With LL weaving deep into Page 6 territory this week, he figured he might as well keep up the shtick:

• Seen in the D.C. Council box at Verizon Center Tuesday night for the George Michael show: At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania, with many friends.
• Seen in the front rows at Wolf Trap for “Hippiefest” on Wednesday night: Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, with female companion, enjoying the likes of Jack Bruce, Eric Burdon & the Animals, the Turtles (feat. Flo & Eddie), and Badfinger. (Among the classic Cream tracks played by Bruce: “Politician”—”Hey now baby, get into my big black car/I wanna just show you what my politics are.”)

LL has been informed that the D.C. Chamber of Commerce has made their endorsements in several of the major D.C. Council primary races. In each of those, incumbents unsurprisingly pulled in the chamber’s nod:

• Ward 2 Democrat: Jack Evans
• Ward 4 Democrat: Muriel Bowser
• Ward 7 Democrat: Yvette M. Alexander
• At-Large Democrat: Kwame R. Brown

The endorsements, made by the chamber’s political action committee, do not include the at-large Republican primary. There, of course, the big question is whether four-term incumbent Carol Schwartz will get the chamber’s nod. Challenger Patrick Mara got the nod from the Greater Washington Board of Trade, a group with a broader scope but similar pro-business interests. Chamber types were not pleased, not pleased at all, with Schwartz’s advocacy on the behalf of mandatory sick leave.

A source says that the delay is due to the fact that neither Schwartz or Mara have been interviewed by the chamber yet; they’ll make their pitches next week. No word on whether a Ward 8 endorsement is forthcoming.

That’s the actual subhead in a press release from Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans‘ office. Luckily, the statement redeems itself by presenting some real news (as opposed to the recent “[Kwame] BROWN BAGS IT FOR PROSTATE CANCER AWARENESS“.)

Residents in Shaw have been begging for ShotSpotter since the dawn of the police listervs, or at least it feels that way. Here’s a little sample:

“What bothers me almost as much as the repeated gunfire is that residents (myself included) seem to have gotten so accustomed to hearing it that it may not even get reported. One more reason that we need to get ShotSpotter deployed so that the police aren’t dependent on sometimes not-very-precise reports from residents.”

Now, apparently, the wait is over.

Read More “Criminals Beware: ShotSpotter Technology Up and Running” »

On Saturday afternoon, LL was watching the weather report with bated breath, as a line of thunderstorms threatened to put the kibosh on this year’s Capital Pride Parade, the centerpiece of the yearly gay-community celebration and the first chance for the players in this year’s campaign season to truly come out. (Yes, pun intended.)

Luckily, the show went on. The big news of the parade were the mystery signs:

All along the parade route, posted on lampposts were signs reading “Ask Carol Schwartz why she OPPOSES marriage equality” in Schwartz’ trademark yellow-and-white. The signs carried absolutely no indication of where they might have come from. Shady!

Gay activist Peter Rosenstein told LL he had seen folks on stepladders posting the signs earlier in the afternoon, but neither he nor anyone else LL consulted had any idea who they were. The challengers who marched in the parade—Adam Clampitt, Dee Hunter, and Patrick Mara—all denied having anything to do with the signs. (A Clampitt aide, in fact, phoned in a preemptive denial, before LL even showed up for the parade.)

Schwartz called it “the work of a cowardly liar” and furthermore implored LL not to “rain on my parade” (har har) by giving the cowards any ink—sorry, Carol! (For more on the does-Carol-support-gay-marriage theme, read Washington Blade articles by Rosenstein and by Schwartz.)

LL thought he might have solved the mystery when, right on the middle of the 17th Street NW commercial strip, a spectator holding one of the signs in one hand and a drink in the other marched right out to confront Schwartz, who was walking behind her yellow Pontiac Firebird. From a distance, LL seemed to see Schwartz saying to the interloper, “I do! I do!” in response to the sign’s query.

After Schwartz passed, LL asked the man, Andrew Campbell of Dupont Circle, whether he’d been involved in the signmaking. Nope, he said—”I pulled it off the lamppost.”

LL quizzed him further on the reasoning behind his anti-Schwartz stance. “I dunno,” he said. “Look at what the sign says!”

The crowd rest of the crowd seemed not to care much. Take this spectator reaction to the confrontation: “Tell him to fuck off, Carol!”

