capitolstreets
The Scandal That Shouldn’t Have Been by Martin Austermuhle
A
fter a year of speculation, conjecture and political guessing, in May U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ron Machen made his move against two campaign aides to Mayor Vince Gray for their role in paying Sulaimon Brown to attack Mayor Adrian Fenty during the 2010 campaign. Assistant campaign treasurer Thomas Gore pleaded guilty to illegally funneling money to Brown and then lying about it, while Howard Brooks admitted to being less than truthful about the affair when asked by federal investigators. Both are likely to serve jail time, but their admissions of culpability have brought the simmering year-long scandal to a fullfledged boil. With Gore and Brooks having admitted their roles in the Brown affair, there are still any number of questions that remain unresolved. How much, if anything, did Gray know? Does Machen have enough evidence to roll up towards Gray, or did Gray remain insulated enough to provide the sort of reasonable doubt that a jury would use to acquit him if taken to trial? Will Gray even finish his term? But even more pressing is the question that Gray’s supporters, advisors and campaign staff must be asking each other now—was it even necessary? That’s probably the easiest question to answer. No, it wasn’t. Illegality aside, there was simply no reason that the Gray campaign needed to illicitly hire an attack dog to let loose against Fenty. Gray didn’t need Brown to attack Fenty to make the point that Fenty shouldn’t be re-elected because it seemed that most residents felt that way even before Gray decided to get into the race. In 2009, the Clarus Research Group found that 53 percent 48 H HillRag | June 2012
Mayor Gray talks to a supporter. Photo: Andrew Lightman.
of voters wanted someone other than Fenty. In a two-way matchup against Gray, it reported, Gray would win with 41 percent to Fenty’s 37 percent. Though 38 percent of voters admitted to not knowing much about the man who would eventually become mayor, they were already inclined to vote for him over the man who was serving as mayor. A few months later, a January 2010 poll published by The Washington Post similarly found that Fenty’s approval rating going into election year stood at 42 percent, a huge drop from the 72 percent he had enjoyed two years prior. Among African American voters, the decrease in support was even more stark—from a high of 68 percent in 2008, Fenty fell to a mere 29 percent in 2010. Even Fenty’s closest advisors seemed to see the writing on the wall—Bill Lightfoot, his campaign chair and a former member of the D.C. Council, recently told the Post’s Robert McCartney as much: “We knew already in May and early June,
before they did anything illegal, that Adrian was in very deep trouble, because people just didn’t like him.” Given the strong anti-Fenty sentiment in the city at the time, Gray didn’t need to make much of a case for his own candidacy— much less did he need someone like Brown to make it for him. Brown was the quintessential fringe candidate, with little money, virtually no staff or organization, and no chance of winning. Additionally, there were other mayoral hopefuls that took aim at Fenty’s policies without having been paid to do so, including Leo Alexander and Ernest E. Johnson. Beyond the political wisdom (or utter lack thereof ) of illegally paying Brown to attack Fenty—which he did with gusto, sometimes crossing lines that even alienated hardcore Gray supporters—it seems mindboggling that Gore, Brooks and the other unnamed conspirators were convinced that they needed Brown’s services to make the case for Gray stronger. On primary day, Brown could only muster 200 votes for his own candidacy, leaving plenty of people to ask: if you can’t even get people to vote for you, could you get them to vote for anyone else? Numerically, there simply wasn’t a Brown bloc that moved towards Gray, and many of the people who voted for Gray would have done so with or without Brown’s constant haranguing of Fenty on the campaign trail. Of course, various former Fenty supporters argue that Brown only helped strengthen the existing narrative against Fenty, not to mention throw him off his game at campaign debates. But would that have been enough to swing an election that already seemed like it wouldn’t be particularly close? No.
On September 14, 2010, Gray defeated Fenty by over 13,000 votes— far beyond what Brown could have helped him deliver. D.C. voters were already willing to throw Fenty out of office—they didn’t need a fringe candidate like Brown to make the decision any easier. But we now know that Brown was paid for the troubles and offered a government job in the aftermath. The discovery of that fact last year and the ensuing year-long federal investigation hasn’t only landed two people in jail, but has also distracted Gray and strengthened the very narrative that he sought to downplay during the election—that he was just another Marion Barry in the making. Worse yet, it may derail what’s left of Gray’s term or cut it short altogether. The city’s chattering political types are openly speculating that Gray won’t be around for much longer, further sinking confidence in his leadership and eroding what little political capital he might have had left. Given the favorable political environment they faced in 2010 and the crisis that their decision to fund Brown has caused, Gore, Brooks and the rest of the Gray campaign conspirators shouldn’t only be ashamed that what they did was criminal, but that it was criminally stupid. They didn’t need Brown to get Gray elected, but it could well be Brown that brings him down.
McDuffie Delivers in Ward 5
While the mayoral scandal gained steam, the scandal that felled Harry Thomas, Jr. (to be known as prisoner 31866-016 for the next three years) finally found some closure on May 15 as Ward 5 voters selected Kenyan McDuffie to fill the seat on the D.C. Council that Thomas had once held. McDuffie, a former letter carrier turned prosecutor, won