With one week to go before the Democratic primary, Mayor Adrian Fenty could get a big boost toward re-election by digging into the 150,000 District Democratic voters who show up for presidential elections and disappear when it’s time to vote for the city’s next mayor.
Fenty has been running behind D.C. Council Chairman Vince Gray in the polls over the past month, including a Washington Post poll released Aug. 29 that showed the mayor lagging by 13 points among all registered Democrats. What the polls typically leave out, though, are those who don’t consider themselves “likely voters.”
About 100,000 District residents have cast ballots on average in the past three mayoral primaries. In the 2008 general election, however, Democratic President Barack Obama received more than 245,000 votes in the District, meaning nearly two-and-a-half times the number of voters turned out for the general election compared to the mayoral primaries.
“They could show up if Fenty somehow were to tap into the voters who are generally beneath the radar and bring them to the polls,” political consultant Chuck Thies said. “It’s a far stretch and it never occurs, though, and they may not break for him anyway.”
The Fenty campaign has focused on a massive get-out-the-vote effort, not just on next Tuesday’s primary day but throughout the two weeks of early voting that lead up to it. The prevailing thought among observers was that Gray couldn’t match the well-funded Fenty campaign in its plans to bring supporters to the polls.
But that doesn’t mean Gray isn’t also shelling out for the stretch run.
On Friday, Gray’s campaign rolled out two television advertisements set to run on pricey broadcast television stations. One advertisement knocks Fenty’s recent apology theme — in which the mayor has promised voters he’ll be more inclusive if he wins a second term — and another is designed to get the word out on Gray’s platform.
“We’re able to run these advertisements because more money has come into the campaign,” said Gray’s campaign manager, Mo Elleithee, who then stressed that the campaign is still far behind the $5 million Fenty collected in the years leading up to the election cycle.
“Fenty donors looking to hedge their bets have probably been donating heavily to Gray, particularly since the Washington Post poll came out [last week],” Thies said. “Expect to see the campaigns going at it over the airwaves as a result.”
