Fenty's Snow Woes Go National
On top of having to oversee a massive snow removal operation, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty now also to worry about his political standing in the midst of the region's largest winter storm in decades.
Yesterday on Hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews took Fenty to task for the city's response to the storm, going so far as to hope out loud that the mayor will be replaced in the coming Democratic primary. "We've got a very sophisticated mayor this time, everybody liked him for a while. And I'm telling you, it's time for a competition in the next primary round here. I think somebody's gotta run. This city needs a little better effort right now. I'd like to see some action," he said.
Matthews was joined by D.C. Council member Harry Thomas, Jr. (D-Ward 5), who also criticized Fenty for not asking President Obama to declare a state of emergency for the District, though Thomas did not clarify what exactly federal intervention would provide in terms of immediate snow removal. (In a press conference, Kwame Brown (D-At-Large) and Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) made similar calls, asking that the National Guard be called in to help clear snow.)
The segment was rife with hyperbole, with Matthews going so far as to compare the city's snow response to Hurricane Katrina, and guest Jerry Phillips from WRC/NBC4 actually drew a parallel to Sept. 11, 2001. Unbelievable.
And that wasn't the only national forum where Fenty took a beating. The Financial Times piled on Wednesday, writing that the "competence of Washington officials was again under fire on Wednesday." Even The New York Times got in on the action, suggesting that Fenty "faces a tough re-election fight in November," a concept we have a hard time wrapping our heads around given that he's got $3 million in the bank and no real challenger.
Needless to say, this isn't exactly what Fenty wants right now. On top of his already low approval rating among District residents, a national perception that he's flubbed the snow response certainly won't help his electoral chances later this year. Matthews' broadside against the District might be most damaging, given the wide audience he draws. A viewer in Colorado or Arizona who watched him last night could have safely assumed that it was the District's fault -- and our fault alone -- that the federal government shut down. "Why can't a government town do a government job?" Matthews asked. "It looked like Siberia without the Siberian discipline. We had the weather of Buffalo with the snowplowing capability of Miami."
But Matthews failed to recognize that neither Virginia nor Maryland dealt with the snow any differently. If anything, they've had more trouble. (Montgomery County, where Matthews lives, canceled school before the District did, and did so for the whole week, while the District remains day-to-day.) And those regional problems -- combined with a mass transit system not able to function safely in the historic conditions we've seen -- are more to blame for the government's closure than any specific action, or lack thereof, in the District itself.