The Post’s David Nakamura reports that Mayor Adrian Fenty plans to endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. An official announcement has yet to come, but the actions of Fenty adviser Jim Hudson, who organized a fundraiser for Obama, suggest the mayor looks set to get behind the Illinois senator’s campaign. Hudson collected $600,000 and endorsements from some of the mayor’s more loyal D.C. Council members: Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7), Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4) and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6).
It’s not terribly surprising that the mayor and members of the council would start moving toward Obama at this time, given that the Democratic field looks to be narrowing down to two serious candidates and Fenty and Obama have both been identified as part of a new generation of African American leaders. There had, however, been some speculation that Fenty was waiting to see if his friend/mentor/big brother figure, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, would be jumping into the race — though it’s certainly a question whether Fenty would ever have been so bold as to endorse a non-Democrat.
As Nakamura points out, Fenty will join other Democratic big-city mayors, including Chicago’s Richard Daley and Newark’s Cory Booker, in endorsing Obama. Of course, these kinds of endorsements, especially from a young, new mayor in an already Democratic-majority city, probably don’t add up to much of significance for Obama except another line in his list of supporters. Rather, the endorsement could mean a lot more for Mayor Fenty, who in seeking to distinguish himself from his predecessor, Mayor Anthony Williams, who did not endorse a presidential candidate in 2004, is doing his best to give off the appearance of a mayor whose opinions and influence matter.
And of course, it remains to be seen whether D.C.’s primary will even be binding this time around anyway. As you’ll recall, in 2004, Howard Dean won the D.C. primary, but it was non-binding and ended up being more of a symbolic referendum on voting rights. At the time, then-D.C. Council member Fenty told the Associated Press that he would lead an effort to make sure the 2008 D.C. primary actually counted for something. Endorsement or not, that achievement would be a huge victory for the Mayor.
Photo by dmansouri
