Editorials and Opinions

Gary Tischler • July 26, 2011

On Easter weekend in Washington, the president became an avatar of spring, a burdened man who still led the way, like a pied piper, to greet spring with joy and a burst of activity.

In Washington, the tourists, too, are our avatars of spring, dropping out of the sky as the cherry blossoms did their magnificent thing.

But President Barack Obama showed the way, taking himself and his family not across the traditional way to St. John’s Episcopal in Lafayette Park but out to Southeast and Allen Chapel AME Church for an Easter service.

The visitation at a church, very much like the one he used to attend in Chicago, moved the congregation, the ministers, deacons, women, men and children there to the core. This is an area of the city where shootings are a regular part of the daily diet of woes that includes astronomic unemployment and a feeling that political leaders, from the mayor on down, had forgotten them.

But the president had not, and by attending and interacting, although not speaking, he brought with him — besides the circus of Secret Service and gawkers that go with him everywhere — some measure of renewed hope and energy. “This is a monumental moment for us as a community,” Church pastor Rev. Michael E. Bell Sr., said, as reported in the Washington Post. Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry, a frequent visitor, and Mayor Adrian Fenty, not so much, sat quietly.

The president, like us, like the tulips, like the tourists, embraced spring, and dove into its duties with gusto — jump-starting egg hunt races at the White House were thousands of guests brightened up the lawn and the day afternoon on Sunday. No doubt, he forgave the children for getting a bigger kick out of teen rock star Justin Bieber, who sang and performed.

Later, he headed to the Nationals Ball Park, donned a red suit, and threw out the first pitch, a lob to the left, proving again that basketball was his game. On YouTube, you could hear a lone boo somewhere, but this was no tea party. This was baseball, the season initiated by the president, and the fans, who bring hope and begin their spring-summer-early-fall-to-October daily ritual of perusing the box scores as if they contained the baseball equivalent of Bible verses.

And that was spring in Washington, where the president lives by our leave, as do we. The Nationals, by the way, lost the opener 11-1, which does in no way diminish the fact that many, many games remain.

Jan Craig Scruggs •

America’s National Mall has problems. Look at the lawn. There are parts of the Mall where the grass is, well, not grass at all, but rather weeds. On some of the most visited areas of the Mall you can find several types of grass and weeds growing together in a most unappealing manner.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has hired landscape professionals to show the public how the Mall should and can look by improving the grounds at and around the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The irrigation system we installed in the early years of the wall is now fully operational. While it costs $30,000, there was no alternative but to repair the system. The millions of annual visitors and our fallen heroes deserve inspiring surroundings and greenery. Right now we are also undertaking weed control, aeration, seeding and other work. This is being paid for with private funds.

The total area we are repairing exceeds 13 acres, which includes the wall, the knoll to the east, the area around the park ranger kiosk and the future site for the education center at the wall. The plan is to keep this area privately maintained in perpetuity with quality care.

We have taken the initiative many times, in large and small ways over the years, to help take care of the Memorial and the site since 1982. We have designed and installed two different lighting systems. We have inscribed names and conducted engineering studies. We even keep an insurance policy on the Memorial in the event of damage.

The National Park Service does not need people to complain about the Mall; it needs people to be involved. The fiscal situation impacting the Mall is simply that there are billions of dollars in maintenance backlogs in our National Parks. Places like Yosemite, Antietam and wilderness areas need a lot of help. Do we light a candle or curse the darkness?
The foresight and boundless energy of President Teddy Roosevelt started our National Park System over 100 years ago. It is up to each and every one of us to do our share by visiting these parks and by giving back, if we have the resources, as volunteers or contributors.

As comedian Lily Tomlin wisely said, “I always wondered why somebody didn’t do something about that. Then I realized I was somebody.”

Jan Craig Scruggs is a Vietnam veteran and founder of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

Gary Tischler •

The last time Vincent Orange had a seat on the city council in 2006 after representing Ward 5 for eight years, he decided to run for mayor. Adrian Fenty rolled over him, just like every other candidate in a knockout victory.

Now, Orange is back as the newly-elected at-large city councilman, winning a special election to fill the seat formerly held by Kwame Brown, who was elected council chairman last year in a race against Orange. Talk about perseverance.

