Examiner endorses Patterson for Council chair
With a new mayor and many new faces on the 13-member D.C. City Council next year, the Council will need a strong chairman to help set the agenda — and then hold city agencies accountable to the public they are supposed to serve. First-term Council Member Vincent Gray, D-Ward 7, has earned our respect for championing the city’s most marginalized citizens for three decades, but outspoken Council Member Kathy Patterson, D-Ward 3, has earned the right to lead the chamber into what many hope will be D.C.’s golden years.
When almost everybody else — including outgoing Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp — was talking about little else than baseball last year, Patterson and mayoral candidate Adrian Fenty were co-sponsoring legislation to fix the city’s crumbling public schools by raising hotel, parking and cigarette taxes. That initial proposal failed, but Fenty and Patterson — who chairs the Council’s Education Committee — shamed city officials into finally doing something concrete about their most enduring failure.
Overseeing the resulting $1 billion school modernization plan will be the Council’s most important — and difficult — job in the years ahead. But Patterson has already shown her mettle by taking on the D.C. Board of Education and the Metropolitan Police Department and resolutely pushing much-needed contracting and procurement reform through the Council. She doesn’t build consensus, she leads — and that’s what the chairman’s job is all about.
“I want to make sure the city’s forward progress continues,” Patterson told The Examiner. And her “share the gain” approach, coupled with an impressive 12-year record of demanding accountability from the District’s recalcitrant bureaucrats, is the most likely to make that happen for all residents of the capital city.
Bolden for at-large Council seat
For the same reasons, The Examiner also endorses attorney A. Scott Bolden over incumbent Phil Mendelson, D-at large. The city desperately needs a new sense of purpose and direction and we believe Bolden can best provide it.
A former prosecutor who is now a partner at Reed Smith, a prestigious K Street law firm, Bolden is exactly the kind of young, successful black role model the District needs.
Bolden is also passionate about reforming DCPS’ fraud-riddled special education program and preparing District youngsters to compete in the global economy, when today many of them can’t even compete in the local one. His proposal to require 70 percent of the education budget be spent on the core curriculum is right on target in a city in which too many children aren’t being taught to read and write.
As the youngest past president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, Bolden forged close ties with the city’s economic leaders. He’ll need their cooperation to develop affordable workforce housing — in addition to the luxury condos they prefer to build — before the city’s middle class entirely disappears.
The upcoming election will be an historic chance for District residents to change course, if they pick the right people. Patterson and Bolden are the right people for the offices they seek.
