You can understand the battle for mayor by deconstructing the groups that have endorsed the candidates.
Linda Cropp, the council chair favored by the establishment, has attracted the most endorsements from the most entrenched organizations from the business, labor and political elite.
Adrian Fenty, the young renegade from Ward 4, got the cold shoulder from most business and labor groups, but he’s about to get the stamp of approval from the blunt-force instrument in today’s labor movement.
Last week, Fenty went to New York for an audience with the bosses at 1199 Service Employees International Union, which represents health care workers from Massachusetts and New York down through Maryland and D.C.
“Our top priority is to get Adrian Fenty elected in September,” Quincey Gamble told me. Gamble is political director of 1199 in Maryland and D.C.
A few weeks ago, SEIU’s 32BJ local endorsed Fenty. It represents janitors in and around D.C.
With the SEIU locals behind Fenty, the landscape of the mayoral campaign has tilted.
Why should Linda Cropp be worried? She has scooped up almost every endorsement on the table this campaign season.
The Greater Washington Board of Trade gave its approval to Cropp. But as mayoral hopeful Marie Johns said, “Not everyone thinks wealthy businesspeople from the suburbs ought to decide the mayor’s race anyway.”
Johns, the retired phone company executive, would have been singing a different tune had she snared the endorsement, but her pursed lips spoke the truth: The board of trade might bring funds, but few of its members live or vote in D.C. The D.C. Chamber of Commerce also endorsed Cropp, rewarding her for lowering the business tax on the baseball stadium.
The cops seem to prefer Cropp, too. The MPD union embraced her along with Eric Holder, the man who the establishment wanted to run for mayor. A former prosecutor and Clinton appointee, Holder is another usual suspect of the elite. At least he lives in D.C.
Two major labor unions that represent government workers have backed Cropp. Locals of the AFSCME and AFGE announced for her.
In the clearest endorsement of the prevailing power elite, incumbent Mayor Anthony Williams has backed Cropp.
So why would the endorsement of two relatively small local unions to be so important?
Because Williams’ endorsement is a red flag for Washingtonians who believe he’s been distant. Because every other endorsement reeks of the musty old guard.
Because the SEIU is an insurgent, like Fenty. It has succeeded and grown by sheer passion, by putting its members on the street, by devoting half of its resources to organizing.
“We’re willing to put our soldiers on the ground for Fenty,” Gamble says. “He’s a fighter. We’re fighters. Now we’re fighters together.”
We are approaching the final stages of the campaign. The candidates are setting up their election day apparatus.
“SEIU 1199 is already calling and canvassing and offering volunteers to work the polls,” Fenty tells me.
And it hasn’t even officially endorsed him.
Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at [email protected].