Many more pix after the jump! Read More “The LL Capital Pride Review Stand” »

This morning, about 300 members of the area’s hotel employees union gathered in the halls of the John A. Wilson Building to lobby councilmembers on the long-percolating noise bill.

The bill, which aims to put a decibel ceiling on noncommercial speech, has caught labor ire due to concerns that it would curb union protests. (Not all unions are against the bill; local chapters of the Service Employees International Union support it.) It will be up for final vote on tomorrow’s council meeting agenda.

In the union’s sights were two councilmembers who supported a compromise measure that limited noncommercial speech to 80 decibels or 10 decibels above ambient levels: At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown, who introducted the compromise, and Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander. The union’s preferred solution is through a set of amendments put forth last month by Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans that would, among other things, exempt areas containing hotels according to zoning definitions. Those amendments failed at the bill’s first reading last month, but are likely to be introduced again tomorrow.

Union reps took out ads on local radio stations and protested at at least one political event: Alexander’s State of Ward 7 Speech last week.

They’ve bagged at least one of their quarries: Brown, standing in the halls among the red-shirted union folks, told LL that he planned to vote for Evans’ pro-union amendments at tomorrow’s final vote. Alexander, according to top aide J.R. Meyers, “hasn’t made a decision as of yet.”

Brown said that his original amendment, was meant to address nighttime street noise in the Penn Quarter area and that he didn’t realize at the time that this bill would not help solve those problems. “You gotta understand,” he says, “this was during the budget.”

Brown says he’s “disappointed” with the unions when it comes to their media campaign, which invoked Martin Luther King Jr. in an attempt to sway minds against his and Alexander’s original positions. His change of heart on noise, he says, was due to new facts he’s learned since the initial vote. “It really helped me understand why we have two readings,” he said.

OK, like everyone else in town, LL’s been trying to figure out what the hell’s going on with the soccer stadium proposal. Here’s what LL has been able to determine:

• No deal is in place yet. According to Wilson Building sources, the sticking points include, yes, the amount of the District’s commitment—the Fenty administration is holding to a $150 million cap versus the $225 mil that the team is hoping for—and the issue of whether the District will be held responsible for any delays in turning the land over to the team, which, from the District’s point of view is untenable, seeing as the District doesn’t even have possession of the land yet (the feds do) and likely won’t for years, until the National Park Service figures out a way to get its facilities off the property.
• With Councilmember Marion S. Barry Jr. out of town in Tanzania all week, don’t expect a whole lot to get done. He’s the main force driving the stadium deal. Word is, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, though supporters of the project, are treading very lightly indeed.
• Last night, Gray told LL there was virtually no chance stadium legislation would be ready for the Tuesday legislative meeting. That means introduction and committal won’t happen until July, meaning first reading wouldn’t be until after the summer recess.

So, folks, hold your horses: Don’t expect any fireworks on this until the fall.

LL’s on the scene at the Kennedy Rec Center in Shaw, where Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans is holding his re-election kickoff party.

In the company of council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, Evans announced minutes ago he’s throwing his support behind Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Evans had been a longtime Hillary Clinton supporter, co-chairing her campaign in the District. Earlier this month, he’d been elected by local Democrats to serve as an at-large delegate pledged to Clinton.

Asked to explain his move, Evans cited “just the momentum that was going behind it.” He says he left a message with the Clinton campaign about the decision but was not able to speak with the senator before making the announcement today.

“It’s important for the city that we have a good relationship with the next president,” Evans says.

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.

One of the District’s hardiest political addresses is once again occupied: Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans will be locating his campaign headquarters at 1005 7th St. NW, on the highly visible northeast corner of 7th and New York Avenue.

Evans, who is being challenged thus far by Mount Vernon Square lawyer and community activist Cary Silverman, follows in the footsteps of numerous other city politicos—many who had checkered experiences on the premises:

• In 1998, the building housed one of At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz’s failed mayoral runs.
• In 2000, Schwartz ran her successful re-election campaign out of the building—a rare unqualified success for the edifice.
• In 2002, Mayor Anthony A. Williams also ran a re-election campaign out of the building. You know, the one with all the fake ballots and the write-in votes.
• In 2004, incumbent At-Large Councilmember Harold Brazil’s campaign occupied the space. He was overthrown by insurgent Kwame Brown.
• In 2006, mayoral hopeful Michael A. Brown moved his campaign in. He ended up with a mere 650 votes after throwing his support to Linda Cropp less than a week before the Democratic primary.

