A D.C. Council committee has voted to disapprove Peter J. Nickles‘ nomination as the District’s attorney general.

At a meeting this morning of the committee on public safety and the judiciary, chair Phil Mendelson, along with colleagues Yvette Alexander and Mary Cheh, voted against the confirmation. Councilmembers Jack Evans and Muriel Bowser voted to confirm.

Under council rules, the nomination will now proceed to the full council and is likely to be taken up at tomorrow’s legislative meeting. Mendelson tells LL he expects a vigorous lobbying effort from the mayor’s office in the meantime.

More to come.

UPDATE, 12:33 P.M.: A little bit of procedural nitty-gritty on what took place at the meeting: Mendelson changed what had been an approval resolution to a disapproval resolution. Why? To deny the nomination requires an affirmative vote against it. Not acting on or not passing through an approval resolution by the Dec. deadline would have been a de facto approval.

Here’s what Jack Evans has to say: “I’m disappointed that Councilmember Mendelson at the last moment changed the approval resolution to a disapproval resolution….I believe that Peter Nickles overall because of his legal skills and organizational skills is the best person to lead the A.G.’s office at the time.” Evans says his colleagues need to “put aside individual incidents that they had and look at the best interests of the city.” He says he plans to introduce an amendment at tomorrow’s council meeting to change the legislation back to an approval resolution.

Here’s Alexander: “It wasn’t a matter of his competence. I think his qualifications are very impressive. However, he’s representing the District of Columbia. I did have some concerns about his blatant firings and his residency.” The fact that he told councilmembers in hearings that he wouldn’t start his house hunt until after his confirmation, she says, “doesn’t show commitment.”

Furthermore, she says, there’s “too much of a conflict” in his various duties. “He acts in some instances as city administrator. He acts in some instances as heads of agencies…There’s a lot of qualified persons out there. I don’t think he’s the only lawyer running around out there.”

UPDATE, 3:15 P.M.: LL got a perfectly sanguine Nickles on the phone: “I don’t have any reaction. I don’t have any comment. We’ll see what happens when it goes to the full council.”

He had no prognostication as to what might happen tomorrow: “This is within the prerogative of the council,” Nickles says. “Whatever they say is fine with me.”

And here’s a fun excerpt from the committee report: “A nomination submitted to the Council should not be considered a fait accompli. Rather, a nomination instigates the Council’s oversight role in assuring that the candidate put forth is competent, has nothing disqualifying about him or her, understands his or her role and the mission of the agency, has vision for the agency, and will serve in the best interests of the District and its citizens. The Committee believes that the nominee does not meet this standard and recommends to the Council the disapproval of his confirmation.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander kisses cutout of At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown at Precinct 110.

On Tuesday, Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander told LL that despite the lobbying of colleagues Marion Barry and Harry Thomas Jr., she wouldn’t cross Carol Schwartz by supporting prime challenger Michael A. Brown.

She apparently gave in. Alexander says she plans to join Barry and Thomas tomorrow for a 10:30 a.m. press conference endorsing Brown.

LL heard the news after being invited into Alexander’s Wilson Building office, where she was meeting with Barry and Ward 4 rep Muriel Bowser, who has endorsed Schwartz.

Barry himself related the details of the presser to LL, breaking his vow of silence to City Paper. “I’ll break it for that ’cause it’s too important,” he says.

Bowser walked out and later told LL, “She told me unsolicited two days ago she would never support Michael Brown.”

What happened since Tuesday? Well, for one thing, Alexander’s predecessor and patron Vincent C. Gray came out with a surprise Brown endorsement. Whatever happened, Alexander certainly had quite a change of heart in those 48 hours. She told LL, “I’ve fought too long and hard for the Democratic Party” to support Schwartz, a Republican. “It’s almost like endorsing John McCain….I can’t allow that to happen.”

As for her flipflop, she already begun to pay the price. She showed LL a Post-It note from Schwartz reading, “Shame on you.”

We’re headed into the final weekend. So who will have the biggest war chest to blow in the next five days?

According to reports filed earlier this week, Ward 2 incumbent Jack Evans has better than $184,000 in the bank; challenger Cary Silverman has but $3,440. Unopposed at-larger Kwame Brown has $144,000 in the bank. Republican at-large foes Carol Schwartz and Patrick Mara continue to duel; Mara’s spent more thus far, but Schwartz has more in the bank going forward.

But the fattest kitty belongs to Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser, who has been downright thrifty in her expenditures thus far. She has $224,000 banked.