Orange won a tight race, considering the low voter turnout citywide, that featured a strong challenge by Republican Patrick Mara, who was endorsed by the Washington Post and won impressive pluralities in Wards 2, 3 and 6. Orange, boosted by a strong lead in fundraising late in the campaign, name recognition and experience ended up taking 28 percent of the vote to Mara’s almost 26 percent. Orange won by a margin of over 1,000 votes.

Sekou Biddle, a Shepherd Park resident and Teach for America worker, was the nominal incumbent, having been appointed to fill the seat on an interim basis by the DC Democratic Committee, with support from Mayor Vincent Gray and Chairman Brown. Incumbency was not enough to push Biddle across the finish line in the lead. He finished third, winning 20 percent of the vote.

Bryan Weaver, a Ward 1 activist and ANC Commissioner, made a credible showing at 13 percent (he won a majority in Ward One), followed by Josh Lopez, the young Hispanic candidate who worked on former Mayor Adrian Fenty’s campaign and helped lead a write-in campaign for him.

Looked at from a distance, the results of this race appear to be almost a replay of the results in the mayoral race, which saw Gray upset Fenty by winning heavily in the primarily black wards of 8, 7, 4 and 5, while Fenty took a large majority in the primarily white wards of 3, 2 and 6. Orange scored big in the same wards as Gray, while Mara took large majorities as Fenty. What’s clear is that Mayor Gray’s campaign slogan of “One City” remains no more than just a slogan.

Voter turnout, as usual in such special elections, was not even respectable, coming in at 9.48 percent of eligible voters, according to DC Board of Election figures. Before DC voters again rail against interference from the federal government or for voting rights in congress, they might look long and hard at that figure: 43,208 voters out of 455,842 eligible voters voted in this election.

True, special elections don’t draw a heavy turnout, but for an election deemed critical by many observers, it’s a poor showing that needs to be improved.

Both Orange and Mara indicated they would not support a tax increase on the $200,000 plus earners in the city, something of a surprise from Orange, but not from a GOP candidate. The tax increase is a critical part of Mayor Gray’s budget and the election results probably doesn’t bode well for it. Expect a big budget fight ahead in the upcoming weeks.

What the results showed is that the city, while losing black residents, remains a deeply divided city. Mayor Gray, under a continually raining cloud over hiring practices and investigations from a variety of sources, has been so far unable to effectively lead. School reform was probably not a major issue, since there wasn’t a candidate that doesn’t support reform. The ethical scandals surrounding the mayor, the chairman and some members of the council, however, was a big talking point in the candidate forums.

Orange returns to a council that is different from the one that he left. Brown, the man who defeated him in the chairman race, remains chairman but is a considerably weaker leader almost in as much hot water as Gray and even more unpopular.

For Orange, it’s something of a major comeback and triumph. He won in spite of having lost convincingly in his last two campaigns. He won in spite of a majority of the council support for his opponents. That signals a divided council, which Orange may have difficulty in influencing. On the other hand, Orange brings one quality that is healthy in these tense times to the council: he is an unwavering enthusiast and optimist, not the worst attitude for an elected official.

Gary Tischler •

Walk into the offices of DC City Council Chairman Vincent Gray, and it’s like walking into two different
worlds.

Along a small corridor of offices and cubicles, there are people talking on the phone; computers are on. It’s got all the signs of any busy bureaucratic office. Walk into his office, with Gray leading the way, and the busy sounds die down. His office is reminiscent of an expansive drawing room — leather chairs, a large desk, books and pictures on the wall.

The two-world metaphor works in another way now: Gray, who prevailed over incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty in the race for the Democratic mayoral nomination on September 14, now has his feet in two different places. He’s still the Council Chairman, but he’s also the presumptive mayor of the District of Columbia.

It’s presumptive because usually, in this heavily Democratic city, if you win the Democratic Party’s nomination you become mayor. There are only ever nominal Republican or third-party opposition in the general election, which this year is November 2. This will probably be the case again, even though some disaffected folks have started a Fenty write-in website.

“People don’t know what to call me or how to describe my status,” Gray joked as we settled in for an interview.

Gray’s victory has unsettled people. While it’s sometimes jarring even to Gray, it’s even more jarring to Fenty supporters and supporters of DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who had trouble imaging such a result ever coming to pass. Some of the same people have painted the results in the darkest of terms.

