How Adrian Fenty lost in Washington, D.C.

hat tip for the picture -The Black Snob



The Washington Post, who carried Fenty's water during his term for the most part, must have been anticipating this, because they had, within hours of the votes being counted, this long article on why the mayor lost.

A snippet:

How Adrian Fenty lost his reelection bid for D.C. mayor
By Nikita Stewart and Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writers

One afternoon in late June, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's political advisers invited their boss to a downtown conference room to report an unsettling development: Focus groups commissioned by the campaign were saying that Fenty's leadership style was offensive and that he was oblivious to constituents' concerns.

If the mayor had any chance of winning them over, the prospective voters told the campaign, he needed to apologize for his actions.

Tom Lindenfeld, the mayor's chief political strategist, proposed a cure, a one-page letter to be delivered to thousands of voters across the District, a letter in which Fenty would acknowledge mistakes and express remorse. He would promise to change.

"What is this?" the mayor said, reading the letter and tossing it away.

"The things you don't do now will be much harder for voters to ignore later," Lindenfeld told him.

The mayor slammed his hand on the table.

"I'm proud of my record," Fenty shot back, according to Lindenfeld and two others present at the meeting. The mayor stood and walked out.

..........................

How Fenty came to squander that success and the goodwill that catapulted him to office is the story of a mayor who misread an electorate he was sure he knew better than anyone, who ignored advisers' early warnings that key constituencies were abandoning him, who shut out confidantes who told him what he did not want to hear and who began to listen only when the race was all but lost. The account is based on interviews with more than a dozen of Fenty's advisers and supporters, including some such as Lindenfeld and campaign chairman Bill Lightfoot, and others who talked only on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to appear critical of the mayor. The sources were interviewed Tuesday or earlier with the agreement that the information would not be published until after the election. The mayor was interviewed in the final hours before the campaign ended.

Fenty, an incumbent with a $5 million war chest who lost to council Chairman Vincent C. Gray on Tuesday, used many of the same tactics that had won him the mayoralty in 2006, frustrating advisers who thought he needed a more sophisticated campaign. He refused to pay for pollsters to measure the public mood, for example, or hire researchers to dig up dirt on Gray.

Who gathers up a $5 million war chest and doesn't do polls?

That's a basic tenant of politics. The only folks that don't do polls, are campaigns that can't afford to do polls.

But, one didn't need polls, if you had just been reading the opinion columns of Colbert King and Courtland Milloy over at the Washington Post. I've been reading their columns on Fenty for a few years, and you can pretty much chart the building foment against Fenty within the Black Community against Fenty. A simmering discontent that built up over several years into where it boiled over.

Read more »

Senate Votes to Give DC Citizens Vote in Congress

From HuffingtonPost.com:

Senate Votes To Give DC Citizens Vote in Congress
JIM ABRAMS | February 26, 2009 07:39 PM EST |

WASHINGTON(AP _ The right to a vote in Congress denied the District of Columbia when it became the nation's capital two centuries ago would be granted under legislation the Senate passed Thursday.

Congress is "moving to right a centuries-old wrong," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shortly before the 61-37 vote.

The House is expected to pass the measure with a strong majority next week and President Barack Obama, a co-sponsor when the bill failed to clear the Senate two years ago, has promised to sign it.

The measure is likely to face a court challenge immediately after becoming law; opponents argue that it is unconstitutional because D.C. is not a state and does not qualify for representation.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, who sponsored the bill with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, expressed confidence that they could win the legal argument and noted that the bill contained an expedited appeals process to ensure a quick court decision.

The real issue, he said, is that the disenfranchisement of 600,000 residents of the nation's capital "is patently unjust and un-American in a sense of the best principles of this country."

"This is a historic moment," said Ilir Zherka, head of the advocacy group DC Vote. "In 2007 we were gaining tremendous momentum," he said. "The huge difference this year is that we have an advocate in the White House."

Rest of article at link above.

Could it be?

Taxation with sort-of representation for DC?

Holding Their Ground in Columbia Heights

Long before Columbia Heights became one of the hottest development sites, before its Metro station opened and before D.C. officials announced a $149 million plan to build a neighborhood mall with a Target and other big-box stores, Maria Zuniga lived at 1458 Columbia Road NW.

So did Maria Salgado and Maria Rivas and Maria Guevara and Maria Gavidia and Maria Herrera and Maria Amaya.

They and about 40 other immigrant households were residing in a building that a District housing inspector labeled in January 1999 "a danger to the health and safety of persons in or about the premises." There were roaches and rodents, and cold water flowed from the hot-water tap.

The tenants also faced threats from a landlord and manager trying to empty the building to convert it to condominiums. But the residents -- urban pioneers from villages in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia and Ecuador -- had another plan. With an army of volunteers, they wrote a new ending to the gentrification story: 1458 Columbia Road did indeed go condo, but these low-income tenants managed to buy their building. In a neighborhood of $450,000 condos, they found a way to provide homes for families earning $24,000 to $40,000 a year.

Full article here from the Washington Post

Liberal Arts Dude sez:

After all the horror stories about the nationwide housing crisis I thought this story of immigrants winning affordable housing for themselves in high-priced Washington DC was a major victory for these working-class folks. Columbia Heights is just a stone's throw away from where I live and I am glad to see that there will be an oasis of affordable housing units as a result of their efforts.

Some of the comments were pretty ignorant and mean-spirited and targeted the ethnicity of the subjects of the article. For the life of me I don't understand the vitriol. What I see is a shining example of working-class people who by organizing and sticking to their guns accomplished something remarkable in advocating for themselves.

