Carol Schwartz Running as a Write-In Candidate
This year's At-large D.C. Council race just won't go quietly into this goodnight, and neither, she announced today, will longtime Republican Council member Carol Schwartz. Even though she initially said last week that she would not launch a write-in campaign after losing the GOP primary to upstart challenger Patrick Mara, Schwartz today announced that she will now do just that.
Schwartz's campaign web site already has the full text up of her speech this afternoon, in which she accused Mara of winning the primary by targeting local College Republicans whom she described as having "no real vested interest in the District of Columbia" — we're sure some of you who went to one of our many local universities and settled permanently here afterward might disagree on that one. Schwartz had several other unkind words for Mara:
... to be honest with you, the idea of going forward with a write-in campaign and actually running against a candidate who is now being supported by many on the DC Republican Committee, which bravely and unanimously endorsed me in the primary, is a difficult thing to do. Working opposite those who did so much, so recently, for me is something I do not take lightly. But I also do not take lightly my primary opponent’s extremely nasty, dishonest and unfair efforts to undermine my record - a record of which I am justifiably proud. Make no mistake, his tactics played a role in this decision to fight on - a risk he willingly took.Today's announcement goes against a lot of the murmurs we heard in the last week that Schwartz may not have had her heart in this campaign: she waited until the last minute to announce she was running again, and appeared to concede the election to Mara with only 20 percent of precincts reporting, long before she could be sure of the results. Up until today, we thought Schwartz may just have been relatively contented to retire from politics after so many years of service. We were wrong.
Schwartz will now face a write-in candidacy against a long list of candidates on the ballot running for two At-large spots on the Council. Remember that in At-large races, you vote for two candidates on the general election ballot. Most everyone expects Democrat Kwame Brown to easily win the first spot. Even though Mara beat Schwartz in the primary, it seemed unlikely he'd be able to beat Democrat-in-Independent's clothing Michael A. Brown, who has both the name recognition from his 2006 bid for mayor and the fact that his last name is the same as Kwame going for him. With Schwartz, who has for so long been popular across party lines in the District, back in the race, the candidate with the most to lose now may well be Michael A. Brown.