Colbert I. King, longtime Washington Post editorial board member and columnist, was given a well-deserved lifetime achievement award last night by the D.C. Appleseed policy nonproft, a distinction he shared with schools expert Mary Levy and former Ward 4 Councilmember and Southeastern University President Charlene Drew Jarvis.

In his remarks accepting the award, King shared heartfelt and stirring words about his work as a journalist, chronicling “people in this city who hurt in ways we can’t even imagine.” He also, of course, paid tribute to the organization that bestowed the award upon him, saying something to the effect that no one else around does more for the city than Appleseed.

Then things took an unexpected turn: “Dorothy Brizill is a close second,” he said, referring to the DCWatch doyenne, civic activist, and involuntary home-improver.

“No,” he then added, “you gotta catch up to Dorothy,” he said to the assembled Appleseed board and staff members and hundreds of others gathered at their annual gala at the National Press Club. Brizill herself was sitting at a corner table.

King concluded his personal tribute with the following: “Dorothy, don’t die!”

This week’s Loose Lips column features a fascinating look at contemporary gay and lesbian politics in the District. The dropback for the piece was this week’s endorsement forum of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the “voice of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered citizens in the Democratic Party in Washington, DC.”

The forum is a great opportunity for activists to grill candidates on the wide range of extremely worthy issues on the Stein agenda, such as gay marriage. On that front, as WCPer Mike DeBonis reported, Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander took quite a beating, showing an ambivalence on the topic that the activists pounced upon. In the end, Alexander relented, saying, “I guess I’m in support of it; I’m in support of equal rights.”

Gay marriage, meet male strip clubs.

Longtime city gay activist Rick Rosendall proceeded to hammer Alexander on the lamest of all possible issues–Alexander’s support for stopping the relocation of male strip joints from the baseball district to Ward 5. As DeBonis explained, Alexander’s position on the matter is one of deference to the Ward 5 councilmember, Harry Thomas Jr. But Rosendall couldn’t possibly stomach a councilmember not getting behind the facilitation of strip-club mobility, screaming that Alexander had “betrayed us” on the relo thing.

Why? Because strip clubs suck. They’re ugly, they’re boring, their customers are boring and lugheaded. The places are blights on the urban landscape, in part because they have no windows or if they do have windows, they’re all covered up, and the people in front of those windows are generally stiffs–big self-important bouncers. The shit that goes down in the strip clubs is lame and not worth fighting for and certainly not something that should affect the assessment of a councilmember.

And it’s great to see that the Stein Club apparently feels this way: They voted 36-3 in favor of Alexander.

That would be Delegate and Republican senatorial candidate Bob Marshall of Prince William County. Today, on WTOP’s Politics Program With Mark Plotkin, Marshall was a guest, and Plotkin asked what he, as the junior senator from Virginia, could do to help Virginia’s notorious transportation problems.

Volunteered Marshall, I’d build I-95 through D.C.

Let’s set aside for a moment that Marshall is proposing building a potentially six-or-more lane freeway through a jurisdiction he would not have been elected to represent. And let’s ignore the billions of dollars it would cost. Maybe even we can forget that such a road would, if not destroy their homes and parkland, disrupt the lives of hundreds of District and Maryland residents for years. And we’ll even forget this would have unproven effects of Virginia traffic. How ’bout the fact the people stopped this more than three decades ago and no credible proposal for an inner-city highway has been proposed in D.C.—or virtually anywhere else in America—since.

The way portrayed it, Marshall said it would simply be a matter of dusting off plans prepared in the early 1970s, and in fact proposed doing so to former Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening and former Mayor Marion Barry some years ago. The excellent Web site Roads to the Future describes what those plans entailed:

If I-95 had been completed according to the original plans, it would have continued from the Center Leg to north of New York Avenue, and it would have junctioned the North Leg of the Inner Loop, turned east, and followed the North Leg, which would have paralleled the New York Avenue corridor, about a block to the north of it. At the B&O Railroad corridor (today’s CSX Transportation), I-95 would have turned northward as the North Central Freeway, following the railroad corridor to beyond the Brookland area, being tunneled (cut and cover) for 3/4 mile from south of Rhode Island Avenue to north of Michigan Avenue, then leaving the railroad corridor at Fort Totten Park, heading northeast into Maryland as the Northeast Freeway, passing west of Hyattsville and College Park before junctioning I-495 at the I-95/I-495 interchange that was completed in 1971. I-95 would have had 10 lanes on the North Leg and North Central Freeway, and 8 lanes on the Northeast Freeway.

