The former mayor’s press conferences were few and terse. Adrian Fenty did not like to be questioned, period. Mayor Vincent Gray schedules weekly question-and-answer sessions with reporters in the basement of the John Wilson Building, but they are more performance art than traditional press conference. Gray’s press operation attempts to use reporters as an audience. He trots out government workers to congratulate them for their work, and he announces an appointment or two. The press is supposed to clap and often obliges. These are feel-good press events.
But questions about the investigation into alleged payoffs by Gray’s campaign staff wiped the grin off Gray’s face. He snapped at my colleague, Freeman Klopott, who dared to prod the mayor about bonuses paid to campaign workers, the better to follow the money trail.
Clearly, Gray is rattled by the ongoing probe that has taken two tracks: Federal agents are gathering evidence and will report to U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen, who can expand the probe and prosecute, and the D.C. Council has been holding hearings into the matter.
But after watching the council’s investigative hearings into Gray’s hiring practices, I can understand Gray’s frustration and irritation. People keep asking: What’s the point?
Will the hearings headed by Council Member Mary Cheh, who represents white and wealthy Ward 3, result in any serious consequences for malfeasance or perjury? Doubtful.
Can we expect the council to find out if Gray or his emissaries paid off candidate Sulaimon Brown to harass Fenty on the campaign trail, with cash or job promises? Doubtful.
Will shedding light on the slimy side of patronage have a salutary effect on government hiring practices? And will exposing the way Gray’s “friends” betrayed him free him from the tentacles of the Old Guard? Quite possible, on both scores.
Which is why I applaud Cheh and her blunt instrument, at-large Council Member David Catania. Cheh comes off as circumspect. But Catania questions witnesses with a prosecutor’s zing and low tolerance for crap. He’s not quite Sam Waterston, but he’s the best we have.
Cheh’s hearings have unearthed a trove of emails that detail the underside of government hiring. They have exposed how Gray’s trusted aides steered government jobs to friends and relatives. They allowed Catania to catch government officials lying on the record.
But the true value of the scandals and the hearings that they have spawned is that they can free Gray from parts of his past that could hamper his future. Gray trusted old friends such as Lorraine Green, Judy Banks and Gerri Mason Hall. They betrayed his trust, embarrassed him, exposed him to ridicule. To many, they represent the city’s Old Guard that used the government as a place to get a paycheck.
Now that they have been exposed by the city council and the media, Gray can throw off their shackles and run the government on merit rather than connections. He can choose to be free — or not. His petulance at the press conference makes me wonder which path he will choose.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
