Leo Alexander, candidate for mayor

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.

While the District’s mayoral race has been presented as a settled contest between D.C. Council Chair Vince Gray and Mayor Adrian Fenty, former TV reporter Leo Alexander has slowly worked his way into contention, so much so that whispers have started as to whether he’ll draw enough of votes away from either Fenty or Gray to assure the other a victory. Might that be in the offing? Let’s check.

According to a November survey by the Clarus Research Group, Gray would best Fenty in a head-to-head matchup, 41 to 37. In a January 2010 Washington Post poll, that margin stood at 35 for Gray to 31 for Fenty.

Looks good for Gray, right? Hold on a second. The Clarus poll also found that if a third candidate were in the race (they guessed either Council member Kwame Brown or Council member Michael Brown, both At-Large), the Gray vote would split and allow Fenty to sneak by with 34 percent of the votes. In the Post poll, other candidates including Alexander and Sulaimon Brown could draw up to 11 percent of the vote. Also, both polls found that around 20 percent of those surveyed were undecided.

What this all means is that Gray, and to a lesser extent Fenty, may well lose votes to other candidates. And in an election that could prove to be close, losing one or two votes at a time is bad news.

Whether by chance or hard work, Alexander has worked his way into the second tier of mayoral challengers. Last week, he attended a meet-and-greet put on by D.C. for Democracy and a Ward 3 candidate forum alongside Fenty and Gray, while Sulaimon Brown and other challengers were left out of both. (Brown, ironically, polled higher than Alexander in the Post’s January survey, and he was the first of all the candidates to turn in his nominating petition two weeks ago.) While most observers doubt that he will win the race, there is speculation that Alexander could pull in as much as 10 percent of the vote (though that figure certainly seems high to us).

Assuming Alexander could end up being a spoiler, the question then becomes, at who’s expense? On first look, probably Gray’s. Alexander has focused his campaign on the theme of generational poverty, and has spent time in neighborhoods across the river trying to build a base of support. These are the areas that long ago soured on Fenty, so the mayor has less to lose. Gray, on the other hand, needs to make sure that he does well in wards 5, 7 and 8 to counteract Fenty’s expected strong performance in wards 2, 3 and 6.