That included Rhee, who at first, in the aftermath of the Newseum’s premiere of “Waiting for Superman”, used the word “devastating” describing the election results. Of course she later backtracked.

Gray, who says he hasn’t yet seen the film, said that he’s not making personnel decisions at the moment. So the oft-asked question about Rhee’s status, asked almost routinely throughout the campaign, goes largely unanswered when I asked it yet again. “I know, I know,” he said. “But I haven’t made a decision on that yet. Honestly, when she and I met we didn’t talk about any of that. We talked about educational issues, education philosophy, ideas about schools and children and teachers. It was a pretty far-ranging conversation, so we didn’t get to that. We’ll obviously be talking again.” But if pictures and video of the two emerging from their recent meetings were any indication
— the two literally stood at some distance from each other, and Rhee left quickly — than clearly the discussions had some heft to them.

“Right now, nothing is off the table,” Gray said. Asked if that included Rhee staying on as chancellor, in some form or another, he said, “I haven’t ruled it out.”

As usual, Gray is being deliberative, not making up his mind quickly even if there is a certain amount of pressure — most of it coming from the media.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to believe that we are where we are,” Gray said. “I feel most of the time incredibly humbled by what’s transpired, but I was confident in making that decision to run. I never thought we couldn’t win. And as those first polls about the mayor surfaced, and later on, it was pretty clear to me that there were a lot of unhappy people out there, some angry people.”

“Of course, when some early polls came in election night they had us behind,” he said. “That had a chilling effect, to say the least.”

Back in the summer, when we first had a long conversation with Gray at the Busboys and Poets site near his campaign headquarters, he stated emphatically that this city was more divided today than at any time in its history of home rule. He turned out to be acutely accurate.

“I get these questions all the time,” he said. “What are you going to do about Marion Barry? Are we going to go back to the old politics? That sort of thing.”

“I understand that, believe me. But…people should remember that I wasn’t part of all that. I’m not a career politician, who’s been doing this stuff all of my life. I didn’t run for office until 2004, the first time,” he said. “And when it comes to Mr. Barry, I’m interested in responding to the needs of his constituents, as well as the constituents in all of the city’s wards. I’m not obligated to Mr. Barry.”

It’s fair to say he proved that earlier this year, when Mr. Barry once again came under fire, and the council as a whole voted to censure Barry and strip him of his committee chair position. When the vote came, it was Gray who handled it with both dignity and toughness, unwavering, because it was the correct thing to do, in spite of Mr. Barry’s emotional importuning during the proceedings.

“We did what we had to do. People seem to forget that,” Gray said.

There is certain toughness in Gray that isn’t always readily self-evident. He has what in old-school terms you might call good manners, but there are fires burning there. A widower, he’s lived alone, in a house in the Hillcrest neighborhood, in Ward 7 since the death of his wife Loretta, a schoolteacher, in 1998. He has almost a courtly way about him. He’s a man who believes in observing the formalities.
There’s almost an idiosyncratic dynamic about him. You saw it in the campaign. He carries himself with authority and confidence, fully aware of the importance of position and endeavor. But at the same time, he has the very quality that many people thought Fenty lacked: a consideration for and curiosity about people.

At candidate forums, he could get prickly and combative, but he also looked like somebody that was enjoying himself. His theme is that he will run a One-City government, inclusive of the participation and the views of others. “Don’t stand on the sidelines,” he urges people when it comes to issues. “Be a part of the debate, a part of the discussion.” Put him in a parade, and he might take hours to get through, as you could see, at the Adams Morgan Festival, two days before the election. His supporters surged forward only to lose the candidate, who had been buttonholed by someone he knew, jaw-boning as the parade passed by.

“Yeah, I guess it does take me a while to get through a parade,” he said. “I just think it’s important to talk with people and even more important to listen.”

He knows he’s got his work cut out for him. “We’re facing a huge $175 million budget deficit
— more than that I’m told — and we need everybody working together on that. We’re all in this together.”

He knows too that the election results, which showed him winning by huge margins in the mostly black wards and losing by large margins in the mostly white ward, exposed the great divide that he had identified. “It’s not just race. It’s economic; it’s perceptions of government,” he said. Nationally, his win was being touted by media types as a rejection of education reform.