Plotkin seemed as taken aback at the idea as LL, and he asked Marshall to confirm that he was in fact proposing pushing a freeway through the middle of residential Washington.

Marshall confirmed he was, “along with a corridor for light rail, correct,” he said.

Oh, light rail (along a corridor already served by Metro’s Red and Green lines)—it’s all good, then, Bob.

Jonetta Goes Down the Memory Hole: A minute in to the Politics Hour on WAMU-FM, host Kojo Nnamdi makes no mention whatsoever of the firing of his former co-host, Jonetta Rose Barras. Filling in for her is NewsChannel 8 host Bruce DePuyt, who is currently talking about…team tennis. —Mike DeBonis

Steve Novick launched his campaign to run for Republican Gordon Smith’s Senate seat in April 2007. He’s one of those prototypical Oregon progressives, with staunchly lefty views on war, taxes and health care. He also has an amazing story. He stands under five feet tall and was born with a missing left hand. Raised in a working-class family, he went on to Harvard Law School, at age 18, and ended up serving as the government’s lead attorney in the Love Canal case.

Half a year after Novick started his grass-roots campaign, the Democratic establishment put a more generic horse in the race: state House speaker Jeff Merkley, who’s voted against giving in-state tuition to immigrants’ children and in favor of denying driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Now, the two candidates are neck and neck in next week’s primary.

Novick’s underdog battle is getting an extra push from a bunch of notable musicians, from Death Cab for Cutie to REM to Rufus Wainwright. The campaign is giving tickets to Pearl Jam’s D.C. show this June to local supporters who donate $250. Even MTV is paying attention now.

(Conflict of interest alert: I went to grade school, high school and college with Novick’s campaign manager.)

Early next week is one of the great annual events in District politcking: the trip to the yearly convention of the International Council of Shopping Centers in Las Vegas. There, from Sunday to Tuesday, local politicos, bureaucrats, and developers do their damnedest to land commitments from big-time national retailers.

In past years, Mayor Anthony A. Williams was a frequent attendee, as well as then-council economic development committee chair Vincent Orange and occasionally a couple of other councilmembers. This year, the delegation has grown: eight councilmembers—Chairman Vincent C. Gray, Ward 2’s Jack Evans, Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, Ward 5’s Harry Thomas Jr., Ward 6’s Tommy Wells, Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander, Ward 8’s Marion Barry, and At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown—and seven council staffers are slated to attend, in addition to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Neil Albert, and three of his staffers.

And, as with so many instances of intergovernmental relations these days, there are apparently some issues. The council has had a hard time getting a complete schedule of meetings from the executive branch. That’s important, LL’s sources say, because it gives the impression that the mayor is calling the shots as far as who can attend which meeting with which potential retailer.

“We want to be on the same page, so were disappointed the executive is making the sole decisions,” says Alexander. “We don’t want to look like we’re disorganized.”

Gray, a source says, requested a full schedule from a mayoral staffer at a meeting yesterday but has yet to receive one. LL is also told that Brown, current chair of the economic development committee, was none too happy with the snub. Reached by LL, though, Brown declined to feud with Hizzoner. “There’s no problem,” he says.

UPDATE, FRIDAY 1:16 P.M.: Gray’s chief of staff, Dawn Slonneger, calls to say a full schedule was provided by Albert’s office last night. Everyone’s happy again!