Will Jonathan Graduate?

An eye-opening, maddening and thought-provoking account of a Washington, D.C. high school student and whether or not he will be able to graduate. I was surprised at how bad the culture of high school for teenagers has become since my own high school days in the 1980s in Philadelphia.

Kathryne Lewis sees the boy her son used to be. The boy who made B's, helped kids with their class work and won first place at his sixth-grade science fair. That boy is gone, and if Jonathan doesn't graduate, she fears, all anyone will see is a big, young, uneducated black man -- the exact same as not seeing anything at all. He'll spend his days doing nothing much with friends who dropped out. He'll become a statistic, and, good Lord, she does not want that to happen.

Jonathan's mother attended George Washington University for two years and is a corporate project coordinator. His father attended Howard University for three years and is a Metro technician. The two never married, but Allen Putman lived nearby and saw his son nearly every day, watched him play baseball, took him for haircuts. His parents have pushed him.

Jonathan, 18, says he can see where he wants to go: graduation, college, then owning a business, maybe doing graphic design or creating video games. This is what education is supposed to prepare you for, academically, socially and emotionally: to join the real world, to become a productive citizen. But in Washington, the social contract between students and schools has been broken in all kinds of ways.

Full article here from the Washington Post.

Here is the link to the Washington Post series “Fixing D.C.’s Schools.”

The subject of education reform at urban schools is one of the most highly-charged and inflammatory subjects in American social discourse. Mayor Adrian Fenty is the latest of a long list of reformers who aim to tackle the inadequacies and problems of D.C. public schools and his efforts are being closely watched.

We had our share of problems in the Philadelphia magnet school that I attended in the 1980s. But for the most part, we as students, were fairly well-behaved, treated teachers with respect, and went on to graduate and then go on to college and skilled trades. My high school had a very high rate of students who went on to college and we could count among our alumni some students who graduated from the Ivy Leagues.

Which is why the description of Coolidge High in D.C. through the story of Jonathan surprised and saddened me. Disrespectful students, out of control classes, rampant truancy, a culture of mediocrity, and teachers who were often absent and subject to physical assaults—these things were fairly routine in the day-to-day operation of this public school. I thought to myself—even if a student were motivated to rise above these circumstances and want to learn and to apply him or herself to studies, the resources and consistent support needed from the school, their families, and other students are largely absent.

Speaking in hindsight as someone who graduated from high school, college and graduate school, these students are already far behind in the game of Life in terms of being able to compete with well-educated students from private schools and well-funded, suburban public high schools, qualify for white-collar and professional jobs, and to go on to college or skilled trades. And that’s a crying shame because the article points out many of these students are talented, intelligent and if were in different circumstances would really shine and succeed.

I have often witnessed discussions of solutions degenerate to finger-pointing and partisan blame-gaming. There are some who would advocate funneling the funding from these struggling public schools to charter schools and vouchers for private schools. There are those who blame the teacher unions for making it difficult to hire and fire effective teachers and who oppose initiatives like President Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy.

There are those who would advocate for a fairer way to fund these schools because the current system which relies on property taxes has a lopsided effect of excellent, well-funded suburban schools in affluent areas and crumbling facilities and understaffed schools in urban and poor rural areas. Then there are those who would advocate an individualistic approach where the student and his or her family take full responsibility for their destiny in the educational system and focus on values, achievement, discipline, and family ties as a bulwark against the negative surroundings and environment.

Often lost are voices of teachers and school administrators in the front lines and the students themselves who are being done a disservice by the educational institutions that are supposed to mold them to educated, productive citizens.

I don’t consider myself a partisan and happen to find a grain of truth in the arguments of all sides of the issue. As a citizen in a supposed democracy I find it hard enough to navigate the professional world and to seriously perform my duties as a citizen. Much more so if I did not have the middle-class advantages and education that I do now. As a white-collar, working professional I wonder if there is a role for people like me to play in lending a helping hand to these young people who are probably oblivious to the fact that they are rapidly being left behind.

I applied for and was rejected for Teach for America at one point in my life and a teaching fellowship program in D.C. does exist to recruit working professionals to the profession of teaching. I was a volunteer in an afterschool tutoring program at one point. But as one of my articles points out, trying to be a professional do-gooder is not always what it is cracked out to be. A career in public service is often low-paying, emotionally draining, and makes you subject to derision and insults from jerks who would rather mock and insult people who try to balance having a career with idealism. Student loans, after all, still have to be paid even by idealists with do-gooder degrees and graduate credentials.

This is a huge problem and I don't have any ready answers. I do applaud the Washington Post for focusing a considerable amount of attention to this issue.

No Job Too Dirty For Washington D.C. Lobbyists

Harpers magazine writer Ken Silverstein, recently went undercover to expose the dirt on Washington Lobbyists. Yes, we know that most of these Lobbyists are slimy, but Silverstein shows just how low they are willing to go for the right price. Apparently, a few lobbying firms are willing to help reshape the image of some of the worlds worst dictators.

It's ironic that these K Street, U.S. government connected and U.S. government supported lobbyists are in the nerve center of this so-called Democracy (D.C.) yet they are willing to support dictatorships that are antithetical to the values that this country claims to hold dear.

Listen to a report & interview with Ken Silverstein from On Point Radio. (Use the RealPlayer Option).

The report is based on an article written by Ken Silverstein entitled "Their Men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.'s lobbyists for hire". Read Here
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Related Links

Amy Goodman at Democracy Now also has a report on this story. Watch/Listen

See The Bill Moyers PBS Documentary Capitol Crimes

Interview with Bill Moyers