Local Dish
Vincent Gray sits down to talk business and jobs
August 1, 2010At a blogger meet up that took place mid-morning on Saturday, D.C. City Council Chair and mayoral hopeful Vincent Gray was dressed for a full day of work. In sturdy shoes and his "Gray for Mayor" hat, Gray was to jet off to Ward 4 directly following the sit-down for a day-long door-to-door push involving dozens of volunteers. The theme for the afternoon would be jobs—and that was be the theme, too, for the sit down, just as it will be for his campaign all week, once it releases its economic development paper to the public in just a few days.
As with the last meet up Gray held with city bloggers, the sit-down was well-suited to Gray's deliberative and—to use a word that hs been used over and over to describe the Council Chair—wonkish style. Anyone who has been to a mayoral forum this political season will have heard most of the ideas he shared before—his birth-to-24 education plan, how much the city spends on special education and how he intends to reform it, and the staggering percentage of the city workforce that lives out of state—but with Saturday's meeting, Gray had again created a space for himself where he could amplify his message beyond the 30-second sound bytes he is forced to issue at various heated debates with Mayor Adrian Fenty, and show off his flair for details.
Even so, Gray was not tell-all on every issue. Regarding IMPACT, the evaluation system for DCPS teachers that Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has recently cited in the potential firing of over 200 District teachers, Gray did not say much more about the system than he has already. Without dismissing IMPACT, Gray questioned the amount of deliberation that preceded its implementation, which he said raised questions as to its validity. He pointed out that in one Michigan school district, the rollout process took all of three years, and said if he were elected, he would want "some measure of the effectiveness of IMPACT." Gray also wondered how well it could account for the stress teachers who teach in poor conditions face in schools.
Gray did expand on his promise to bring better leadership to D.C.'s campaign for self-determination, a new-ish talking point that he introduced at Thursday's forum with Councilmember Kwame Brown. The strategy still being in the works at his campaign, the plan is missing a proposal for how the City could finance a stronger campaign for D.C. statehood. But the theme was there.
"We don't invest much of anything at this stage," he said. "As the economy improves, I would like to find a way to invest more [into a lobbying effort for self-determination]." Referencing the news that Congress may consider a bill with language that would strip it of some control of D.C.'s budget, he said, "There's gotta be a strategy that says, 'There's an endgame, but there are milestones along the way' .... Even if we got a vote, what we would have at the end of the day was somebody in Congress who could vote, no senator, still no autonomous control over some of the basic functions that every other state has control of, and we'd still be fighting for that. I think self determination has to be the fight," Gray said, self-determination meaning being able to do "anything any other state is able to do." The logistics of that, he said, would not be easy, but even a discussion about how to navigate the constitutional language that legitimate the District, like creating a federally administered enclave of government buildings, would be helpful in jumpstarting a discussion that isn't taking place now.
Gray also had a moment to discuss the various 2010 Campus Plans that Universities are proposing across the city. For most of those plans, he said, he hears concern over "this sprawling presence of undergraduates" that residents see, "and student housing in the communities, and the parties, and all of the behavior that comes with that."
"So I think that there is a way to get that issue on the table and have people talk about having as much housing on campus [as possible]," he said.
And as for Georgetown, a community which has seen constant community meetings already, and seems to be at an impasse over GU's Campus Plan?
"Well again, I think you have to have a Zoning Commission that says, here's a certain set of principles we operate by, and you guys need to figure out how to conform that," he said, explaining that the Zoning Commission should not be comprised of all developers. "Ultimately, the Zoning Commission, with the members being appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council has the authority to approve these ten year plans, and that's why I support people on the Zoning Commission who are sensitive to how a community develops."
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Gray and Brown get forum to themselves
August 1, 2010Thursday’s D.C. Open Government Forum at UDC became more about the contrast between Vincent Gray and Kwame Brown than each candidate's race for office. With incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty and council chair candidate Vincent Orange absent, the debate morphed into extended interview with moderators Kathy Patterson, the former Ward 3 Councilmember, and News Channel 8 Bruce Depuyt, giving outgoing Council Chair Gray and At-Large Councilmember Brown, the man most likely to be Gray’s successor, significant space to elaborate past sound bytes. An ideal format for Gray, the no-opponent, no-time-limit forum proved challenging for Brown.
Gray’s wonkish and deliberative style particularly shined, for example, when he was expanding on the 30-second summaries of his birth-to-24 education plan that he'd been racing through at forums all season. Brown, meanwhile, clung to his talking points on the same topic, reminding the audience once again that he was a product of the D.C. schools, with two young children in DCPS schools.
The difference was fairly apparent throughout the night. Asked how he would achieve D.C. voting rights, Gray first recounted the complicated legislative acrobatics that doomed the City's most recent big push for voting rights before concluding that statehood should be the District’s goal.
"If a vote is that difficult to get," he said, having recalled how the demands of gun rights activists had squashed the consensus for D.C. voting rights, "I'm going to lay out my chips and go for statehood. [Because if we get the vote], we're still sitting there with no legislative authority, no budget authority, and paying the same federal taxes while being disenfranchised."
Brown’s response to the same question, though, was that the District government should "energize" people—"young folks" at colleges, and D.C. residents who have served overseas, he said—to protest for voting rights, so Congress's representatives will "see real people at their offices every day."
"We need some crazy things to take place" to secure voting rights, he said.
Gray expanded his position of D.C. rights in his closing statement, "If we can't say by 2014 that we have increased our self-determination, then we have failed," he said. Statehood, said Gray, was going to be one of his administration's big agendas, if that's what D.C. wants. "If we have to throw our coffee into the Potomac, that's what we'll do."