Klingle Road Is Dead: The D.C. Council just voted 10-3 to keep language in the city budget that would close Klingle Road and replace it with a hiker/biker trail, perhaps, just maybe bringing a 17-year saga close to its end. LL’s tally of votes held up with one exception: At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania, who voted to open the road in 2003, voted today to close it, citing the federal government’s failure to approve funding for the reconstruction. In his comments on the matter, Catania adopted LL’s point of view: enough of this shit already. “I believe the majority of the citizens of the city wouldn’t be able to find Klingle Road if you put a gun to their head,” he said. “I hope that once and for all we can put this issue to rest.” —Mike DeBonis

Well, looks like Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray’s plege to rein in pork-barrel spending will wait one more year for implementation: The D.C. Council is about to approve about $48.4 million $72.7 million in earmarks for various city groups in fiscal 2009, including the controversial $10 million for Ford’s Theatre contained in the mayor’s budget proposal.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty had proposed about $27 million in earmarks, but in draft budget legislation circulated today, various councilmembers had added more than $20 million $45 million to that, just about matching far exceeding the level from last year’s budget battle. LL still needs to go through the list and see what the mayor got to keep and what he didn’t.

But Gray did follow through on promises for greater accountability for earmark beneficiaries. A section of the budget legislation imposes a list of items such groups need to submit by July 15, including articles of incorporation, a recent financial audit, tax forms, and a “detailed Program Statement” explaining what they plan to do with the taxpayer money. Also new: random audits from the D.C. Auditor.

UPDATE, 6:55 P.M.: LL neglected to include the earmarks falling under David A. Catania’s health committee. $20.15 million is allocated to specific groups and businesses; about another $4 million is set aside for grants to groups to be determined.

Full list of earmarks after jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jonetta Rose Barras, the fiery veteran D.C. political analyst, has been fired by her bosses at WAMU-FM, where she served as co-host of the Friday noon show The Politics Hour With Kojo and Jonetta. Her departure is effective immediately, and the station has changed the name of the show to The Politics Hour.

Barras says that her dismissal was prompted by her persistent appeals for better pay, not to mention a rocky relationship with WAMU Program Director Mark McDonald. “My problems were with the program manager, who had no appreciation for the amount of work I did, the quality of that work, and my reputation, and believed that I should be paid less than a senior career person,” says Barras.

The sharp-tongued Barras has never been afraid to confront power–she did it every week on the airwaves–and she apparently didn’t keep quiet about what she saw as workplace injustices. She says she watched as WAMU staffers who did less work got paid more than she did. Behind the alleged disparities, she says, lie racial and gender discrimination on part of the WAMU leadership.

“I do believe that there was some discrimination involved in the way that I was handled by the program [director] and the senior management,” she says. Barras says she had no problem whatsoever with co-host Kojo Nnamdi and staffers who put together their show.

Barras’ dispute with WAMU follows a classic ’00s model. Over time, says Barras, her managers at WAMU expanded her responsibilities. Whereas the show was once titled The D.C. Politics Hour With Kojo and Jonetta, the station subsequently expanded its scope to include Maryland and Virginia, rechristening it as The Politics Hour With Kojo and Jonetta. Though Barras thus gained two big jurisdictions to cover, her compensation didn’t experience a comparable gain. “They changed the name of the show and scope of the show and then were pissed off because I was asking for more money,” says Barras, who has also worked extensively for Washington City Paper over the years.

McDonald declined to comment, citing the manager’s personnel comment exemption. A statement released by the station is light on details, saying only that Barras “is leaving” WAMU.

The list of groups that Phil Pannell has quit in a huff continues to expand: The longtime activist announced in an e-mail sent early this morning that he “in good conscience can no longer participate” with DC Vote, the city’s most prominent voting-rights advocacy group.

The e-mail was addressed to DC Vote’s executive director, Ilir Zherka and copied to several media and political types. It was prompted by the decision of Eugene Dewitt Kinlow, who is DC Vote’s outreach director, to drop out of a shadow senator race he had entered a mere three days before.

