Politics makes strange bedfellows, the saying goes.
The adage came to mind when I read the invitation to a party aimed at raising money and support for Michael Brown’s run for an at-large seat on the city council. The at-large race has come down to a two person contest, between Brown and longtime Republican Carol Schwartz. Having lost the primary, Schwartz is asking voters to write her name in on November 4.
We’ll get to Brown later, but first the party of bedfellows.
It was held at the home of Bill and Cynthiana Lightfoot, way up 16th Street in the heart of D.C.’s Gold Coast. Lightfoot, a former city council member who flirted with a mayoral run in the 1990s, is a luminary among the capital city’s trial lawyers. He and his politically-active wife were early supporters of Adrian Fenty. The guest list included wealthy arts patron Judith Terra, also an early backer of Fenty’s campaign.
Michael Brown, on the other hand, besides being compulsively ambitious in politics, has positioned himself atop Fenty’s enemy’s list. Fenty would never admit to such a list, but you be the judge as to Brown’s rank.
Brown is a lobbyist. His political credentials are twofold: his father was Ron Brown, a legendary player in national Democratic politics who died in a plane crash when he was Bill Clinton’s Commerce Secretary; Mike Brown served on the Boxing and Wrestling Commission, where he distinguished himself for trying to stage a Mike Tyson bout in D.C. right after Tyson bit off a hunk of Evander Holyfield’s ear.
Brown was one of four who ran against Fenty in the 2006 democratic mayoral primary. He dropped out and threw his support to Linda Cropp, standard bearer of the old guard. At the press conference with Cropp, Brown said of Fenty: “I cannot watch a political novice, a man without the courage and strength required to run the city, attempt to steal this race from someone who has seen the city through its worst times. We cannot afford a mayor who merely knocks on doors and asks for support.”
Brown wants a seat on the council for one reason — to run for mayor.
So why would Lightfoot back him? Do I sense a break with Fenty?
“This is not an indication in any way of a diminishment of support for Adrian Fenty by myself or my wife,” Lightfoot told me.
Supporting Brown is business. The trial lawyers did a poll on contenders for the at-large seat. Brown beat out Dee Hunter, himself a trial lawyer. Despite the friction with Fenty, Lightfoot opened his home and wallet for Brown.
Does Brown pass the smell test, despite his pleading guilty to campaign finance violations? Despite his publicized problems paying for his suite at the Verizon Center? His current supporters see these as “personal financial problems,” and therefore, tolerable.
But can Adrian Fenty tolerate people who support someone who called him “a man without the courage and strength required” to be mayor?
