“Schools, school, schools,” Mayor Adrian M. Fenty answered when asked for the top three issues of his re-election platform. His response came as he and D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee were being publicly excoriated for firing hundreds of employees.
“[People] are looking at what is happening and saying, ‘If [the mayor and Rhee] are willing to take this type of criticism — if they really want to put decisions affecting children ahead of decisions affecting adults — this is a city that has its priorities straight,’ ” Fenty continued.
Some critics want the D.C. Council to rescind his authority over schools. Joslyn Williams, head of the Metropolitan Council of the AFL-CIO, asked Chairman Vincent C. Gray during a hearing Friday to impeach Fenty. (The council can reject a mayoral appointee, but it knows better than to try to remove Fenty from office.)
As I talked with Fenty over a California omelet and Chamomile tea, he dismissed reform opponents, treating them almost as collateral chatter: “Nothing is done without controversy. Regardless of whatever criticism may come, we are doing it for the right reasons.”
The mayor’s critics have painted a portrait of a municipality in trouble and in need of new leadership. But during a conversation about a variety of topics — privatization, council relations and the 2010 mayoral race — Fenty presented a picture of a city on the upswing.
“Here’s how I frame where we are in 2009. We inherited a strong foundation. There were some high hanging fruit that, because of their nature, hadn’t been addressed yet. [But] we are moving with more urgency and getting results,” he said, citing the reduction in the backlog of child welfare cases, return of special education students to the city and the record number of once-homeless individuals now in housing.
“Schools is bigger than all of that,” Fenty asserted.
He may be right. Education has been residents’ top concern for years. They praised the council in 2007 when it turned control of the system over to Fenty.
Though some have decried his and Rhee’s actions since then, a recent poll showed the chancellor’s favorability rating was higher than those of the mayor and council chairman. Her durability has forced some legislators to perform a clumsy two-step, dancing with reform opponents without fully embracing their agenda.
As Fenty and I talked, I was reminded that politics is the art of packaging. The public is guided to a well-crafted scene created to capture their imagination, alter their perspective and garner their support.
A deft retail politician, Fenty has assembled an array of evocative vignettes ready for wrapping. If our conversation was any indication, he has written an interesting script, casting himself as a benevolent executive, struggling to further improve a once-stagnant bureaucracy and determined to bring quality public education to the District — even if he gets bloodied in the process.
The months ahead will reveal whether voters will buy what Fenty has to sell.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
