A senior aide to D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray thinks Council Chairman Kwame Brown is “a do-nothing chairman.”
Brown called Gray’s spokesman “clueless.”
But the mayor says he has a rosy relationship with the head of the city’s legislative branch.
“The chair and I have worked together since we came to this council, and we’re going to continue do that,” Gray, a former council chairman himself, said on Wednesday. “We live in the same area of the city. We share some of the same values and goals and aspirations for our children [and] for the city.”
In a statement released through his spokeswoman, Brown agreed.
“Mayor Gray and I have a strong working relationship that has been established for years,” Brown said. “Even though sometimes we have differing opinions on a particular issue, at the end of the day the mayor and I are both deeply committed to serving the people of the District.”
Brown said that rumors throughout the Wilson Building of a rift between him and the mayor are inaccurate.
“Anyone who says that our relationship is contentious or strained is simply mistaken,” Brown said.
Gray also hinted that he has a closer relationship with Brown than has been disclosed publicly.
“He and I probably talk more than what you all realize,” Gray said. “We’ll continue to do that.”
As for Pedro Ribeiro, the Gray aide whom Brown dismissed as out-of-the-loop, well, he acknowledged Wednesday that Brown’s comment had drawn some support from an unlikely source.
“My wife would agree with the chairman,” Ribeiro told reporters. “She’ll probably vote for him.”
