidence it received funds associated with the recreation deal. Understandably Karim’s lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, has said Trout is becoming “the Kenneth Starr” of the District.
The council’s action didn’t generate media coverage. So later that week, candidate Gray called a press conference, hoping to score the political points the legislative session didn’t provide. Gray has said the recreation contract is the worst example of cronyism in the city’s history.
He knows better. Nothing compares with what happened during the mayoral tenures of his good friend and supporter Marion Barry.
The chairman and his posse of council members, including Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, have slung around terms like corruption and criminal wrongdoing before. That was when they learned the Fenty administration was seeking to donate fire equipment to a town in the Dominican Republic. After great theater, including issuance of subpoenas and taking of depositions, Cheh’s committee concluded, “there does not appear to have been any criminal wrongdoing.” Folks who know the details of the recreation contract investigation have said the same conclusion likely will be reached on that deal as well.
Meanwhile, the mayoral race is being misdirected by ancient political history and malicious propaganda. The real victims in this mess are District residents, who definitely deserve better.
Jonetta Rose Barras’s column appears on Monday and Wednesday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
