Vince Gray has shown with his picks for top positions in his administration that as mayor he won’t likely bow to the wishes of the unions that helped get him elected. The mayor-elect has been unafraid to rehire members of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration, the incumbent Gray just defeated. The mayor-elect, however, never said Fenty and his team didn’t get the job done. Instead, Gray’s platform attacked Fenty for moving forward without listening to the community’s — and its stakeholders’ — concerns. That has given Gray the political cover to keep around key Fenty picks like Police Chief Cathy Lanier, but it has also alienated him from the very groups that felt shut out by the mayor. And it was those groups, such as the police and fire unions, that helped put Gray in office.
The outspoken head of the city’s police union, Kris Baumann, and fire union chief Ray Sneed are now using Gray’s projection of himself as the District’s choice for an inclusive mayor to attack Gray for picking leaders for their departments that they don’t want.
Gray’s picking Lanier “is a disappointment, not just because of the decision, but also because of the way he handled it,” Baumann told The Washington Examiner. “What you have here is what happened under Fenty. There’s no collaboration, there’s no openness,” he said, lamenting that Gray didn’t meet with Baumann and the top 20 members of the union as Baumann said the mayor-elect had promised.
Baumann’s distaste for Lanier is nothing new. But Sneed attacked Gray’s pick for fire chief using similar language. Ken Ellerbe was a deputy fire chief under Fenty and will come to the Gray administration amid questions around a retirement deal he brokered when he left the city in August 2009 to become a fire chief in Florida. The deal fell through when The Washington Times brought it to light.
“Gray talked about transparency, but he apparently isn’t transparent” Sneed said. “We were left out.”
The police and fire unions were among several unions that supported Gray in a big way. Unions, led heavily by the teachers, poured millions into Gray’s campaign as they hit the streets to help the campaign get the vote out.
In sending the message that he’ll act independently, Gray has rocked the boat with some of his supporters, said political consultant Chuck Thies.
“He continues to pour water on the notion that Vince Gray was elected by unions and will to kowtow to unions,” Thies said. “He’s showing that no matter what anyone did for his campaign, it will not guarantee entree into his government.”
