Recent independent polls have indicated many African-Americans aren’t fans of D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty. But, considering the city’s political history, his low standing may not be surprising.
Blacks have complained that Fenty is arrogant, doesn’t interact with and doesn’t care about them. “Those perceptions go back to [former Mayor Anthony A.] Williams and carry over to Fenty,” said political scientist and syndicated columnist Ronald Walters.
He recalled a news conference Fenty held with D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. The topic was voting rights. The mayor and member of Congress weren’t on the same page. “He stepped out in front of her; he was incredibly disrespectful.”
Critics have blasted Fenty for appointing too many whites, causing some to believe “race doesn’t matter, or he believes African-Americans incompetent,” Walters said. “There is the perception that he is privileging the white community.”
Exacerbating that view is the fact that, like Newark, N.J.’s Mayor Cory Booker and Philadelphia’s Michael Nutter, “Fenty isn’t waving the red, black and green [black nationalist] flag. They are a different generation — like Obama,” said Norman Kelley, author of “Head Negro in Charge Syndrome: The Dead End of Black Politics.”
The black political brand began changing in the 1990s, when African-Americans started choosing more pragmatic leaders who brought a corporate approach to governing. Williams was the first District mayor of that class; Fenty is the second. They achieved measurable results but forgot that personality and communication can be as important as policy.
“To maintain relationships with African-Americans requires more than credentials. It requires an apparatus that continuously keeps people in the loop and involved, ” explained Eugene Dewitt Kinlow, public affairs director of DC Vote.
As the Ward 4 city councilman, Fenty touched and talked. As mayor, he has been called remote and aloof. He has hemorrhaged African-American support since 2008. Nasty fights with the council, highly publicized investigations, employee firings and a recession more pronounced among blacks made matters worse.
“The social-economic circumstances can’t be ignored,” Walters said. Once upon a time, blacks ruled. They comprised 70 percent of the population; held the majority of government jobs; won the lion’s share of contracts and elected offices. That has changed.
Today, African-Americans are only 54 percent of the population. They have a one-vote lead on the 13-member council, and small-business owners increasingly complain it’s harder to win contracts.
“[Fenty] is the face of shifting political winds,” Kelley said.
But many “new” residents are “young professional Afro-Americans,” said former councilman and Fenty re-election chairman William Lightfoot. “They like Adrian Fenty. They want to be Adrian.” That category of voter may provide Fenty a reliable constituency among African-Americans, experts said.
Jonetta Rose Barras, host of WPFW’s “D.C. Politics With Jonetta,” can be reached at [email protected].
