Whoever distributed the fake Bowser cards weren’t the only tricksters at work late last night. Michael Brown reports that his campaign office received several calls from homeowners reporting that Brown campaign signs had been placed in their yards. None of those callers had requested a sign.

Brown says his election-eve visibility plan did not include staking signs in the yards of random voters. “Somebody was trying to make us look bad,” said Brown. “We had to send people out late last night to pick up the signs.”

His attempt to make good with a handful of voters who were pissed off to find a Brown sign in their yard is understandable given what appears to be a dismally low voter turnout. At St. John’s College High School in upper Northwest, 66 voters had cast their votes by 8:30 a.m., the usual end of the morning rush. A half-hour later at Lafayette Elementary—another traditional high-voter-turnout precinct—90 votes had been cast.

Some Ward 4 voters woke up this special-election morning to find some green-and-white campaign literature that appeared to be pushing candidate Muriel Bowser.

The glossy heavy card stock featured a picture of Bowser and the name “Bowser” next to her head. It even mentioned she was endorsed by the Washington Post. LL obtained a copy from Bowser volunteer Jeff Stoiber at Lafayette Elementary School. He’d collected the cards he found at that poll site.

“They were on the ground and under windshield wipers,” said Stoiber. “This is a fraud.”

A the bottom of the card, there’s a big giveaway that the card probably is not a product of the Muriel Bowser campaign. It reads “#15 on the ballot.” Muriel Bowser is No. 2 No. 6 on the ballot. No. 15 is occupied by Renee Bowser.

Ward 4 resident and political consultant Joe Ruffin said he had a card delivered to his porch along with many of his neighbors. “I walked down the street for three blocks and they were on every porch, except those with a Michael Brown yard sign.” Ruffin, a former consultant for Brown and Muriel Bowser supporter, says judging from the card, “this was not an inexpensive print job. Just a stupid one.”

At the St. John’s College High School polling place, Brown examined the card and then requested a sample ballot to determine who was at #15. “Renee Bowser,” he said, shaking his head. “Obviously, I have nothing to do with this,” he reported. “Voters are too smart to fall for this,” he said.

A Renee Bowser volunteer at the polling place also disavowed the attempted effort to mislead voters.

The flip side of the card offered one last clue that the distributors were not part of some sophisticated dirty-tricks campaign. The official-looking disclaimer at the bottom indicated that a copy of the Bowser finance report “is filed with the Director of Campain [sic] Finance.”

D.C. pols have gotten carried away during this special election season with imitating their heroes.

The campaigns of Ward 4 candidate Muriel Bowser and Ward 7 candidate Victor Vandell shamelessly adopted the green-and-white literature and signs of the city’s latest political darling, Mayor Adrian Fenty.

The candidate in Ward 7 endorsed by council Chairman Vincent Gray—Yvette Alexander—follows the same copycat act, right down to lifting Gray’s “One City” campaign slogan (her version: “Making Ward 7 One”).

But those imitators can’t top Dee Hunter, who is exploring an independent bid to unseat Republican At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz. Hunter is going around town handing out an exact copy of At-Large Councilmember David Catania’s campaign lit.

Hunter isn’t shying away from his attempt to glom unto a successful politician like Catania, who has now been elected to the council in three city-wide elections. “It was copying by design,” says Hunter, who at one time worked for Catania. “Imitation if the best form of flattery, after all,” he says. “I would be a very effective councilmember if I was as good as David Catania.” Hunter claims he would offer up “the same kind of aggressive oversight,” if elected.

Ben Young, Catania’s chief of staff and former campaign manager, passed along this statement from the councilmember: “David was not consulted by Dee Hunter about the literature, but of course, he is flattered.”

Hunter did show some individuality with his literature choice; he chose a different printer than the one Catania uses. “And besides,” he says, “the color is called hunter green.”

Mayor Adrian Fenty isn’t going to shy away from calling on the private sector to step up in his schools-improvement efforts.

And his timing couldn’t be better.

At a press conference today announcing his school-takeover transition plan, Fenty indicated that he is inviting private companies to participate in what he called “buff and scrub” operations—small-scale building-spruce-up projects that would be sponsored by a local firm.

Good for Fenty.

The business community has been bitching about the sorry state of the D.C. schools for years, but the only effort to raise taxes for school improvements was blocked by industry lobbyists. So the mayor is asking the business community to put its money where its mouth is.

The buff-and-scrub services would presumably be donated primarily by developers. You know—the same companies that will be bidding on nearly a billion dollars in District-funded school-modernization projects.

Fenty says the company’s payments in-kind will be completely transparent. At this point, he envisions company donations appearing on the mayor’s Web site.

It would be difficult to imagine that the list won’t serve another purpose: What company president in their right mind would bid on the big school-improvement contracts if they haven’t contributed to the mayor’s school effort?

