Results tagged “politics>”

Yesterday the Washington Post asked a number of local political watchers, myself included, if we thought Mayor Adrian Fenty would be re-elected in 2010. Some said yes, others said no. I stressed that without a credible challenger – and none has yet stepped forward – Fenty would cruise to a second term. Well, if that capable challenger ends up being D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray, Fenty may have to start looking for a new job.

As expected, D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) today formally announced that he will be seeking re-election in 2010. The announcement was coupled with the launch of his campaign web site.

Tom already told you about Tim Craig's story in today's Washington Post, which outlines how D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray used council stationery to solicit a $20,000 contribution from Comcast to help pay for Democratic Party activities at last year's national convention. But potentially even worse news for Gray also came today in the form of this story by Washington Times reporter Jeffrey Anderson, which alleges that some questionable work was performed on Gray's Hillcrest home by developer William C. Smith & Co. – a huge company that has a long list of contracts with the District government, and doesn't usually offer basic home repair services.

As the political fracas continues over the $82 million in parks and rec contracts that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty quietly funneled through the D.C. Housing Authority (much of it handed to contractors with cozy ties to the mayor), members of the D.C. Council are demanding accountability. None more so than Council member Michael A. Brown (I-At Large). Or not. No, he is. Really. We think.

Rumors about a possible D.C. Council run by ANC 1C chair Bryan Weaver have been circulating for weeks now, and DCist had been dutifully pestering the longtime Adams Morgan activist to confirm his intentions for some time before ... getting royally scooped by Loose Lips this afternoon. Sigh. Weaver "filed exploratory papers with the Office of Campaign Finance on Tuesday," Mike DeBonis reports.

Let's just say that the Fenty administration and the D.C. Council aren't planning any friendly get togethers any time soon.

Mary Cheh is a smart lady. She's got tenure at George Washington University Law School and has a master's degree from Fair Harvard. That said, it was slightly mystifying to read the following, located about halfway through an interview Cheh gave to the Washington Post magazine. Cheh's gee-whiz tone throughout (the best part of being a politician: "hugs and the free food") certainly didn't help when the magazine asked what her biggest "goof" was. Cheh's answer:

Real estate mogul (and D.C. native) Don Peebles is thinking about giving Mayor Adrian Fenty a run for his money, according to a report this morning in the Washington Business Journal. Peebles told reporter Jonathan O'Connell that he will 'either run himself or support another candidate because of what he called "a continued pattern of a lack of oversight and accountabilty" under Fenty.' Harry Jaffe had previously reported the Peebles rumors in the Examiner, though the possibility that the businessman could run himself is a new development.

Even though a new Washington Post report today suggests D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) may not actually be a target of the corruption investigation that ensnared his chief of staff, the D.C. Republican Committee keeps hounding him like he definitely is.

We've written about the sizzling drama inside the Cleveland Park Citizens Association before, and now the Ward3DC blog reports that the "UNITY" slate, headed by longtime resident John Chelen, has been declared the winner of Tuesday's election. Chelen replaces long-serving president George Idelson, the man who was ridiculed by local media earlier this year for accusing new members of CPCA, drawn to join due to the endless bickering over the Wisconsin Ave. Giant grocery store plans, among other development issues, of attempting a coup. Idelson eventually chose not to run again, leaving Jeff Davis and his "Reform" slate to oppose Chelen.

A majority of D.C. voters disapprove of the job D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is doing, according to the results of a WJLA/SurveyUSA poll released this afternoon. Of 500 D.C. voters surveyed, 51 percent disapproved of his job performance, while 40 percent approved.

It's always seemed to me that Washington has a disproportionate number of residents who self-identify as libertarians. Perhaps it's just the nature of our politically-focused city, or the location of the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, et al and the subsequent deployment of so many Koch fellows here, but I've never met more libertarians in one city than I have in D.C. As such, I've always been surprised by the lack of an active D.C. Libertarian Party on the local politics front over the last several years. Even the small-in-number D.C. Republicans have an organized local party and a small staff, not to mention that the national Libertarian Party is headquartered right here in the Watergate. Turns out, D.C. resident Peter Orvetti is trying to change all that. Orvetti is spearheading a rebirth of a local chapter of the Libertarian Party. He's started a blog and a Facebook group dedicated to the endeavor, and has already convened the reborn party's first meeting.

So, you decided to take a nice leisurely stroll around the National Mall today, eh? You probably ran into a sizable contingent of tea party protesters. The AP and WTOP are reporting that somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 people made their way towards the Mall, completely obstructing Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 14th Street and the Capitol building along the way.

Five Years On: On Wednesday we gathered to celebrate DCist's fifth anniversary, which caused me to reflect on how in those five years I've written countless posts and gotten into innumerable arguments with some in the commentariat -- all over D.C. voting rights. In the last five years -- which, in the grand scheme of 200 years of injustice is nothing -- the voting rights movement has had hope and seen defeat, but never really achieved any of its goals. This isn't to criticize the selfless and noble work of those who advocate on behalf of the District's enfranchisement more than it is to say that, well, we're still unrepresented in Congress. Yet the fight continues, and with each passing day comes a new reminder of the ways big and small that our particular injustice is rubbed in. Maybe it will take another five years before the plight of the District's residents is remedied. Maybe it'll take 50. Who knows. But as the city comes alive again after the August break, another cycle of hoping, organizing and advocating begins anew. Let's just hope that by the time DCist turns 10 or 15, I'm not still writing about how it sucks not to have voting rights.

