Even though Mayor Vince Gray said today that he has no plans of resigning in the wake of the ongoing scandal related to his 2010 campaign, Councilmember David Catania (I-At Large) thinks differently.
According to NBC4’s Tom Sherwood, Catania said today that Gray should resign. “The legitimacy of the election was called into question,” Catania said, according to Sherwood. “Whether Gray knew [about shadow campaign] or not, it doesn’t matter. He should not be beneficiary of that illegality.”
In May, Catania, who chairs the D.C. Council’s Committee on Health, speculated on Jeffrey Thompson’s campaign donations, saying that Thompson was giving big to Gray’s campaign in order to keep his lucrative $322 million Medicaid contract with D.C. Yesterday’s guilty plea proved that to be true.
Catania has been one of the most outspoken elected officials when it comes to the misdeeds of his colleagues. In January, he joined Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) in calling for embattled Harry Thomas, Jr. to resign from the council. Catania has also been a strident critic of D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi, who he has accused of mismanaging the city’s finances.
Martin Austermuhle