Opponents of Ward 4 D.C. Council candidate Muriel Bowser thought they had her nailed for some type of high-profile ethical gaffe. It looked as though Bowser patron Mayor Adrian Fenty had finally crossed the line in his support for his candidate.

This weekend, several residents spotted what appeared to be a D.C. fire truck sporting a green and white Bowser banner. Some citizens even reported that the fire engine was running with sirens on full blast. Of course, Bowser’s opponents were quick to hit cell phones and listservs to charge the mayor with ordering his fire department to get behind Bowser.

Not quite.

It was the firefighters’ union out there for Bowser. The Muriel Bowser for Ward 4 truck was a private vehicle regularly used by Local 36 of the International Association of Fire Fighters Association during the political season. The group has endorsed Bowser and admits blasting the sirens as they slowly moved around the ward’s back streets.

But union president Dan Dugan denies the siren was ever used on a major street. “We only turned [the siren] on briefly when we were on a block,” says Dugan. “Then we shouted support for Muriel and handed out some T-shirts.”

Dugan was shocked to see his activities lighting up the political gossip lines. “The truck is an antique that has been out of service since the 1970s,” says Dugan. “We’ve done this for like the last five or six elections. We’ve never gotten stuff like this.”

Incidentally, the union didn’t support Fenty during the last election.

Bowser appreciates the support of the union, but “we were not happy about the confusion,” caused by the use of the sirens, she says.

• The rain proved to be a blessing for organizers of the march in support of a D.C. voting rights bill. The 1,500 or so people who showed up were truly committed and energetic.

Organizers were forced to move the elevated stage in front of the reflecting pond to the ground because of the wind, creating a much rowdier atmosphere and fostering a closer connection between the leaders and the people.

But most importantly, the weather prompted legendary talker Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton to keep it short. When D.C. Vote Executive Director Ilir Zherka announced to the mob gathered before the capital that they had decided to shorten the program, old D.C. political hands chuckled knowing that the longwinded Norton was waiting in the wings.

LL hit the stopwatch figuring Norton would turn a fired-up but windblown crowd into a frozen and silent mob just looking forward to the indoor post-rally reception.

Her big speech clocked in at 4 minutes, 50 seconds—a record for brevity as far as regular Norton watchers could figure.

• The rally barely got started before several marchers unfurled a banner not to the liking of organizers. What followed was what opponents of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s school takeover plan call a muzzling of free expression.

Just as the march stepped off, D.C. school teacher Kerry Sylvia and parent Lee Glazer walked between the cameras and Fenty carrying a banner that read: “Democracy Starts at Home: Referendum on the Schools Takeover.”

The banner referred to calls by some residents for the mayor and council to put the question of Fenty’s schools-takeover legislation to a vote of the people. The mayor and council have agreed to go to Congress for the change in the city’s charter required for the school takeover.

According to Sylvia, their attempt at ribbing Fenty at his own event was short-lived. “We knew this was Fenty’s gig and it wouldn’t be something people would like,” says Sylvia. But she didn’t expect a physical confrontation.

“They tried to move us at first,” she says. “Some of the men were wearing green jackets that said ‘Roving Leaders’ on the back.” Then the treatment got rougher. “That’s when they start to shove us. They were stepping on our feet and pushing us.”

Sylvia wasn’t planning to disrupt the march per se, but she does feel the overreaction by Fenty backers helped make their point. “We wanted to point out that democracy starts at home,” she says.

Photograph by Arthur Delaney

Mount Pleasant activist Laurie Collins has never had a problem taking on the merchants in her neighborhood. As head of the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance, she spearheaded a successful effort to ban the sale of single servings of booze in the area and was willing to take on anyone who opposed the idea down at the Alcohol Beverage Control Board.

Her activism was understandable, given that the home she’s lived in for more than two decades on 17th Street NW is within earshot of the main drag.

So when a new neighborhood group was organized with the aim of lifting a ban on live music in Mount Pleasant, Collins wasn’t about to stay out of the fight. Live music is banned under another Collins initiative—voluntary agreements signed by bars and restaurants several years ago. She plans to protect those agreements.

No one was really surprised by the biting Collins money quote in reference to the live music proponents that appeared in a recent story by Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher. “I will be damned if people outside my neighborhood come in and do something that affects my property value,” she told the Post.

There’s only one little problem: Collins doesn’t live in the Mount Pleasant right now.

She’s a renter in a Cleveland Park apartment complex just down Porter Street NW. For the past few months she’s lived up the hill from her old neighborhood. “I am separated from my husband, which causes me to be temporarily away from Mount Pleasant,” she says.

Collins has delivered the “temporary” change of address report to the Mount Pleasant Neighborhood Alliance board. “They have absolutely no problem with it,” says Collins.