Over the long weekend, DCist spotted the first yard sign we've seen so far for D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty's re-election campaign. This sign, with its trademark Fenty green, was planted in front of a home in the Logan Circle neighborhood. We've also seen a few blue and white Clark Ray for D.C. Council At-large signs popping up outside businesses in the Dupont Circle neighborhood's 17th Street corridor.

We all know that democracy is about competition and participation, but D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) must be wondering why he keeps getting challengers for his seat.

Yesterday, City Desk provided a juicy bit of news for late on a summer Friday: Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) seems to think that D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles ought to hit the road:

Good stuff from WaPo's Tim Craig on the ongoing bickering between At-large D.C. Council member David Catania and Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry. The two men have never been the best of friends, but they've been particularly at odds since the recent revelations that Barry may have improperly directed earmarks to several non-profits that appear to have been created by and under the control of the Ward 8 council member's office. Barry has attempted to blame the news stories about the earmark controversy on leaks coming from Catania, and the discord has been bubbling up continually during this week's revised budget negotiations.

We were all set to write off the Associated Press's latest attempt (via WTOP) to recycle the "National Mall is a National Disgrace" story template, which has been a favorite of the local media for years now (for examples, see last year's versions here and 2007's here). We all already know that the National Mall is looking pretty banged up, with cracked walkways, dead, trampled grass, dying trees and mud making what should be the country's pride and joy look shabby and depressing. We also already know that when President Obama tried to steer $200 million out of his stimulus package to renovate the National Mall, it was killed by the House. But the AP's Brian Westley and Brett Zongker have done a nice job of reporting out the story behind the story: that members of Congress routinely earmark money for national parks in their home states, while torpedoing such efforts for the Mall, which, by virtue of being located in the District, doesn't have any powerful members of Congress to fight for it. Here's the meat:

All told, Congress sent home more than $181 million in earmarks through the park service budget last year _ an election year _ according to data compiled by the group Taxpayers for Common Sense and analyzed by the AP. Nearly half that money was driven by lawmakers who were on the House and Senate appropriations committees.

Continue reading "AP Revisits 'National Mall is a Disgrace' Story"

Via the DCist tipline, we learn that D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty may actually face some "super" serious competition in his upcoming reelection campaign. A web site promoting Peter Parker, aka Spider-Man, for mayor of D.C. has popped up, along with the requisite Facebook page and Twitter feed.

"Over the past six months we have filtered out those businesses that want to be good neighbors and those that did not wish to operate legitimate businesses," Fenty said today.

The Ward 1 Democrats met to take their own temperature on the same-sex marriage issue last night and voted overwhelmingly in favor of marriage equality, in a vote of 137 in favor to 4 against. The outcome isn't a big surprise, considering Ward 1's D.C. Council member, Jim Graham, is one of two gay representatives on the council. The Democratic committees of Wards 2, 3, 4, 6 and 8 have also voted in favor of supporting such legislation, while Ward 5 voted against it amid heated debate.

The event finally happened last week, but the interview didn't come up. Instead, Waters and Bourdain danced around the topic of local food prices and the recession, without ever fully addressing it.

With Michael Steele having been elected the Republican Party's chairperson yesterday, the national political battle between Republicans and Democrats has suddenly become much more local. Not only is Steele from Maryland, but he'll be doing battle with Virginia's Tim Kaine, who was recently appointed to serve as the Democratic Party's head.

We're not ones to get involved in the internal political battles of the other states, but when it comes to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), we've got her back.

WTOP has a copy of a letter the D.C. Council sent to President-Elect Obama, urging him to place the District's "Taxation Without Representation" license plates on his presidential limousine. No big shock that the Council would push for the pro-D.C. voting rights symbol, but is it somewhat surprising that both Mayor Adrian Fenty and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton have said they will not press the issue with Obama?

At his Election-Eve chat at the Birchmere, Henry Rollins considered the post-presidential role of one George W. Bush. In Rollins's speculative, Bergman-movie vision of the Bushes' Golden years, they occupy a swank Houston condo, their suites situated on opposite sides of the long dining room where they take their silent meals together, the air so thick with tension it scares the help. Of course, pundits with loftier credentials than those of a punk singer-turned-storyteller will probably weigh in on this topic. Who is Hank Rollins to say what will happen to our sad president, whose nature and motives have already been examined by some of the sharpest journalistic minds of our generation? In such matters, Rollins is, as he freely admits, a lightweight.

It may be Halloween, but since the shenanigans won't get started until tonight, we don't have much actually in the way of ghoul-related overheards. Unless you kind of stretch it...

In the world of politics, nearly every elected official or civic leader has at one point said something stupid, regrettable, insulting or downright confounding. But in recent years, well-known personalities in Virginia have had a disproportionate number of serious flubs, many of which have become national scandals.

It's D.C. in October in an election year, which means you're going to hear a lot about politics. That's not necessarily a bad thing, there are probably a lot of educated conversations going on around town from folks not involved at all in the horse race. And then there's this guy, who apparently supports either a higher birth rate or venereal disease.