Pray for Vincent Gray. Now he has to be mayor. Fun’s over.
The mayor-in-waiting might gaze back on his years as City Council chairman as we recall our happy grade school days. Sure, he had to give Marion Barry the back of his hand, but most of his time running the council he could ponder and pontificate, complain about the mayor and the missing baseball tickets, rail at that nasty attorney general.
Now Vince Gray has to be the man. He has to make decisions, deliver bad news, be the enforcer rather than the cogitator. And he has to make good on the promises that he made as a candidate.
Which brings me to the unions. Every major union in town supported Vince Gray against incumbent Adrian Fenty. Teachers and firemen and cops and public employee unions lined up behind the 67-year-old challenger. Don’t forget Teamster Local 639. The truckers endorsed Gray and showed up the rally at Judiciary Square on the last Monday of August to launch Gray’s final push to victory.
Call me naive, but my guess is that most of these unions and various interest groups will be taking the new mayor behind closed doors and asking for a return on their electoral investment. Ditto the business groups, the tenants — and, of course, the Muslim Democratic Caucus.
Remember when Fenty ran for mayor four years ago? Not one establishment organization backed him. Every union, business group, trade association and political organization supported Linda Cropp, running as the queen of the Old Guard establishment. Fenty won, of course, without the establishment. Might that be one reason Fenty governed without consulting what he called “usual suspects?”
So we find out that the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teacher’s union, plunked down $1 million in the final days of our mayoral election to help defeat Adrian Fenty. No surprise here. AFT boss Randi Weingarten and D.C. School Chancellor Michelle Rhee are gladiators fighting to the death over merit pay and tenure. With the whole world watching, Rhee won the first round by getting rank-and-file support for a contract that rewards teachers for raising achievement levels and meeting classroom standards.
Now Fenty, Rhee’s patron and protector, is out, thanks in part to the AFT. Gray, who questioned Rhee’s firing of teachers, is in.
And you don’t think Weingarten is going to try to renegotiate the Washington Teachers’ Union contract to gut the clauses on merit pay and tenure?
The Fraternal Order of Police has been at war with Police Chief Cathy Lanier for three years. The police union backed Gray. Union President Kristopher Baumann tells me that Gray never promised to present Lanier’s head on a platter; he said only that he would listen to the union’s concerns, which is more than Baumann got from Fenty.
But Gray’s biggest problems will come when the unions ask him to quit firing city workers and start hiring. Problem is the city is out of money, and Gray can’t deliver.
Poor Vince.
Harry Jaffe’s column appears on Tuesday and Friday. He can be contacted at [email protected].
