The head of the movement to recall D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has missed a mandatory meeting with the city’s elections board and his cause has about $12 in its war chest, but Frederick Butler insists the movement will go forward. “It is just a bump in the grass-roots road,” Butler told The Washington Examiner. “We will move forward.”
On Wednesday, Butler missed a meeting during which the elections board was to issue petitions to start the recall of Gray and Council Chairman Kwame Brown. Without a representative of the recall campaign present, the board did not issue the petitions.
Butler said he did not understand that he needed to attend the session, though D.C. law requires that the organizer of a recall “formally adopt” the petitions to be circulated.
The meeting dustup came a day after the two committees that make up Butler’s recall movement reported dismal fundraising figures. At the close of the reporting period, the two groups combined to have $12.15 remaining after raising only $250 — and one-fifth of that came from Butler.
He said the limited cash flow didn’t bother him, and Butler predicted fundraising success in the coming weeks.
“The money is there,” said Butler, who estimated he needs at least $170,000 for the campaign. “I know how to get the money. I just haven’t done it yet.”
Chuck Thies, a political strategist who has advised Gray, has said Butler needs to raise at least $250,000 to be competitive.
If the elections board issues the petitions on Feb. 13, as Butler expects, organizers will still have a long way to go before voters consider a recall at the ballot box. To secure a citywide vote, Butler will have to collect signatures from about 45,000 voters distributed across the city’s eight wards.
The executive director of the D.C. Republican Party, Paul Craney, said Butler appears to lack the infrastructure necessary to run a successful recall campaign, and he said the local GOP apparatus has no plans to support the effort formally.
“Without serious financing of this effort and organization behind it, it’s near impossible,” Craney said. “Unless this current recall measure changes dramatically, there is no reason why we’d be wasting our resources behind an effort that isn’t seriously planned.”
Gray, who described the recall movement as “ill-advised,” has frequently defended his record as Butler organized his movement.
“The barometers that people swear by all are going in the right direction,” Gray said last month. “I feel we have done an excellent job with many of the issues in the District of Columbia.”