Her desire for full disclosure apparently did not extend to Fisher, who had previously interviewed Collins in her Mount Pleasant abode.

“I am not a hypocrite,” says Collins. “I’m not an outsider, so I can’t be a hypocrite….My body may not be there, but my head and my heart are there in Mount Pleasant,” she says.

Mayor Adrian Fenty is generously using the resources of his office to pump up attendance at the April 16 voting rights march. Callers to the mayor’s citywide call center are urged to attend the march. He mentions the event at almost every public appearance.

But the mayor’s enthusiasm for the voting rights cause hasn’t reached all D.C. employees.

On Thursday, LL spied one of those billboard trailers attached to a pickup truck with a big sign promoting the march. The rolling promo was parked near the corner of 15th and U Streets NW, right in front of the headquarters of D.C. Vote. Two D.C. parking officers were finishing their work and slapping two tickets under the truck’s windshield wipers. By the time LL parked and ran back to them, the officers were on their way to another hit.

Everyone knows D.C. ticket writers are ruthless. And who can blame them if they are bolstering the D.C. treasury by nailing freeloaders from Maryland and Virginia?

But Officer Williams (Badge No. 00370) could find no reason to give a break to democracy crusaders—despite the “Demand The Vote” billboard attached to the offending vehicle. The driver of the truck is out $100—$50 each for “OBSTRUCTING CROSSWALK” and “BLOCKING HYDRANT,” according to the tickets.

LL found the driver, Levone Seegars of Billboard Connection, in the D.C. Vote conference room. He operates a little company out of his home and was donating his time to the voting rights cause.

Perhaps Seegars should take his case to someone who might be able to get the tickets waived. It should be pretty easy to find the mayor at the front of the voting rights march on Monday.

The D.C. government is always keen on coming up with ways to communicate more effectively with their customers.

Recently, the Department of Public Works outdid itself. That is to say, in an effort to explain what happens with garbage pickups after a city holiday, the agency may have devised one of the most confusing visual aids on record.

The simple text-based explanation of holidays and garbage pickups goes like this: After a holiday when the city does not pick up trash, the trucks will come by one day later than usual. Is that so complicated? Apparently DPW wanted to make absolutely certain no one could actually figure out such a simple concept and will be sending this “slide guide” postcard to all city residents:

How silly of me to think the simple explanation would make sense to most people. Somehow, the statement of DPW Director William O. Howland Jr. included in the press release announcing the slide guide works a bit better. “Every week, we collect from 110,000 households, and when a holiday occurs, trash and recycling collections ’slide’ to the next day,” he said.

Despite a huge build-up by local media outlets, the council easily passed Mayor Adrian Fenty’s schools-takeover legislation with little drama. A second, final, vote on the bill is slated for next month.

Only At-Large Councilmembers Phil Mendelson and Carol Schwartz voted against the measure.

Fenty’s strategy of pushing the schools bill in the first few months of his administration is paying off. Mayor Anthony A. Williams didn’t go for the school takeover until he had been in office five years—just enough time to piss off a critical number of council colleagues.

That school vote became a referendum on Williams, not on the schools-takeover plan. He lost.

Lucky for Fenty, he hasn’t been in office long enough to screw anything up. The last big thing councilmembers can remember about the mayor is a simple Election Day tally: Fenty 56 percent; Cropp 31 percent.

A dispute within the administration of Mayor Adrian Fenty about regulatory enforcement has led to the departure of the city’s leading official for constituent services. Merrit Drucker, director of community relations and services, submitted his resignation March 21 and will leave the government on Friday, according to Drucker.

Drucker ran an office that follows up on complaints from residents on neighborhood problems and breakdowns in city services. He earned a reputation as an energetic go-getter as Mayor Anthony A. Willliams‘ clean city coordinator. Fenty’s appointment of Drucker to the community-services post was seen as a step up for the hard-driving manager.

During his brief tenure, Drucker championed the use of an aggressive city code enforcement regimen called Operation Fight Back, a multi-agency regulatory sweep first instituted by Williams in 2003. It seemed like an approach custom-made for Fenty, who has long been a stickler for using government tools to tackle quality-of-life problems.

But not everyone was happy with the hard-line approach, including some business owners and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham.

When asked whether the lack of backing for his regulatory posture played a role in his decision to leave his post, Drucker replied, “Yes. I think I’ll just leave it at that.”

Another sticking point relates to Drucker’s work space. According to sources, Fenty ordered Drucker’s eight ward outreach coordinators to centralize their activities in Fenty’s “bullpen” at the John A. Wilson Building. Drucker wanted them to remain in the field, as they’d been under Williams.

Drucker says he mostly ignored the petty squabbling that is part of the D.C. government landscape. “I tried to stay out of the politics the best I could,” he says, but wouldn’t elaborate.

