Photo by Matt Cohen.
Mayor Vince Gray doesn’t want to talk about the past, he wants to talk about the future. Only one day into his reelection campaign, he made that abundantly clear to reporters this morning at a press conference at the new City Market at O highlighting the first year of his economic development strategy.
During an hour-long presentation, Gray discussed the highlights of the first year of his five-year economic development strategy, which he unveiled last year to help create 100,000 new jobs and $1 billion in new tax revenue over a five-year period. The strategy, which focuses on seven core sectors vital to D.C.’s economy—federal government and contractors, higher education and health care, professional services, hospitality, technology, retail, and real estate and construction—has been successful thus far. Of the 52 initiatives, twenty are complete and another thirteen are in progress. These initiatives include building up D.C. as a tech center (Gray thanked 1776 on numerous occasions for that), end retail leakage, become more business-friendly (Gray cited the success of his SXSW trip for that), become the nation’s destination of choice (Union Kitchen, which has become a culinary incubator), become the best-in-class global medical center, and become a destination for foreign investment and tourists (Hyatt Place at 400 E Street SW). Through these initiatives, Gray announced that after one year, the five-year strategy has resulted in 17,750 new jobs (both created and in creation) and $281 million in tax revenue.
Though the five-year strategy is a success so far, some questioned whether Gray can take all the credit for D.C.’s recent economic growth, suggesting that some of it can be traced back to the Williams and Fenty administrations. Washington City Paper’s Aaron Wiener asked Gray a question about the whether or not the success of his economic development strategy plan is because of what previous administrations built. The mayor lashed out at Wiener, shouting “You’re just plain wrong! Excuse me for saying this, but you are just plain wrong! … I’ve been to other cities where the media are actually, they’re not part of the payroll of the city, but they don’t sit there and try to pick a hole in anything they can get their hands on. I’m going to invite you to do the same thing. I appreciate objectivity, but that is just plain wrong, man. It’s debilitating to say something like that.”
After taking questions specific to the economic development strategy report, reporters asked Gray about his reelection campaign, mostly zeroing in on the missteps from his 2010 campaign and what he’s doing differently this time. Gray was none to responsive, dismissing any question related to his 2010 campaign, stating that he’s not talking about the past: “I’ve said it repeatedly. I want to talk about the future.”
And one of those points about the future is how he’ll run his campaign. He said that he plans to be “more involved” in the day-to-day than he was during his 2010 campaign. What that means, exactly, Gray did not elaborate.