The D.C. Open Government Coalition members are the DC Bar, the DC Branch of the NAACP, UDC and the David A. Clark School of Law, DC Appleseed, and the ACLU of the National Capital Area.
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Gray captures Ward 6 straw poll in contentious vote
July 27, 2010City Council Chair Vincent Gray won Tuesday night's Ward 6 mayoral straw poll at Eastern Market, but not before a heated argument over the legitimacy of 10 ballots arose between workers for Gray and Mayor Adrian Fenty.
With 218 of the votes—or 56 percent of the ballots cast by registered Ward 6 Democrats at the forum and straw poll—Gray won the straw poll but not the Ward's endorsement, which needed 60 percent of the vote. One hundred and fifty-eight ballots were cast for Fenty, giving him 40 percent of the votes; 31 ballots were challenged, four were cast for mayoral hopeful Leo Alexander, and one went for candidate Sulaimon Brown.
The final tally became official around 11 p.m., nearly two hours later the Ward 6 Democrats expected to have a final count to announce. At about 9:30 p.m., the ballot counting process stalled abruptly when the Fenty campaign challenged a stack of 10 ballots that volunteers for Gray had collected from seniors who could not walk into the polling station.
Gray campaign manager Adam Rubinson argued vocally and angrily that to collect the ballots in question, Gray volunteers had followed a process that was formulated by the Ward 6 Democrats. First, Candace Nelson, a Ward 4 co-coordinator for Gray, and other Gray volunteers brought index cards that seniors had filled out with their names and addresses to the voter registration table in order to confirm the seniors' registration status. The volunteers were then issued ballots, Nelson said, to bring back to the seniors, who were sitting on two buses that the Gray campaign had chartered to bring them to the event. Finally, Gray volunteers brought the checked ballots to the ballot box inside Eastern Market.
Because the 10 seniors who voted were all members of a group of 32 seniors who the Gray campaign had bused to Eastern Market on two separate charter buses, their ballots prompted accusations from Fenty's campaign that Gray volunteers were too involved in the collection of the ballots for the votes to be legitimate. Ultimately, Ward 6 Democrat Chair Charles Allen ruled that the counters would hold the ballots in provision in case the vote became close. Allen would not disclose who the 10 seniors had voted for.
But Allen did not reach his decision without hearing intense protest from Gray's side. When it was still unclear whether the seniors on the buses would need to stay for a chance to recast their votes, Rubinson became so heated that when he asked Allen whether his campaign should hold the buses, he effectively backed Allen into a room behind the ballot table.
Calling the event, "the most disorganized straw poll ever," Rubinson bitterly told reporters, "I've never seen a straw poll ever that changed the rules in the middle [of the vote]." To Allen, he said that depending on how he chose to handle the contested ballots, his actions could be considered "fraud."
Allen responded to the night's events in an email. He wrote, "While I understand Mr. Rubinson got caught up in the heat of the moment, it was unfortunate that his campaign put in jeopardy the integrity of these 10 ballots. Contrary to his claims, the process to assist seniors in balloting was not followed. At the same time he was protesting, one of his campaign workers inappropriately had 10 ballots in their possession. The Ward 6 Democrats moved quickly to remove these ballots from the process and maintain the integrity of the evening’s election.”
Meanwhile, Gray volunteers became agitated with Fenty campaigners who were filming and photographing the exchange between Allen and Rubinson. Fenty volunteers also heckled Rubinson. "It's not September 14," one said. "What are you worried about?" Gray volunteers also charged that members of the Fenty campaign had photographed the seniors on the buses and have used photos of voters in the past for "voter intimidation" tactics.
The altercations concluded a mayoral candidate forum that had already become heated several times that night. During the forum itself, Eastern Market overflowed with easily agitated Gray and Fenty supporters. With three times as many people standing around the walls of the auditorium-like building as seated (the fire marshal informed the organizers that they were at-capacity well before the event began), candidates were forced to shout over the echoing din of 500 voters—and that only riled up their supporters in the audience. By the end of the forum, both Fenty and Gray were yelling at all times, and they were often drowned out by cheers or boos. Uncomfortable bickering between the two camps broke out frequently among the audience.
The forum included mayoral candidates Leo Alexander, Fenty, Michael Green, Gray, Sulaimon Brown, and Ernest Johnson.
Fenty touted his ability to develop the city and complete projects, and closed by roundly panning Gray and his campaign. Gray did not discuss job creation and education reform as much as he has had at previous forums. Instead, he criticized Fenty and his record.
Gray said that Fenty had helped close the budget gap "with every fee and fine in sight." Citing parking, a perennial frustration in D.C., he said, "You better have nine rolls of quarters in your pockets if you want to park on the street," to overwhelming cheers.
Fenty, meanwhile, accused Gray of "unilaterally cutting street cars." When he said, "Listen, everyone, this is a forum about facts and results," he was drowned out by booing. His closing statement was addressed entirely to Gray. "How in the world can you blame me when you have voted for every one of my budgets?" he asked. "How can you pretend to criticize what my government does when you come to every ground breaking I'm at?" In a reference to Gray's refusal to say whether he would work with D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee he said, "How can you refuse to take a stand on the most important issue in our city today, education?"
On Wednesday, Allen said he was pleased with the debate.
"We were thrilled with the candidate forum last night," he wrote in an email. "It was one of the most robust and lively forums this season with nearly 500 people attending and 400 votes cast. The turnout and energy demonstrates Ward 6 Democrats are paying close attention to the choices on the September 14th ballot."
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