Pannell alleges in his letter that two-term incumbent Paul Strauss had used his “clout” to force Kinlow out of the race. “I personally witnessed Paul Strauss at the Obama fundraiser at Union Station last Thursday and at the Board of Elections the next day state to people that Eugene’s candidacy would be problematic for DC VOTE,” Pannell wrote. “Strauss, in my opinion, clearly stated that he had the clout to get him out of the race, which apparently he did. His hubris was nauseating.”

And, in trademark Pannell rhetoric, he also wrote that Kinlow’s withdrawal made him feel “what it must have been like for African American slaves to witness the beating of slave when they stood by helplessly. I will not sit by and let a Black man be trashed this way and consequently have entered the race for Shadow Senator.”

UPDATE, 4:55 P.M.: Strauss calls to deny Pannell’s insinuation that he intervened with Kinlow’s employer, DC Vote, to get him out of the race. “I never called anyone at DC Vote,” he says. “Any implication that I interfered in his employment situation is false.”

Strauss says he’s mystified and hurt by Pannell’s comments. “No one’s ever referred to me in language like that before.”

Full letter after jump.

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The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club’s endorsements are usually noteworthy for no other reason than the fact they happen so damn early in the election cycle. This time though, there was plenty of drama on offer at the club’s meeting tonight at the John A. Wilson Building aside from the timing.

The big scoop: Eugene Dewitt Kinlow took the Stein Club event as an opportunity to drop out of a shadow senator race he’d entered little more than 72 hours prior. That race was shaping up to be a civil war of sorts between Kinlow, outreach director for DC Vote, and Paul Strauss, shadow senator since 1994 and an old friend of Kinlow’s. LL was super-excited about the prospect of another contested race and had hyped it up in a Friday blog post.

Strauss, sources tell LL, raised concerns to folks in the voting-rights crowd about the fact that a paid employee of the District’s best-funded voting-rights advocacy group would run for his unpaid seat. Asked his feelings on the matter, Strauss demurred: “I hope none of us in the movement would do things do divide the movement when we need to unite the movement.” He says he met with Kinlow privately after learning of his run.

Kinlow says he “reevaluated what it is I do seven days a week,” explaining that he didn’t want to drive an unpaid volunteer out of the voting-rights-activism ranks; he insists “it was a personal decision” his employer had nothing to do with.

Even his extremely short run, Kinlow says, had its accomplishments: “Since Friday, there’s been a tremendous amount of interest in this position,” he says. “Even by thinking about running I became a catalyst in recruiting more soldier” to the voting-rights cause.

The next big surprise: Ward 8 civil-rights activist/man-of-all-seasons Phil Pannell stepped into the void after he heard of Kinlow’s decision. Pannell, who is gay and a longtime Stein Club member, had a home-field advantage and forced a runoff vote with Strauss, which he won. But because the vote was so close, 26 votes to 21, no endorsement was made.

Says Strauss: “I was very gratified to win the first ballot, which is the one I think that indicates the true support.”

Kinlow made no endorsement, but his wife, D.C. Public Schools ombudsman Tonya Vidal Kinlow rose before the group in support of Pannell. Says her spouse: “She’s a smart woman. She’s a smarter person than I am.”

Other big drama:

• OK, no huge drama in the Ward 2 endorsements. Incumbent Jack Evans was squarely on home turf. He outflanked challenger Cary Silverman by playing up his record on issues close to the gay community over his four terms. (He held up to the crowed a framed ad run in 1992 by then Whitman-Walker Clinic Director Jim Graham touting Evans as the gay community’s “advocate.” Asked how long he’s been toting that ad to Stein Club endorsement meetings, Evans said, “No comment.”)

  Silverman did score some points with his full-time-councilmember pledge and his response to a question on liquor-license voluntary agreements, but then proceeded to blow it while answering a testy question from Pannell on how the gay community hasn’t been able to get a meeting with the Washington Nationals. Silverman tried to to make a point about a bad stadium deal: “We gave away the store….I don’t know what we can do. I look forward to Councilmember Evans’ answer,” he said.

  Well, Evans promised the Stein Club a meeting with Nats President Stan Kasten, to wild applause. Evans won the endorsement (and a $500 campaign contribution), 54-5, with 3 abstentions.

