Challenger Erin Palmer says DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson isn’t rising to the challenges the city faces.

Despite telling various media outlets last week that he’d be running in the November 6 special election to be D.C. Council Chair, Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-At Large) seems to have backed off of that plan.

Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) is likely to become Interim D.C. Council Chair this morning, but the really political drama may be over the council’s ceremonial second-in-command position.

In case you were wondering, Sulaimon Brown backs Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) for Interim D.C. Council Chair.

It looks like Councilmember Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) may have the votes to be elevated to interim council chair next week, filling the seat Kwame Brown once held until a special election in November.

The city’s local political Twitterati are all aflutter this morning about this column by Harry Jaffe in the Examiner, which proclaims Kwame Brown, but six-plus months into his tenure as Chair, as the “most powerful” leader in the Council’s history.

Vincent Orange, who is taking on Kwame Brown in the race to replace Vince Gray as D.C. Council Chairman, has adopted the strategy of calling Brown “Mr. Mistake” as part of his campaign, hopping on errors the current At-Large Councilmember makes whenever he can. True to form, the Orange camp (which is now tweeting!) sent out a press release on Saturday titled “Mr. Mistake Is At It Again,” accusing Brown of getting his facts wrong…

Remember those billboards that popped up in the 1980s that counted up the national debt, dollar by dollar? Pretty scary, huh? Well, District voting rights activists want something similar for their cause. Today the D.C. Council held a hearing on legislation that would allow the city to place two large LED billboards — one outside the John A. Wilson Building and the other outside the new Washington Nationals stadium — that would display the amount…

Good morning, Washington. The pernicious effects of this year’s drought could continue to haunt the region during next year’s holiday season, according to WTOP. Turns out that young Christmas trees and seedlings being grown in Maryland and Virginia were especially affected by the lack of rainfall, meaning that thousands of area children could suffer the indignity of having to make due with a sub-par decorative plant with which to entice entice Santa to leave them…

D.C. officials are apparently stunned to find that the money they’ve spent on the new Nationals stadium isn’t translating into the sort of unconditional loyalty they might like. Turns out the team’s 2008 Dream Foundation Dream Gala (it’s dream-related, see) will be held at National Harbor in Prince George’s County, Md., and the Examiner reports that Mayor Adrian Fenty, D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray and just about every other D.C. leader is throwing a temper…