Red-and-white Evans signs appeared all over the three-story building, owned by developer Doug Jemal, earlier this week; Evans campaign manager Keith Carbone says phone lines still need to be installed and furniture ordered for the storefront. A kickoff event for the office, he says, is scheduled for later this month.

Perhaps Evans will be able to avoid any bad juju on the premises—he is, after all, the first non-citywide candidate to move in (the office is located in Ward 2’s eastern flank—the area Silverman considers his base). Carbone says he’s not worried about any of that. “We’re not going to be superstitious,” he says.

High Drama on Noise Bill! Evans amendment fails, 7-6. Voting to water down the bill/cave to unions: Bowser, Evans, Graham, Gray, Mendelson, Thomas. —Mike DeBonis

The battle over the noise bill, recently brought back from the dead, comes to a head today at the D.C. Council’s legislative meeting.

Actually, the battle is well underway: At this morning’s council breakfast meeting, councilmembers got pretty huffy over the bill’s prospects. Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans described an amendment he plans to introduce that would distinguish between amplified noise in residential areas, where it would be limited to 80 decibels as measured inside a residence, and commercial areas, where there would be no limits. The distinction, he explained, was necessary to protect the interests of unions (Local 25 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees was specifically mentioned) who want to hold protests—including protests outside three large hotels located inside residential zones (the Washington Hilton, the Wardman Park Marriott, and the Omni Shoreham).

Also, rather than empowering police officers to enforce the law as originally proposed, the amendment would require readings to be taken by noise inspectors from the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. That, Evans explains, is because the unions “have an enormous distrust of the Metropolitan Police Department.”

Ward 6 Councilmember and bill cosponsor Tommy Wells initially suggested a compromise amendment that would keep the residential/commercial distinction, but lower the threshold to 70 decibels, as measured outside a residence. To placate the unions, Wells proposed allowing amplified speech within 100 feet of a hotel with 50 rooms or more.

So what does 70 decibels sound like? Some said “freight train”; Evans likened it to one of his favorite hangouts: “It’s Cafe Milano on a busy night,” he said.

Wells took a dig at Evans, who had loudspeaker-equipped protesters outside his Georgetown home early on a Sunday morning earlier this year: “As Jack learned, noise is used…as a weapon.”

Then At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania said, essentially, screw this union shit: “What offends me about this is in the effort to pander to one constituency…we’ve basically said to the community, ‘Good luck!’” After Catania’s spiel, At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz also spoke again the union pander, and Ward 3 Councilmember Mary M. Cheh stood up for the provisions in the original bill, which she cosponsored. The hotel exception, she says, is “beyond pandering.”

The meeting broke up when Evans stalked out shortly before 10 a.m.; Cheh, Wells, and others huddled to discuss strategy.

Shortly before the start of the meeting, Wells told LL that he and his allies would offer no amendment unless Evans’ amendment passes.

“Healthy DC,” the plan put forth in March by At-Large Councilmember David A. Catania that aimed to insure every District resident, looks to be dead.

In its place, Catania announced at the D.C. Council’s pre-legislative meeting press conference this morning, the D.C. Healthcare Alliance—which covers the District’s poorest residents—will be expanded so that uninsured folks who earn more than the Alliance’s ceiling of about $21,000 can buy in for a premium that would be no more than 3 percent of their income.

There are a few catches: One, the requirement that all District residents carry some form of insurance goes away in the new proposal; two, the proposed funding level will only support about 15,000 of the 25,000 estimated uninsured originally targeted; and three, the benefits won’t include any mental-health or substance abuse treatment. The program is still proposed to be funded out of a $1-per-pack hike on cigarette taxes and new taxes on HMOs.

Catania hinted that the reason for the collapse of the orginal plan was a failure to get CareFirst, the District’s Blue Cross Blue Shield licensee and largest health insurer, to buy in to the plan. The company—which, in the original Healthy DC plan essentially administered the program—was unwilling to move forward unless the District assumed all of the risk on the deal. CareFirst had also come into some criticism for essentially getting handed the program on a no-bid basis.

“CareFirst has had, the best way to characterize it, a change of heart,” he said. Catania did say the new plan “doesn’t let them off the hook,” in that CareFirst is still required by law to engage in a substantial community benefits program.

[UPDATE, 3:40 P.M.: Catania's chief of staff, Ben Young, disagrees with LL's choice of words: “Healthy DC is not dead. However, we may need to take a different approach.”]

