Photo by Sommer Mathis
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty opened his re-election campaign headquarters over the weekend, and this morning he was out with his team on the sidewalks of Logan Circle, doing that patented Fenty campaign thing: shaking hands, picking up babies and asking D.C. residents for their votes.
Fenty’s first, hugely successful campaign for mayor in 2006 became famous for the sheer number of doors he knocked on and individual people he personally met. Now that he’s the incumbent, and an embattled one at that, he claims he has no plans to change how he goes about running for office.
“Our strategy is very similar to all of my previous campaigns,” Fenty said as he greeted passersby.
His strategy may not have changed, but his reputation certainly has. Over the course of his first term as mayor, Fenty has routinely come under fire for appearing to be arrogant, petty and unwilling to compromise. There was the baseball ticket fiasco between his office and the D.C. Council. There are the multiple, undisclosed trips abroad. There was his refusal to meet with Dorothy Height and Maya Angelou about former D.C. first lady Cora Masters Barry’s program at the Southeast Tennis and Learning Center. And that doesn’t even touch on some of his more controversial policies, chief among them his staunch support of the increasingly polarizing Michelle Rhee.
The mayor didn’t want to talk about the latest DCPS budget debacle this morning, instead referring DCist’s queries to the official DCPS statement on the matter. He wanted to focus on campaigning and saying hello to potential voters. But did they want to say hello back?
Many did. In the 45 minutes or so that DCist spent watching Fenty work the corner of P Street NW and Logan Circle, at least half of the people he personally spoke to indicated they planned to vote for him. Plenty of others went ahead and gave over their names and mailing addresses, even if they were still undecided.
Brennan O’Farrell, who lives in nearby Shaw, said he had no strong opinion of the mayor either way. He said he gave a Fenty volunteer his contact information just to get them to leave him alone so he could get to work.
Another man, who declined to give his name but said he lives in Petworth, stopped to talk to Fenty for a minute despite having misgivings about him.
“I don’t think I have a very positive view of the mayor,” the man said while standing about four feet away from the mayor. “It’s more of a personality thing instead of a policy thing.”