Gray typically resented that notion. “That’s just not an accurate perception or reality,” he said. “I am firmly committed to education reform, and I think a lot of good things have already been done in that direction. The election wasn’t about whether or not to reform the schools or that they needed reform. They did. I want to continue to do that. In fact, I want education reform to expand to include early education, [with] more emphasis on charter schools, vocational schools. We have to tackle the other issues that impact schools — the lack of jobs in the poor wards. It’s disgraceful. My approach, I think, is a little more holistic.”

“We’re going to move forward,” he said. “Make no mistake about that.”

Gray’s vision of “One City” was tested in a previous race for the council chairmanship. There he defeated Kathy Patterson, the council member from predominantly white Ward 3, by a double-digit margin. “One City” was put into practice again this week, when he embarked on the first of eight promised town hall meetings across all of the city’s wards.

“We’re going to be there to listen to people,” he said. “We’ll have groups on different topics so that there won’t be redundancy. I want to know what’s on people’s minds — what they’re concerned about when it comes to myself.”

“I want to be the man that unites the city,” he said. “I want people to feel that they’re not forgotten — that they’re part of the debate, part of the discussion.”

He also said that he would revive Mayor Anthony Williams’ Citizens Summit, probably in November, in which residents from all wards can come together to provide input on planning and budget issues.

Gray is known as a consensus seeker, deliberative, and even “plodding,” as one critic described it. “That’s not it at all,” he said. “Leadership to me is not just about making decisions per se. It’s about making decisions and getting people to come with you — to understand what you’re doing, hopefully by inspiring people.”

Gray knows he’s walking a bit of a tightrope — allaying the fears of the people who voted against him while meeting the expectations of the people who voted for him.

“I think my wife would have warned me not to get a big head,” he said. “But I can tell you this much, nobody has to worry that I’m going to be wearing a hat that doesn’t fit me.”

There’s a solidity about the man. It’s not that he’s got a thousand close friends but that he has a solid life; his children, Jonice Gray Tucker and Vincent Carlos Gray, and grandchildren are proudly exhibited in photographs on the wall. There’s his Catholic faith and his best friend Lorrain Green, who was his campaign chairman and “the person I’ll talk with, go over things with” he said. “I’ve known her for 20 years or more.” Gray, who once was a highly touted high school baseball player at Dunbar High School — enough to make major league scouts look at him — still plays in a Washington Recreation League at first base. “Keeps me in shape,” said Gray, who at 67 is the city’s oldest elected mayor. He also has a cat named Samurai and is, apparently, known to be quite the hand-dancer.

Dignity and respect mean a lot to him. “I’ve always believed you treat people with respect,” he said. “Everyone.” [gallery ids="99204,103437" nav="thumbs"]

Gary Tischler •

The real deal begins Wednesday.

Ever since DC City Council Chairman Vince Gray scored a solid and surprising win over incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty back in September, there was a certain air of calm before the storm throughout the city, as voters waited in place for the validating election that occurred this week.

While everywhere else across the country, Democrats are all but shaking in their collective boots awaiting an impending wave of national discontent that seemed likely to take away their control of the House of Representatives, here in Washington, Democrat stalwarts can rest assured that they’ll stay in control of the city, in as much as the city has control over itself.

It’s pretty safe to say that what the Democratic primary brought about in September will pretty much stand as the election result. So, we feel safe in saying that, even though we went to press before the election results were tabulated, Gray will officially become the city’s sixth mayor, Kwame Brown will become it’s City Council Chairman, and the makeup of the city council, sans Brown’s seat, will stand pat.

The bigger question becomes what happens next, and what will be the major issue confronting the new mayor, chairman and council?

Hint: It’s probably not school reform.

The big cloud looming over Washington and its governing types is the huge ($175 million and counting) budget deficit, which, if it isn’t solved could lead the city back into the control of a control board. The city is required by law to present a balanced to congress or see the return of the bad old days of control board authority.

Nobody’s making predictions, but Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, who was the only council member to vote against the last budget and who’s something of an expert on city finances, said that tough decisions are ahead, and to him, that means severe cuts up and down the line.