Other notes from the presser:

• Vince Gray Punctuality Watch: Things kicked off at 10:14 a.m.—14 minutes late and 2 minutes worse than last month. But that’s OK, ’cause LL was 10 minutes late.
• Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells introduced a suite of improvements to child-welfare services contained in the fiscal 2009 budget, plus a couple of as-yet-unfunded proposals. The sexiest of them is a proposal for a tax credit of up to $2,000 for folks who mentor youth; employers who let their employees do mentoring would get a tax credit toward the costs. Wells said he’s yet to get a fiscal impact statement on his proposals, saying, “We certainly know what it costs in terms of losing our youth.” That comment drew an audible sigh from Ward 2 Councilmember and fiscal watchdog Jack Evans.
• The council’s investigation into the OTR tax scandal continues, led by the pro bono efforts of the Wilmer Hale law firm. Gray says the probe “is not at the stage where we’re ready to release any findings.” Investigators are looking to interview “30 to 35″ persons about the scandal, Gray says. Discussion of the tax scandal led to a withering line of questioning from the Examiner tag team of Jonetta Rose Barras, Michael Neibauer, and Bill Myers, all of whom asked about an audit of the District’s tax system commissioned by the CFO’s office. Gray said he hadn’t read the report; though Evans had reviewed the report, he declined to comment.
• Gray will be introducing a “Sense of the Council” resolution in opposition to hate crimes. Talk about something everyone can get behind.
• The single-sales bans in Wards 7 and 8 are moving forward, and the ban in Ward 4 is likely to be made permanent.
• The noise bill will be back before the council tomorrow. Evans, who had said he would likely introduce amendments to the bill, declined to say whether he would do so.
• Ceremonial resolutions galore tomorrow, including one for your playoff-qualifying Washington Capitals. Owner Ted Leonsis will be on hand for the occasion.

In the culmination of a nearly four-month, sometimes controversial, and always confusing process, the D.C. Democratic State Committee last night selected the last three members of the District’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention in August. Councilmembers Muriel Bowser of Ward 4 and Jack Evans of Ward 2 both earned voting slots, as did Ward 1 lawyer and fundraiser Jim Hudson. Political strategist Tom Lindenfeld, a Ward 4 resident, was voted in as an alternate.

The slots filled last night were all “pledged” slots, which could only be filled by candidates who had filed papers pledging their support to a particular candidate. Three of the four slots were pledged to Barack Obama, based on the results of the District’s primary vote. Only the seat Evans won was pledged to Hillary Clinton. The Clinton seat was also the only one that drew a contested vote; folks who had signed up to challenge Bowser, Hudson, and Lindenfeld all withdrew their names before the vote.

Evans’ competition was Franklin Garcia, a committee member and technology consultant. His speech to his fellow members before the vote—which, according to witnesses (it happened before LL arrived), focused an awful lot on what a great candidate Obama is—failed to win him the Clinton slot: He lost 52-6.

Other than that, the drama was minor. There was a bit of uproar when Lindenfeld, a guy who has tended to stay behind the scenes over the years, stood for election by acclamation; one member declined to get with the program, saying “That’s unfair….I don’t know who the hell he is!” She was drowned out when the time to vote arrived.

Also there was an attempted solution to the Case of the Missing Ballots from the prior month’s meeting. Committee member John Capozzi put forth a motion that would have each committee member rise and tell their votes for the at-large unpledged delegates to the crowd; it would also require the state committee to keep ballots for at least 21 says after the vote. A vote on the motion was postponed to next month.

The full list of delegates is after the jump.

Read More “D.C. Dems’ Delegate Slate Is Complete—Finally” »

In a town where Barack Obama got better than 75 percent of the vote, this wasn’t supposed to happen. But it did anyway: Hillary Clinton picked up an extra District delegate to the Democratic National Convention last night. For that, Obama supporters have only their own to blame.

The D.C. Democratic State Committee met in the John A. Wilson Building for almost three hours to select a pair of unpledged add-on “superdelegates.” More than 20 signed up to run for the two slots, voted on by the 80-odd members of the committee. “Unpledged” in this case is a bit misleading; most delegate candidates’ presidential preferences were already widely known to voters.

The days and weeks before the vote saw furious lobbying of the 80-some committee members—especially on the Obama side—to sway votes to their presidential candidate. Obama organizers hoped to prevent a split vote by steering support to two delegate candidates: Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander, a longtime state committee member and favorite of the old guard, and lawyer Miriam Sapiro, a relative unknown favored by the grassroots types.

