To say Mayor Vince Gray’s political fortunes look grim right now would be an understatement. Since Tuesday’s guilty plea by Jeanne Clark Harris in which the public-relations executive admitted to operating an unaccounted-for “shadow” campaign on Gray’s behalf in 2010, rumors and anticipation have abounded that Gray’s mayoralty is ending very soon.
Three members of the D.C. Council—David Catania (I-At Large), Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and Muriel Bowser (D-Ward 4)—are calling for Gray’s resignation. Other members of the Council, led by Chairman Phil Mendelson, are prescribing caution before rushing to judgment.
And as reports continue to leak out about when Gray first learned about the off-the-books campaign being waged while he pursued the District’s top job, his administration looks ever shakier.
But there are some who are encouraging Gray to hold tight and trudge through the investigation. They note, rather importantly, that although a cloud of uncertainty surrounds him right now, Gray has not been, as of yet, accused of playing an active role in the shadow campaign.
“His administration is doing a lot of good things,” Mo Elleithee, who was a senior adviser to Gray’s 2010 campaign, told WTOP this morning. “I don’t believe his administration has been corrupt.”
Elleithee, along with fellow Gray campaign adviser Steve McMahon, penned an op-ed for the Post today in which they wrote about feeling betrayed by the Gray supporters who operated the unreported side of the campaign.
More forceful, though, in his belief that Gray should remain in office, is political adviser and NBC4 commentator Chuck Thies. In a column today, Thies—who interviewed for a position to run Gray’s campaign—argued that if Gray was in fact unaware of the underhanded shenanigans being conducted on his behalf, then, as bad as the situation looks, the mayor should refuse the calls to step down:
I have managed and worked on many campaigns. One responsibility of senior staff is to shield the candidate from disaster. The purpose of a campaign is to get your guy elected. You do not want him to win and then go into office immersed in problems created by the campaign. So, you build a wall around your candidate to insulate him from harm and scandal.
And that’s what Gray’s campaign staff appeared to do in Thies’ estimation. He writes that there is evidence that “a façade was concocted to cover up the scheme” and that Gray was very well one of the people from whom the truth was shielded.
The Georgetown Dish’s Peter Rosenstein is of a similar mind, reminding his readers that U.S. Attorney Ron Machen is still very much in the middle of an active investigation. “Let the chips fall where they may and punish all those found guilty of a crime,” he writes.
But he also compares D.C.’s political skullduggery with that of Chicago and New York. Compared to the Daley machine and Tammany Hall, Rosenstein argues a shadow campaign is small potatoes. Not that he’s excusing Gray, should it turn out that the mayor had an active hand in the shadow campaign operation. “I am for punishing everyone, up to and including the mayor, if they are guilty of a crime in any of the campaigns,” he writes.
It’s tough to say if Gray has any friends right now, even among those not calling for his resignation. Perhaps Thies, who writes that D.C. is doing “fine” and that Gray has been “solid.”
Still, these voices feel like the outliers. It’s awfully tough to ignore the din.
