Mayor Vince Gray talked up the District's streetcar system in an appearance on a Meet the Press web video. more ›

Already several hours into Vincent Gray's first day as mayor, the Secular Coaltion for America is crying 'prayer without representation' over Gray's first inaugural event of today. The group is publicly protesting this morning's ecumenical prayer service for excluding atheists, humanists, agnostics and other non-theists in the event's program. more ›

With the new school year underway and the Democratic primaries but one week away, we spoke with D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee about soul food, sexism, what the mayoral election means for her job, and what's next on the agenda for DCPS. more ›

Look at you, Vince Gray! A sprawling economic plan wasn't the only thing that Gray unveiled recently -- a new haircut, (slightly more) modern frames, and some new suits are all part of the mayoral candidate's attempt to look a little bit more youthful during the stretch run of his campaign against an incumbent who is 28 years his junior. more ›

With this WWE-style video, recorded by the City Paper, of Ron Moten chasing Vince Gray through the bowels of the WPFW radio studio -- be honest, how many of you were expecting a Gray staff member to jump out of a dark corner and wallop Moten with a chair, with Mayor Fenty just getting to the scene moments too late to make the save? -- I think we can officially update the status of the mayoral contest from "somewhat unbalanced" to "certifiably nuts." Observe: more ›

Mayoral contender Vince Gray may not want to answer any questions on whether D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee would stay or go if he was elected, but he is clear on one thing -- someone has to get rid of Attorney General Peter Nickles, and soon. more ›

Anyone who's ever listened to WAMU's Kojo Nnamdi knows that if he's anything, it's soothing and measured. He's not the type to get riled up, much less yell. But on today's installment of The Politics Hour, Kojo delivered what may be as close to an angry tirade as you'll get out of the guy -- yet he still did so in his usual dulcet tones. more ›

Think D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is used to getting booed by now? more ›

Second-tier candidates have a long history swinging elections one way or another. Witness the accusations lobbed at Ralph Nader to this day over his taking vital votes from Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election. more ›

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Good morning Washington. Were you at last night's mayoral debate up on Foxhall Road? If so, did you get the sense that Mayor Adrian Fenty is getting a wee bit more aggressive? Martin and I will have more to say on that later today but there were two key phrases that came out of the mayor's mouth that suggest he may be getting ready to pounce: "Vincent Gray's 'early-90s days'" and "shenanigans about the streetcars." Many people are sick and tired of the squabbling over the streetcar issue, but take a look-y here. Perfect fodder for Fenty, no? This is all getting interesting, for sure! Check out Martin's fantastic live-tweeting from the chilly Field School gym last night. Speaking of tweeting, the National Spelling Bee finals are today and even D.C's first responders are getting in on the act. Isn't this just precious? "Spelling Bee Contestants in DC -Finals are TODAY - How do you spell help in DC - DC F&EMS - we R fast, we R well-trained & we R NICE" That's the type of efficient spelling strategy that should please these protesters! What else is making news? (Yes, we know about the stuck train in the Rosslyn-Foggy Bottom tunnel. That's what you get for living on the Orange and Blue Lines.) more ›

A wide range of District political candidates gathered at One Judiciary Square last night to make their case to members of D.C. for Democracy why the organization should support their candidacies in the September Democratic primary. Everyone from the mayor to would-be shadow representatives showed up to make their case. Endorsements should be handed down in the coming weeks. more ›

In a lightning fast reversal, D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray introduced an amendment Wednesday afternoon restoring $47 million in funding for the city's streetcar project. The measure passed mere hours after Gray pushed through a budget proposal that stripped $49 million from the streetcar plan. more ›

UPDATE: In a lightning fast reversal, the Council has restored $47 million to the streetcar project. Story here. more ›

Looks like there was a tiny bit of drama at this weekend's Ward 8 Democrats mayoral forum. The event, which marked the first straw poll of the 2010 campaign season, featured seven candidates, including incumbent Adrian Fenty, who we hear got booed by a significant portion of the crowd. But the real brouhaha took place during the straw poll, as WAMU's Patrick Madden reports. Previously registered Ward 8 voters went for D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray by a healthy margin, but toward the end of voting, a troop of younger Fenty supporters with freshly filled out voter registration cards tipped the scale for Fenty. more ›

Back in the day, if you really wanted to make your point in the political arena, you'd march a crowd over to the office of your local elected official and demand that they do or not do something. Or you'd get your supporters to flood their office with calls, faxes or emails. These days, you just need a lot of folks with a few minutes and a Facebook page. more ›

Those pesky Save Our Safety Net folks (the same ones who got several D.C. Council members to put on superhero capes last week) got up in D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray's face with a camera during a lobbying push this morning. You've got to admire their moxie. more ›