Ward 7 D.C. Council candidate Yvette Alexander seems to be taking a page from the campaign of Ward 4 council hopeful Michael Brown. Literally.

Last week, Brown sent out a campaign update e-mail touting the fact that he drew the No. 2 slot on the May 1 special-election ballot. The missive included a graphic of a sample ballot that blurred out the names of other candidates and highlighted Brown’s position.

On March 27, Alexander, who will also appear in the No. 2 slot, sent a similar e-mail featuring her face, a Ward 7 special-election ballot, and her name clearly printed with her opponents’ blurred.

But there was something wrong with Alexander’s graphic. As her e-mail points out, Alexander is No. 2 among “18 candidates in the Ward 7 race.” Her ballot has 19 names. The blurred names don’t really match up with the Ward 7 contestants. In position 19 for example, the obscured name looks a lot like Dwight Singleton’s, a Ward 4 candidate. And isn’t that Ward 4 hopeful Muriel Bowser in the No. 6 position?

LL would never suggest that Alexander’s Web team would simply lift the Brown graphic and insert Ward 7 and her name at the top. Perhaps her staff just used the wrong ballot as their template.

But the similarites don’t end with the ballots. Check these passages from the accompanying press releases. Here’s Brown’s:

Today at noon, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics held a lottery to determine ballot positioning in the upcoming Special Election on May 1st. We are pleased to say that we drew the 2nd position out of 19!…

With little more than 6 weeks until the May 1st Special Election, I need your help and involvement more than ever.

And here’s Alexander’s:

The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics held a lottery to determine ballot positioning in the upcoming Special Election on May 1st. We are blessed that we drew 2nd position out of 18 candidates in the Ward 7 race !….

With little more than 6 weeks until the May 1st Special Election, I am pleased that my campaign is moving in a positive and fast-forward direction.

You be the judge! The ballots are after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Mayor Adrian Fenty stepped to the microphone today to officially open the interim library in Anacostia, he called on one of the grade-school students gathered for the photo op to join him.

During a quick tour of the prefab temporary library before the official announcement, Fenty had run into a young girl named Shawna who was skeptical about his title. “She asked if I was really the mayor,” he said. “So I gave her my card.”

After she held up the card for everyone to see, Shawna figured she would take advantage of her proximity to power. “Can I have a dollar?” she asked Fenty, to the roaring laughter of the crowd.

Shawna just smiled and kept her gaze fixed on her new friend.

With nearly 100 children looking on, Fenty must have figured it was no time to play kiddie banker. “I’m sorry, but I have two little boys of my own,” he told the little girl.

Now we know for sure that Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration is green. And we’re not talking about campaign colors or inexperience. Fenty is apparently going to great lengths to conserve paper.

A March 16 response to a March 13 letter from all councilmembers regarding global warming was on some letterhead that had been sitting around in the storage room for a while. At the top of the one-page missive signed by Fenty, just below the city seal, it carried this familiar moniker:

Asked whether the vintage stationery was indeed further evidence of her boss’ green credentials, Fenty spokesperson Carrie Brooks replied in an e-mail, “That’s exactly right. We are continuing efforts to be an environmentally friendly administration.”

At least two established political groups in D.C. aren’t intimidated by the Fenty political machine.

The mayor’s choice to succeed him as the Ward 4 D.C. councilmember—Muriel Bowser—has piled up a lot of cash from politicos who have come to understand that helping Bowser translates into pleasing the mayor.

The D.C. Chamber of Commerce clearly isn’t so concerned about being a Fenty favorite. Ward 4 candidate Michael A. Brown tells LL that he has won the endorsement of the Chamber’s political action committee.

The Chamber’s nod bucks a trend set by the city’s political establishment. Most of the big-money bigwigs—developer Herb Miller and hospital association bigwig Robert Malson, for instance—have dutifully fallen in line behind Bowser. And it’s not like the Chamber couldn’t benefit from sucking up to Fenty: The group supported Linda Cropp in the 2006 democratic primary.

Chamber political action committee member Kelvin Robinson would only say that the group will announce their choice in Ward 4 on Wednesday.

This morning, Brown also stopped by the offices of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 20 to collect the local’s endorsement. The union’s backing wasn’t a big surprise. Council President Geo Johnson, who referred to the candidate as “Mike,” was a longtime pal of Brown’s father, Ronald Brown.

“I remember getting coffee for you guys,” Brown quipped during Johnson’s speech, which was heavy on criticism of the Fenty’s brand of machine politics. “The last political machine was [former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley],” said Johnson. “We’re not going to have that in this city.”

AFSCME Council 20 spokesperson Dwight Kirk reports that Bowser was not even interviewed as part of the endorsement process. He claims her campaign was late in returning a questionnaire sent to all candidates.