The D.C. Democrats’ ward endorsement season kicked off last week in Far Southeast’s Ward 8. These quadrennial meetings are great grassroots political theater. Especially during a hotly contested D.C. primary season, local pols throw these party conventions writ local with gusto, making the most of the District’s curtailed democracy.
Though open to all registered Democratic voters in each ward, these meetings tend to be haunted by the same faces every four years, the most partisan and active of Democrats in this one party town. Turnout can be paltry or a well oiled campaign machine can bus in supporters and overwhelm the volunteers checking voter registration. (In Ward 2, Council Member Jack Evans knows how to work the halls of the senior centers in Shaw and lure out the ladies who like to wear Church Hats on Sundays with an air-conditioned bus ride and the offer of a good meal.) Crucially, a voter interested enough to show up to these meetings is certain to get out and vote even on a low turnout primary election day. Instead of continued caterwauling over D.C.’s limited voting rights, more confirmed Democrats ought to take advantage of these celebrations of political participation and show up, quiz candidates and vote.
Washington Examiner columnist and veteran DC political pundit Jonetta Rose Barras dropped in on the Ward 8 Democrats’ mayoral straw poll and painted the scene in her inimitable style: “dueling campaign workers — mostly from Gray’s and Fenty’s teams — were at the entrance to the parking lot, wearing their camps’ paraphernalia and talking plenty of trash.”
This ward that has repeatedly returned Marion Barry to the council “had been considered a Gray stronghold. For several years, he led a nonprofit organization based there. He is a former Ward 7 representative and still lives there. In the vernacular, east of the Anacostia River is his ‘hood,” Barras notes. Barry, however, the Washington Informer reported, was conspicuous in his absence. Thought to favor Gray, an observer can’t help but wonder how he might have influenced the straw polls results had the “Former Mayor For Life” made an appearance and dropped his trademark oblique hints of his preference.
However, Fenty’s “Green Machine,” his fabled political organization, was out in full force, and “showcased (it’s) determination and sophistication” in not only denying Gray his expected endorsement, but edging him out for first place. Fenty’s folks simply “outorganized his challengers’.”
After seeing the battle on the ground in Ward 8, Barras advises “folks who thought Mayor Adrian M. Fenty would cede predominantly African-American territory simply because independent surveys had indicated many blacks weren’t enamored of the first-term executive had better think again.” But with Vince Gray has made inroads into places like Mount Pleasant, where Fenty grew up, she concludes that this years “Democratic primary are likely to be extremely close.” With seven more Democrats’ ward meeting to go, look for Fenty and Gray to pull out the stops in every ward.
