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Nearly one year into his mayoralty, Vince Gray’s report card is in, and it’s not pretty. Kind of. A poll released overnight by Clarus reports sagging approval ratings for both the mayor and the D.C. Council, and while that all sounds very bad, some of the findings are a bit oddball, and somewhat premature.
Clarus’ headlining metric is that were a mayoral election held right now, Gray, whose approval rating clocks in at 34 percent, would lose in both a rematch with Adrian Fenty and in a race with Anthony Williams. Against his predecessor, Clarus found that Gray would lose a Democratic primary by a 15-point margin and a citywide ballot by 21 percentage points. Williams, meanwhile, would beat Gray by a 17-point edge.
The thing is, neither Williams nor Fenty have expressed any interest in gunning for their old job. Both seem to be fine with their lives as private citizens, with Fenty popping up for the occasional triathlon or Morning Joe appearances in which he can back Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting efforts.
Clarus, which queried 500 D.C. voters between Monday and Wednesday, found that the Council’s approval rating was down to 30 percent. That’s better than Congress’ abysmal 11 percent, but it’s still lousy.
Individual council members Clarus asked about fared as poorly, though the firm limited itself to asking about at-large members in the citywide poll. Of the four at-large council members, Phil Mendelson came in highest with 44 percent, followed by David Catania at 37 percent, Vincent Orange at 35 percent and Michael A. Brown at 26 percent.
Council Chairman Kwame Brown had the lowest rating of any D.C. official, with just 23 percent approving of his performance 12 months into a four-year term. Brown’s disapproval rating also topped the chart, with 57 percent of respondents turned off by a term that has been peppered by several ethical controversies.
“Public sentiment has flipped from clearly positive to decidedly negative,” Clarus president Ron Faucheux said in the press release announcing the poll results. The Council had an approval rating of 54 in a Clarus poll in March.
The outlook isn’t any better for Gray, according to Faucheux.
“The mayor has never defined his mayoralty,” he said in the release. “News stories about cronyism and criminal investigations have framed his first year in office.”
Two officials did come off quite well, however: Metropolitan Police Department Chief Cathy Lanier led the pack with 78 percent; Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton was right behind, with 77 percent. But while it’s good to know how well law enforcement is received, Lanier has never expressed any ambitions toward elected office.
If Clarus’ findings suggest doom for anyone, its clearly the Council’s beleaguered chairman, who is even more unpopular now than he was in March.. But there’s also somewhat of a gap in the polling: It would have been nice if the firm had tested individual ward representatives. Sure, it’s possible that people like Tommy Wells and Muriel Bowser might tick up in lack of recognition outside their home turfs, but it’s a small council, and all of its 13 members have their key issues that affect the entire District.
It’s also worth noting that the breakdown of Gray’s approval rating is something of an inverse of Fenty’s. A year after Gray won 82 percent of black voters, his support has slipped to 45 percent among African-Americans, the Clarus poll found. Meanwhile, white voters went 82-10 for Fenty in the hypothetical rematch, while black voters split 45-31 for Gray. The results in the proposed Gray-Williams contest weren’t too different: Gray won African-Americans 44-30 and Williams took white voters 73-14.
Of the 500 voters Clarus polled, 384 (77 percent) are Democrats. The margin of error is +/- 4.4 percent.