Though a number of the 25 candidates on the ballot withdrew before the vote, seven Obama supporters ended up running, while only two Clinton supporters only three Clinton supporters only two Clinton supporters stood: Ward 5 Councilmember Harry Thomas Jr., Ward 3 resident Mary Ann Miller, and lawyer and ex-council staffer Aimee Occhetti.

Clinton’s name never came up in Thomas’ brief remarks before the vote; he instead chose to talk up his own qualifications and big-picture issues. “The issue is what are we going to do when we get to Denver that best represents the District of Columbia,” he said. (Rumors had swirled that Thomas planned to switch to Obama, but Thomas knocked those down after the vote: “I haven’t changed,” he says. “I’m consistent.”)

The actual candidates’ names rarely came up, in fact. The division within the Obama camp was briefly aired when candidate Linda Nguyen rose to say, “I only have 2 minutes to convince you to vote for me…not someone you promised the mayor you’d vote for.” That earned her hearty boos from the crowd. (Line of the night, though, came from Occhetti: “If you call me at 3 a.m., I will definitely try to answer the phone.”)

In the end, Alexander cruised to victory, but Sapiro came up two votes short; she got 22 to Thomas’ 24. Check after the jump for a full tally of the results (i.e., which Obama folks didn’t get with the program).

Delegate Potpourri

• Unsurprisingly, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown took the two spots reserved for PLEOs—party leaders and elected officials. Shadow Rep. Mike Panetta appeared on the original ballot but withdrew before the vote. In remarks after the vote, Gray said, “My life’s aspiration has been to be a PLEO. I’ve finally arrived!” Panetta says he plans to run for an alternate pledged at-large spot set to be selected on May 3. Barring that, committee chair Anita Bonds announced to the crowd that Panetta would be serving as the delegation’s Official Blogger in Denver. Says Panetta: “One way or another, I’ll be there.”
• Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans showed early in the meeting to greet the crowd but quickly left. Since the decision came down that both PLEOs were to be Obama-pledged, Evans did not appear on the ballot. Gray announced after voting that Evans would be running at the May 3 meeting for a pledged at-large slot for Clinton; Gray lobbied the crowd on Evans’ behalf.

Read More “Clinton Snags Unlikely D.C. Delegate Slot” »

Four years ago, Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans narrowly missed getting a trip to the Democratic National Convention as a delegate for Howard Dean. This time around, the rules changed and, since the primary, everyone thought Evans was in like Flynn.

Well, not so fast.

Two delegate spots are reserved for what are called PLEOs—party leaders and elected officials. This year, those spots are slotted according to a hierarchy; Council chairman gets first dibs, followed by chairman pro tempore, followed by at-large councilmembers, and so on. But you also have to be supporting the right candidate; the PLEO slots are allocated based on the results of the District’s primary. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray is a Barack Obama guy; Evans, the chair pro tempore, is a longtime Hillary Clinton guy.

Originally, the D.C. Democratic State Committee held that Obama and Clinton were entitled to one PLEO spot apiece. Well, a group of Obama activists—including D.C. for Obama’s Howard Park, Jordan Usdan of Young Lawyers for Obama, and D.C. for Democracy’s Keith Ivey—researched the rules and held that Obama supporters were entitled to both PLEO seats. Their interpretation, sources say, was upheld earlier this week through an appeal to the Democratic National Committee.

“It was a matter of math, not politics,” says Park.

LL is not going to get into the uber-complicated calculations here. (If you want a rundown, check the comments section of this blog post; “KCinDC” is Ivey.) Long story short: Jack Evans isn’t guaranteed a trip to Denver anymore.

That’s not to say it might not happen some other way. Evans could run for one of two unpledged add-on spots at the D.C. Democratic State Committee meeting tonight. No guarantees there: About two dozen party activists have already put their names forward for slots, and with a majority of committee members supporting Obama, getting a Clinton supporter elected is unlikely barring some odd vote-splitting.

Another scenario: Clinton is guaranteed one pledged at-large delegate, which is to be chosen by the state committee on May 3; Evans could still be named to that slot. The complicating factor is that those at-large spots are generally used for concerns of racial or gender balance—white males typically don’t rate.

Evans didn’t respond to a request for comment yesterday.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery