Photo by Reid RosenbergIs the Fenty campaign getting desperate? Last week the Mayor attempted to open primary voting to tens of thousands of voters with no declared party affiliation. The Board of Elections and Ethics denied the request, resulting an a flurry of negative press for the incumbent. In a surprising move, at the end of last week Fenty participated in two unlikely interviews, one with the Washington City Paper and one with Greater Greater Washington’s David Alpert.
Fenty’s interview with the City Paper staff came in the wake of Alan Suderman’s cover story, “Is Adrian Fenty a Jerk?” The interview came as a surprise to many political observers, including myself. We’ve had a few peeks at what came out of the interview, but look for more in the dead tree edition next week. Fenty hasn’t done a whole lot of these during the campaign, a fact that likely adds to his reputation as being less-than-communicative. So far it looks like the interview didn’t yield a whole lot of new information, though it did move City Paper staffer Jason Cherkis’s undecided meter closer to Fenty. One thing we do learn is that Fenty would likely not consider running as an independent if he loses the Democratic nomination on September 14.
On Friday, David Alpert penned a piece at Greater Greater Washington titled “Does Fenty believe enough in our issues? Does it matter?” You have to get a few paragraphs in to see that Fenty sat down with Alpert to discuss urbanist issues. Alpert’s piece is not a traditional interview piece, it’s more of a window into how he’s deciding which candidate to support. There aren’t a lot of Fenty quotes to go on, but the biggest takeaway here is that Fenty felt the need to sit down with Alpert. For a mayor who has been mostly inaccessible to bloggers, this is quite a turn of events.