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray kicked off his official mayoral campaign yesterday with a rally at Carnegie Library that sought to answer a question that has dogged him since he announced his intent to run last month: why's he running? more ›

Though the District's mayoral campaign is still relatively sleepy, the next few months promise a number of opportunities for the candidates to meet face-to-face against each other, as civic associations and other organizations line up to host forums and debates. On Wednesday we received word of what looks like the first such forum of the season, to be co-hosted by the Cleveland Park Citizens Association, Foxhall Community Citizens Association, and the Palisades Citizens Association on June 3. Mayor Adrian Fenty, D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray and former TV reporter Leo Alexander have each been invited to present their visions for the District at the event. more ›

About 100 supporters gathered at the Franklin D. Reeves Municipal Center Tuesday afternoon to watch D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray file his paperwork to enter the 2010 mayoral contest. Gray submitted the requisite signatures at approximately 2:20 p.m. more ›

With word leaking out that D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray will be running against Mayor Adrian Fenty in September's Democratic primary, we've finally got a mayoral race to speak of. And now that the identity of Fenty's competition is clear, the question becomes how he'll run. more ›

Both NewsChannel 8 and the Washington City Paper are reporting that D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray will announce this week that he will run for mayor against Adrian Fenty. more ›

This weekend may be decisive in the District's thus far muted 2010 mayoral race, as D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray (D-Ward 7) and multimillionaire developer Don Peebles reportedly plan to meet one more time to hammer out which of the two of them will challenge Mayor Adrian Fenty in the September primary. While they've met before and we've surely heard our fair share of hints and rumors as to which one of them would run, Gray publicly announced this week that the decision would be made in the coming days. more ›

It was just last week that we highlighted the somewhat pathetic state of the District's mayoral contest -- after all, it's not really much of a competition when the incumbent has a war chest valued at $3.3 million and his two challengers can't even scrape together $3,000. more ›

Last night, D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray's office sent out a terse press release admonishing Mayor Adrian Fenty for not making his agency directors available for this morning's budget hearing. Only City Administrator Neil Albert would be there, he had been told, meaning more than a dozen agency directors were being held back by the executive. This was classic Fenty -- just straight out refusing to play ball with the council whenever it tries to carry out its oversight duties. So you could understand Gray issuing a statement like this one: more ›

In a letter released this morning by DCPS, Chancellor Michelle Rhee responded to demands from D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray and Council members Kwame Brown and Marion Barry that she clarify her much-contested comments to Fast Company magazine, where she was quoted as saying, "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school." Local reactions have zeroed-in on the sexual abuse allegation, wondering, as City Paper's Mike Debonis put it, "How could a D.C. Public Schools teacher have sex with a student and remain on the job, sticking around long enough to be fired for budgetary reasons?" more ›

For an election year, the District's mayoral contest remains in low-gear at best, and stalled at worst. Though there's been plenty of talk, plenty of polls and plenty of frustration with Mayor Adrian Fenty, no big-name contenders have yet stepped up to challenge him in September's primary. While that's still eight months off, Fenty's already got $3 million in the bank, a re-election website and a smattering of yard signs. more ›

Which challenger will it be? Not long after D.C. Council Chair Vince Gray and multimillionaire businessman Don Peebles were spotted having breakfast together on Wednesday morning, WUSA9's Bruce Johnson snags the latest Peebles interview. Peebles told Johnson that he's trying to get Gray to decide sooner rather than later -- by the end of the year, even -- whether he's going to run for mayor against Adrian Fenty. Because if Gray doesn't, Peebles says he will. more ›

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray's office today provided DCist with a letter from Peter Schultz, the president of Bowie landscaping company Eastern Gardens Maintenance, in an attempt to clear up allegations made by the Washington Times that Gray failed to obtain proper permits for the installation of an aluminum fence around the perimeter of his home in D.C.'s Hillcrest neighborhood. more ›

If you're following the ongoing saga of Vince Gray's home improvement debacle, the Washington Times's Jeffrey Anderson has filed yet another doozy. Apart from the more recent work supervised by William C. Smith & Co./WCS Construction, there's also long been the question of the big metal fence that Gray had installed around his property in 2008. That work turns out to have been performed by Mid-Atlantic Deck and Fence Co., of Gambrills, Md., a company that also does not possess a license to work inside the District. This quote, from company president Bruce Beauchamp, is fairly fascinating:

"How we got into this, I have no idea," Mr. Beauchamp said, adding that his company rarely, if ever, works in the District and did not obtain a permit. "Our contract says the buyer will obtain the permit. I don't even know where to get a ... permit in D.C."