• One of the last uncommitted superdelegates in the District’s Democratic delegation has made up her mind: Anita Bonds, chair of the D.C. Democratic State Committee, had long said it was her job to remain neutral while her group assembled the delegation. Now, with that job complete, Bonds says she’s “leaning heavily” toward Barack Obama, pending a meeting with the Illinois senator.

  Bonds says she hopes the meeting with Obama will happen soon—”I don’t want to have to go to West Virginia”—and she says she hopes to meet with Clinton, too. Asked if Clinton could say anything to change her mind at this point, Bonds says, “I don’t think so.”

• Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District’s congressional delegate, won the club’s endorsement by acclamation after one of her trademark rambles. Incumbent shadow rep Mike Panetta also won an endorsement without a vote. Lots of other big names came out for the festivities. Besides the combatants, Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser showed, as did Ward 8’s Marion Barry. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray also made a brief appearance, and At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown was in the house.
• As far as verbal fireworks, the highlight of the evening was certainly Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander’s questioning from Rick Rosendall and Bob Summersgill of the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance. Alexander’s speech was pretty darn anodyne, pushing her advocacy for getting rid of discriminatory practices in health insurance during her time as a District insurance examiner and her hard-line stance against sex harassment in a Ward 7 firehouse.

  Summersgill, though, brought up Alexander’s decision during her last election campaign to support civil unions but not marriage for gays and lesbians in the District. After citing her “devout Catholic” beliefs, Alexander said she was “willing to look at those options,” but initially was unwilling to commit to marriage. “That’s still a no!” Summersgill, past president of the GLAA, said repeatedly. Rosendall leapt in Summersgill then added: “In this town, if you don’t support gay marriage, you don’t deserve to be on the council.” Alexander finally said, “I guess I’m in support of it; I’m in support of equal rights.”

  That wasn’t all, though: Rosendall, the GLAA’s VP for political affairs, then went after Alexander for her support of Ward 5 colleague Harry Thomas Jr. on his efforts to keep gay strip clubs displaced by the baseball stadium out of his ward. (Rosendall had earlier, while standing to endorse Evans, announced that he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the GLAA.) Alexander said she tends to defer to the home-ward councilmember in such situations, but Rosendall blew a gasket at that line of reasoning: “She betrayed us on that bill!…You didn’t care about us!” he shouted, while other club members groaned. Said Rosendall, “If you’re more mad at me than at her, then there’s something wrong with you.”

  Alexander won the endorsement by a show of hands, 36-3, with an abstention.

In Saturday’s Post, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray’s office said that the controversial lottery contract wouldn’t be placed on the agenda for tomorrow’s council meeting, drawing criticism from the representatives of the contractors, Intralot and W2Tech, who said the council was short-circuiting a fair process.

Well, looks like they made their point: The lottery contract, “Contract No. CFOPD-7-C-053, On-line Gaming System and Related Services Approval Resolution of 2008″, PR 17-0429,” is back on the agenda posted this afternoon on the council Web site.

Gray spokesperson Doxie McCoy confirms that her boss made the move, but she makes the point that any councilmember could have moved the contract onto the council agenda.

There’s more to Woodley Park than feuding Indian restaurants. Who knew? While wandering around in the rain yesterday, I found one of the neighborhood’s new assets: the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery in what used to be a nasty little restaurant, Thai Town. (”Trust me,” says Stanford in Washington’s program cooridinator Janine Chen, “you should have seen the kitchen.”)

The building was built in the early 1900s and included a grocery store front, which has been partially restored, says Chen. It also includes Stanford U’s program, where students work at internships during the day and live in the building the rest of the time. The gallery space at 2655 Connecticut Ave. NW opened in October and is currently showing its third and most popular exhibit, “Leadership: Oliphant Cartoons & Sculpture from the Bush Years.”