WARD 2

Jack Evans
In: $20,596 ($605,324 total); Out: $48,672 ($420,718 total); Debts/Loans: $0; Cash on Hand: $184,606

The Skinny: Evans breaks the $600,000 mark on a ward council race. He did it with help from law firms Arnold & Porter and Arent Fox (and the latter’s client, D.C. United), developers Forest City Enterprises, and Shaw race-baiter Leroy Thorpe ($200), among many others. In most parts of the country, the state party apparatus raises money to give to its candidates, but not here: Evans gave a hefty $10,000 donation to the D.C. Democratic State Committee. Much of the rest went to canvassers, consultants, and newspaper ads. (That controversial Current spot apparently cost $1,827.)

Cary Silverman
In: $12,591 ($48,360 total); Out: $13,553 ($44,995 total); Debts/Loans: $10,000; Cash on Hand: $3,440

The Skinny: Silverman’s put together a nice little haul, garnering 83 mostly low-dollar-amount donors since Aug. 10. Silverman has also loaned $5,000 to pump up the campaign’s bottom line. Most of the cash has gone to printing and to direct-mail firm Paul & Partners of Dulles, Va.

Read More “LL Campaign Finance Roundup: The Final Weekend!” »

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.

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.

When running for political office, incumbency certainly has its benefits. You get your name in the paper all the time. You can send out newsletters on the public dime. You inevitably make deep-pocketed friends who donate to your campaign fund.

And, in Ward 7, you get to hold a “State of the Ward” speech.

Last night, that ward’s councilmember, Yvette Alexander, did just that in the vast expanses of the Kelly Miller Middle School auditorium, and damn if she didn’t do a good job of filling it up, attracting close to 300. (The turnout for her speech far outstripped the turnout for Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s state-of-the-District speech earlier this year, which was a low-key affair held in the cozy confines of a Ward 7 senior center.)

But here’s LL’s question: Was this simply an opportunity to inform her constituency, or, with the primary just over three months away, a campaign event in disguise?

Read More “State of Ward 7? Or Alexander Campaign Rally?” »

This afternoon, the D.C. Council’s public works and environment committee voted to strip $2 million meant to reconstruct Klingle Road NW from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s budget proposal. Furthermore, the committee voted to add language to budget legislation requiring the road to remain closed, effectively overturning a 2003 council vote to reopen the road.

For LL’s take on the whole sordid story and how it got to this point, read this.

Committee chair and Ward 1 councilmember Jim Graham supported spending the money, as did Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser. Ward 3’s Mary Cheh, Ward 7’s Yvette Alexander, and at-large member Kwame R. Brown opposed doing so. Ward 8’s Marion Barry, though not a committee member, also showed up to speak in support of keeping the road closed.

The full council is free to revisit the decision when the budget legislation moves forward next month.

Updates to come.

UPDATE, 3:50 P.M.: A subsequent amendment by Cheh moves the $2 million in local money to alley repairs and earmarks another $2 million out of the District’s federal funds for environmental remediation of Klingle Valley and construction of a recreation trail.

UPDATE, 4:17 P.M.: After the markup ended, Graham vowed to take the matter to the full council at the May 13 budget session. He also said he intends to hold a public “roundtable” on the Klingle issue in the two weeks interim. “I think there’s going to be a lot of discussion,” he says. During the hearing, Graham had proposed delaying any vote until such a roundtable could be held. Cheh & Co. voted it down; “The public had had ample time….I don’t know anything that’s been debated more than Klingle Road,” she said.

UPDATE, 7:30 P.M.: The Fenty response, from spokesperson Carrie Brooks: “The Mayor will defer to the judgment of the members of the Committee on Public Works and the Environment on this issue. Having served as a councilmember for six years, he certainly appreciates the legislature’s role in shaping the District’s budget.”

By now, you may have heard of the legal troubles of one James L. Walls Jr., the mayor of District Heights, Md., who was arrested for soliciting a male undercover cop for prostitution early Thursday morning.

Fun fact: Mere hours before Walls was arrested near Verizon Center, he had been hanging out with Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander at a community meeting in the Prince George’s County burg of Fairmount Heights, where Walls serves as town administrator.

What was Alexander doing across the District line? She had planned to attended a community meeting in her ward, but a scheduling snafu meant that didn’t happen. So she decided to check out the Fairmount Heights meeting and work on those interjurisdictional relations a bit. There, she met Walls.

LL learned of this when he ran into Alexander at the Wilson Building yesterday—before the Walls scandal broke. At that time, Alexander referred to Walls as “an amazing individual.”