Others on the council, Michael Brown and Ward 6 Councilman Tommy Wells among them, have talked about raising taxes. This would certainly fly in the face of all the mighty political winds blowing across the country, where tax cuts for anybody making a salary, however meager or large, are being proposed and will be the focus of major debates once the electoral blood-letting is done.

Not in DC. Presumptive mayor Gray hasn’t chimed in on that, although at the last of the town hall meetings held in all of the city’s eight wards, he did opine that he himself wouldn’t mind paying additional taxes. Which is not to say that everyone else in the city might not.

Gray has spent much of his time on the town hall meetings throughout the city, drawing largely favorable reviews from those attending. Ever since the resignation of DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the ensuing commentary, things have been quiet. Too quiet.

As Gray himself acknowledges, people throughout the city haven’t yet gotten a handle on what a Gray administration might look and feel like, and how it would differ from the previous tenant. It’s probably fair to say that it will be, as Gray promised, more inclusionary, less breathlessly active, more thoughtful, and more cognizant of the entire city. The city remains divided, as Gray was the first to truly see, and the post-election doings haven’t done much to bridge that gap. The town hall meetings were meant to give people an idea of who Gray was, and to begin healing that divide.

While there were initial rumblings in the media and in different parts of the city in the aftermath of victory (or defeat, depending upon where you lived and who you supported), the grumblings so far haven’t amounted to much. Except for the write-in effort for Fenty which will allow people to vote for Fenty as a write-in-candidate.

In typically contemporary fashion, the effort had its start on Facebook and launched to raise funds and support for Fenty. Never mind that Fenty lost by a clear10 percentage point and that nobody is questioning the result. It’s an effort by folks who fear and think that Gray, whom they otherwise like, is somehow going to derail school reform in the district which, depending on where you sat, was a big success under Fenty and Rhee.

Fenty disavowed any support for the effort, said he was supporting Gray repeatedly, and assured that he was going to vote for him. Although he stopped short of sharply discouraging the effort. “I can’t tell people what they can or can’t do,” he said.

The effort, while perfectly legal, only exasperates the divisions existing in the city. It is a peculiarly undemocratic approach that says: We won’t accept the election results that we don’t like and we’re going to try and change them.

They’re not the only ones who have some of that attitude. Consider the Washington Post. The media always plays a heavy role in politics. It’s the nature of the best that we are. But the Post holds a particularly influential position on matters of local importance in this city.

During the course of this campaign, the Post looked almost schizophrenic
in its coverage, with the editorial page supporting team Fenty-Rhee consistently, strongly, and with all guns firing. On the other hand, the reporting has been, for the most part, consistently excellent and even-handed. There is no small amount of irony in the fact that it was a Washington Post poll which discovered early on that there was a growing groundswell of discontent around Fenty and Rhee—not against reform or policy, but against the high-handedness of their methods. That discovery was made early in January and no doubt helped a still undecided Gray jump into the fray. The fact that neither Fenty nor Rhee heeded the warning signs resulted in yet another late-election Post poll which showed the same results only more so. But by then it was probably too late.

Not that the Post has given up. This year, the Post editorial board appears to have discovered Republicans in our midst, something it hadn’t previously noticed outside of Carole Schwartz, the most unorthodox Republican that ever lived. The local GOP has avoided the mayor’s race, but has fielded candidates in the council races. Two of them managed to gain the support of the Post, in the name of political diversity. That would be David Hedgepeth, running against incumbent Democrat Mary Cheh in Ward 3, and Timothy Day in Ward 5 running against Harry Thomas Jr.

“They’ve come out of the closet,” a neighbor of mine suggested. But it’s doubtful that the Post suddenly got GOP fever, even with the ill political winds blowing out there. They chided Ms. Cheh for what they saw as her tepid support of school reform and, not coincidentally, her support of Gray during the primary election. Thomas is also a strong Gray supporter.

But still there seems to be a watch-and-wait attitude in the city. Even the announced and impending resignation of DC Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin caused barely a ripple in the media. The announcement was made via mass e-mail recently. Rubin said he would be working as a consultant through January 2.

Rubin’s departure, and a sure change in the city attorney’s office come January, along with Rhee’s departure mark three pairs of shoes that dropped. The rest await the workings of transition, a process that Gray hopes to finance through private donations, as opposition to tax funds. Speaking of taxes…we’ll that’s going to have to wait for now, too.