Photo by Gerald L. Campbell.

You know that saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”? That seems to have been lost on one local group trying to recall Councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr. (D-Ward 5) from office next year.

As we reported earlier this summer, a small group of activists have floated the possibility of recalling a number of sitting officials next year. A recall is basically a vote to yank someone out of office before the end of their term, and January 2012 marks the start of the period during which elected officials not up for re-election that year can be subject to such efforts. Among those targeted are Mayor Vince Gray, D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown and Thomas.

Of course, a recall is no simple feat — to even get a recall measure on a ballot for a citywide official, over 46,000 signatures are needed; for ward-based seats, 10 percent of registered voters in that ward need to sign petitions to that effect.

Given those constraints, Thomas seems like the most likely candidate for a recall. After all, Thomas has been battered by allegations that he basically stole $300,000 from the city and used it on everything from a luxury SUV to meals at Hooters to overdraft charges. (The City Paper’s Loose Lips recently wrote that a number of political players in the ward seem to be angling to take the seat should he go.)

Still, getting a recall on the ballot for Thomas will take some organizational muscle — roughly 6,000 signatures will be needed from Ward 5 residents. You’d think that someone looking to organize such an effort would welcome help from any quarter. You’d be wrong.

Yesterday, Frederick Butler, an activist who is coordinating the nascent recall movement against Thomas and others, fired off an angry press release rejecting any and all help from the D.C. GOP. See, yesterday, the local Republican Party launched a website aggregating all the scandal-related information on Thomas and pushing for other city officials to demand that he resign. And though the website isn’t yet pushing for a recall, Butler seems to think any help from local Republicans simply won’t go down well.

“They are welcome to help out. However, any attempt to push the GOP agenda in Ward 5 will be futile. Mr. Craney says his website is not intended to be a Republican or Democratic Website. However, I think their intentions are self-evident. I’m sure Craney means well, but Ward 5 and GOP ideologies don’t mix. A group that single-handedly sabotaged America’s credit rating will never be a big hit in this town,” said Butler in the hostile press release.

Paul Craney, the Executive Director of the D.C. GOP, fired back on Twitter. “Just read the ‘recall’ guys press release… It’s laughable, from a gmail account & wants to recall the Mayor & 4 CMs. It’s a joke people,” Craney wrote. (The spat has even spilled over into today.)

Needless to say, it’s an odd fight to pick, especially publicly. Butler and his cohorts may not like the GOP brand — and to be fair, Tim Day, the Ward 5 Republican hopeful, only picked up six percent of votes against Thomas in last year’s general election — but shoving them aside this early on seems to be a questionable strategy. It’s even more questionable once you consider the fact that Butler also has his eyes set on recalling Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) — the very part of town where most Republicans reside — and probably can’t count on the D.C. GOP for much support at this point. (And then there’s Gray and Brown; Butler will need nothing short of a miracle to gather 46,000 signatures for each.)

Maybe the strangest part of Butler’s broadside against the D.C. GOP is that it ignores one critical aspect of the movement towards recalling Thomas — Day was the first person to sound the alarm on the very allegations of misappropriated funds that have laid the groundwork for Butler’s efforts. Back in late 2010, Day called out Thomas for his use of the Team Thomas non-profit as a personal slush fund; a subsequent investigation by D.C. Attorney General Irv Nathan and settlement by which Thomas agreed to pay back $300,000 to the city seems to bear out those accusations. Had Day and the D.C. GOP not pushed the claims against Thomas, it’s likely that Butler wouldn’t have much fodder to use against the councilmember in his recall effort.

Butler may be right on one point, though — the D.C. GOP will always be somewhat limited by the national brand it has attached itself to. Regardless of the fact that local Republicans have always been more progressive than their national brethren, the association is tough to escape for a place as Democratic as the District. Regardless, feuding so openly may not have been the best way to make this point, especially when Butler and the D.C. GOP probably agree on more than they’d think when it comes to Thomas.