Pat Oliphant, a classic and fantastic skewerist, lets loose on Bush and Cheney, of couse, with fine contributions to the Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Gonzales canons. One of his most brilliant works, though, concerns the Clintons‘ departure. Both are shown walking out of the White House gates loaded down with lamps, rugs, artwork—a lambast on B.C.’s obsession with his legacy and the prospect of H.C.’s return down the road. For a native Australian, Oliphant’s pretty prescient about U.S. politics.

But the exhibit’s greatest highlight, by my estimation anyway, was Oliphant’s description of a speech he gave to a D.C. room lousy with Republicans, including the sitting president at the time, Gerald R. Ford. Oliphant always drew Ford with a Band-Aid across his head, a comment on the late prez’s trademark clumsiness. Following Oliphant’s speech, the artist walked over to Ford and actually drew said Band-Aid on the man’s actual head. Ford, with his also-trademark good humor, sat perfectly still and grinned the whole time. A secret service agent, while also grinning, let Oliphant know that he would not be drawing on the president ever again. Later and as a tribute, Oliphant drew a panel with a laughing , handsome Ford—sans Band-Aid.

The traveling exhibit will be up through July 11.

photo by dbking

There is one clear benefit to Hillary Clinton dropping out of the Democratic Primary race: We won’t have to see/hear/watch Terry McAuliffe anymore.

He’s become Hillary’s master hype man. Before and after every primary, he pops up on TV to scrub facts, chase away scary numbers, and airbrush Hillary’s latest gaffs. While he hasn’t quite earned any Swift Boat merit badges, he knows how to bullshit better than anyone else.

The man has probably been on TV a billion times since last fall. So it’s understandable if the man has started running out of things to say. As his performance yesterday on “Meet the Press” proved, McAuliffe has finally hit a wall.

McAuliffe argued that Michigan should be counted because, well, Obama chose to take his name off the ballot. So why hurt Hillary for what was clearly Obama’s decision? And then he went on to evoke the Buffalo Bills—a Russert obsession—and compared the team to Hillary’s chances for the nomination. Not a good move:

“OK, but well, I’ll just say it’s not impossible. Did you count the Buffalo Bills out in 1993 when the Houston Oilers were beating them by 32 points in the third quarter?,” McAuliffe asked.

And then later, McAuliffe moves on to declare that Russert’s father would basically want Hillary to continue.

“But it’s not impossible for Hillary Clinton to win. A lot of people have said that. Big Russ, if he were sitting here today, nothing’s impossible. Jack McAuliffe, if he were with us today, they both–they’re probably both in heaven right now, Tim, probably having a scotch, looking down and saying, you know what, this fight goes on. It’s good for the Democratic Party. Millions of people coming out to vote. It’s exciting.”

I know Hillary does well with seniors. But this is ridiculous. Now she has the dead people vote? What’s next? Will we see ads with a CGI-enhanced John Lennon endorsing Hillary?

Dear Hillary:

I am sure that I am not part of your PowerPoint presentation. I don’t count in your world. I’m a marginally over-educated white boy who doesn’t think much of your gas-tax relief plan, your fighter cred, nor your previous attempts at YouTube viral video. I don’t buy your big-state argument, your blue-collar argument, nor any arguments whatsoever to count Michigan. I don’t think you’re a fighter. I think you are just desperate.

But forget all that. I need you to quit sometime today. I bet a co-worker that you would. The bet is substantial—way more than what I would gain from your gas-tax holiday—two appetizers and two beers! That’s like at least $20. As you can see a lot is riding on this bet.

You’re probably thinking that I’m a total fool for making this bet, that I just don’t know you—that you really are a fighter. Well, I had my reasons. I figured the superdels would flock to Obama [which they are kinda starting to], that you’d tire of loaning yourself money, and that the press would turn against you. I think I’m closer to being right than you’d want to admit. I mean did you see the cover of Time? That has to hurt. I figured you wouldn’t want to put up with that kind of humiliation.

Please say I’m not wrong. I really could use those two beers and two orders of nachos.

You have about 7 hours to quit. Think about all the free time you’ll have tomorrow.

Please consider my plight.

Sincerely yours in 2016,

Jason Cherkis