The mayoral campaign of Leo Alexander seems to be a little unsure what its candidate has and hasn’t said.

In this week’s Loose Lips column, Washington City Paper reporter Mike DeBonis somewhat jokingly proposed six prominent District residents — among them WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi, the Post’s Colbert King and U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan — as possible candidates to take on Mayor Adrian Fenty. DeBonis prefaced the list by pointing out that two current candidates for the city’s top job — Sulaimon Brown and Leo Alexander — face an uphill battle in unseating Fenty. On Alexander, DeBonis wrote, “The anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric of Leo Alexander, the strongest candidate yet to declare, leaves a bad taste in LL’s mouth.”

In an email sent Thursday night to a quite large list of the District’s political and media establishment — including nearly every ANC, newsroom and political reporter in the city — Alexander’s director of communications, Debra A. Daniels, took DeBonis to task for the claim. “Michael DeBonis I really hate to say this but you have forced my pen. You are a second-rate reporter for having stated the attribution of ‘anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric’ to DC 2010 Mayoral Candidate Leo Alexander when you in fact have not even interviewed Leo Alexander. So tell me and other DC resident Washington City Paper readers where the ‘anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric’ garbage statement you have so loosely and unethically slung comes from. Is it ignorant hear-say perhaps? I say yes it is and you as a reporter ought to be ashamed of yourself for printing untrue, unsubstantiated garbage. One would think that the Washington City Paper could do better than this, but apparently not,” she wrote.

Without even getting into the style of the response, the question remains — was DeBonis unfairly attacking Alexander for using “anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric”? Sure doesn’t seem like it. When Alexander announced his candidacy in September, DeBonis himself stopped by the party to ask the first challenger to Fenty a few questions. Immigration came up. “A generation ago, Washingtonians worked in the hotel industry, parked cars in restaurants—they’re still here, but they’ve been replaced by illegal working poor who will do the job for less money and won’t complain because they’re illegal. We’ve got to do something about that,” said Alexander.