When Alexander learned of Walls’ arrest later in the day, she called LL. “I can’t believe this!” she exclaimed between guffaws. “We were just talking about the prostitution on Eastern Avenue.”

LL inquired whether there were any outward signs that Walls might have been on the prowl. Says Alexander, “He had some fancy brown-and-white shoes on.”

Typically, the only time LL’s Thursday-afternoon strolls through the John A. Wilson Building even get a whiff of celebrity are the occasional Dan Tangherlini sighting in the mayoral bullpen. (Governance rock star, that guy!) But not this week.

Yesterday afternoon, distinguished Spanish tenor and Washington National Opera general director Plácido Domingo spent more than an hour roaming the building with a pair of WNO bigwigs in tow, as well as an official photographer. (Yes, LL had his picture taken with the maestro.) His rounds took him to the offices of most councilmembers.

A couple of members asked for a command performance from the tenor, including Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander and Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser, who rated his pipes as “excellent.”

Domingo treated Bowser and staff to a bit of Gounod’s “Ave Maria.” “We got a good taste, I think,” she said. Her chief of staff, Joy Holland, chimed in: “The first 10 bars, which is a good taste.”

So why exactly was Domingo roaming the Wilson Building halls? To ask for money, duh.

Later today, a panel of WNO bigwigs (not including Domingo) will appear before the council to make their case for a city subsidy. The mayor’s proposed list of budget earmarks leaves the opera out in the cold, even though such cultural organizations as the Washington Ballet ($1 million), Ford’s Theatre ($10 million), and the Ward 7 Arts Collaborative ($100,000) are currently in the money.

Domingo’s appeal played up the need for greater resources for arts-education programs. He then had to be rushed out to rehearse for his upcoming role in Handel’s Tamerlano.

Washington Post this morning reports that the Fenty administration has been a bit selective in dishing out coveted tickets to the Washington Nationals. Some D.C. councilmembers get ‘em, but Fenty leaves others off the list.

Those left on deck include At-Largers Phil Mendelson ,Carol Schwartz, and Kwame Brown. Not hard to figure out why those people would get stiffed, considering that they have shown little hesitancy to put a little water in the tank of the Fenty machine.

Another shunned councilmember: Ward 7 rep Yvette Alexander. What’s the deal here? Alexander hasn’t done much antagonizing of any sort since replacing Vincent Gray, who jumped from the Ward 7 seat to the council chairmanship in 2006.

So the verdict is this: Ticketgate is part petty pique and part disarray/incompetence. Right in line with a grand District tradition, in other words.

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” »

At-Large Councilmember Kwame R. Brown’s gotten a fair amount of attention for his campaign conveyance, a huge blue conversion van plastered with Kwame Brown-in-’08 decals.

Sorry, Kwame, you no longer are king of campaign transpo. Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander has you beat.

This monster was parked outside the Washington Senior Wellness Center this afternoon in advance of the mayor’s State of the District speech.

What the Yvettemobile lacks in sign dimensions is more than made up for by the sheer mass of its conveyance. Alexander’s campaign manager, Darryl Rose, says the pickup—made by semi-tractor manufacturer International—is all his. “It won’t be showing up on any campaign finance reports,” he says. The Alexander sign is magnetic and can easily attached and removed for campaign functions.

Rose showed off the remote-start function, and then LL climbed up—way up—into the cockpit to sample the truck’s leather seating and premium audio system (sample CD: Bobby Brown’s The Definitive Collection).

LL did not peek under the hood, but Rose vouches for the horsepower. “It’s got a tractor-trailer motor,” he says. “A big ole motor.”

“We’re just using it to help re-elect” Alexander, Rose says. “It gets a lot of attention.”

Joe Fengler is pissed. The member of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 6A, which serves Stanton Park, Lincoln Park, H Street NE, and other “East Hill” neighborhoods, is a strong proponent of the enhanced noise regulations that failed to proceed at a Tuesday D.C. Council meeting.

Perhaps the biggest reasons he’s pissed: Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander and At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown, both of whom had supported the noise bill in the past (Brown was a co-sponsor), voted to table the bill on Tuesday.

Incensed at the flip-flop, Fengler wrote in an e-mail to his ANC colleagues and councilmembers that he’s “personally prepared to debate the merits of this bill with Alexander and Brown in a public forum over the next three weeks.”

Oh snap! Full e-mail after the jump.

Read More “ANC Member “Personally Prepared to Debate” Noise-Bill Foes” »

Loose Lips queries D.C. Councilmembers about The Real Super Tuesday, the Potomac Primary on Feb. 12.