Last spring, one of Marie Drissel’s friends called with a messy problem.
It seems an extended family of 300 birds had taken roost in the tree in front of her house in Georgetown.Needless to say, they covered everything with poop.
Drissel, a veteran activist and longtime city resident, agreed to help. They called the Humane Society. They searched the Internet for solutions. The woman’s car was so covered it could not be driven; it had to be towed.
Which gave Drissel her “aha” moment: This was a street problem.
“I called Bill Rice,” she says. “He was the only person I could think of who knows how this city works, inside and out.”
At the time, Rice was spokesman for the District Department of Transportation. Rice termed the bird problem a hazard, reached into the bureaucracy and convinced the city’s tree surgeons to limb the tree. They did, the birds flew away and the problem was solved.
“Bill knows who does what and who’s a doer,” Drissel says, “as in who will actually do something.”
Which is why Drissel is supporting Rice’s campaign to be council member from Ward 3, even though she’s from Ward 2. She says: “He would be good for the entire city.”
This is not a Bill Rice endorsement. There are at least six other candidates running to replace Kathy Patterson in the September primary. Each has strengths, and constituencies. You can see them at their first forum tomorrow night at John Eaton School. But this is Bill Rice’s race to lose.
Last week, the money men of Georgetown held a fundraiser for Rice at F. Scotts. Hosts included restaurateurs John and Ginger Latham; attorney and political kingmaker Max Berry; and restaurant impresario and longtime activist Paul Cohn. Developer Herb Miller was a “Patron.” Activist Terry Lynch, an Adrian Fenty supporter, backs him, too.
I first met Rice when he was covering D.C. politics for local weekly papers. Back in the 1980s, two men would arrive at political events on funky bicycles: Dave Clarke and Bill Rice. Both were a bit, ummm, shall we say, quirky.
A nativeof Cleveland, he came east to go to college at Bowdoin in Maine and get a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He came to D.C. in 1976. “I thought government was an agent of change,” he says. After working for the feds, Rice became immersed in local politics, first as a housing activist, then as a reporter, and most recently with DDOT.
Without question, Rice has paid his dues and has the deepest knowledge of the D.C. government. But this race will be won by the candidate who grabs the education issue and taps into the rage felt by many public school parents — like me — who are tired of mayors and council members who get elected and ditch the schools.
Promise us anything, but first promise to get books to our children, toilet paper in the bathrooms, heat in the winter, holes patched on the roofs.
Bird poop is easy to handle compared to the schools.
Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at [email protected].
