Quotes of the Day
Maybe all politics isn't local after all.
In the middle of the election-crazed capital in a crazy election season, one contest close to home passed relatively quietly in official Washington this week while political junkies focused on key races in Rhode Island, Maryland and Arizona.
D.C. Democrats all but guaranteed that the young BlackBerry-wielding, triathlon-running Councilman Adrian Fenty would win election as mayor in November, by nominating him Tuesday night as the party's candidate in a city that went 89% for John Kerry in 2004. This isn't your standard primary, where only the most motivated voters come out to the polls; it's the only election that matters.
But turnout Tuesday was lower than expected, despite the interest and a watershed opportunity created by Mayor Anthony Williams' stepping down after eight years on the job. Just over 32% of D.C. voters bothered to show up at polling places Tuesday. And unlike in neighboring, affluent Montgomery County, Md., where a series of screwups left voters writing their choices down on blank paper for officials to collect and count later, there were no long lines or busted machines keeping people away. Preliminary statistics show overall turnout in D.C. was actually lower this year than in 2002, when the incumbent Williams ran without serious opposition and had to organize a write-in campaign after he failed to produce enough nominating petitions to get on the ballot ahead of time.
That might not be surprising in some places, but this is Washington, D.C., where wags have even figured out a way to turn the beloved Redskins into a tool for predicting presidential elections (if they lose their last home game before Election Day, that's a bad sign for the party in power — so with the GOP extra-nervous this year, expect Republicans to be Dallas Cowboys fans on Nov. 5 even though it's only a midterm). Both the mayor's race and the campaign for D.C. Council chair featured multiple contenders for open seats, and candidates dumped enough money on TV ads and mailers that few could argue they didn't know the election was happening.
With a population of 550,000, most of the city's residents have nothing to do with the business of campaigns and elections, but there are still more than enough Hill staffers, ambitious young administration officials, lobbyists, think-tank workers and political reporters living here because of their devotion to civic life that you'd expect turnout to be heavy. The local alternative weekly even wrote up a "Hill Staffer's Guide" for the local election. Yet the national politicos seem to have tuned it out. ABC's super-insidery blog The Note relegated the D.C. results to its second page and only linked to one piece of coverage. Even the Democratic National Committee barely mentioned Fenty's win, and this is a year when both political parties are so eager to claim momentum that they trumpet every victory with celebratory press releases. So why is all the attention heading outside the Beltway?
For one thing, Republicans— the controlling portion of the political class for years now — had almost nothing to vote for. The party didn't even have any candidates running in two statewide races and two ward elections. Only 7.7% of D.C. Republicans turned out Tuesday, dragging down the overall figure (Democrats saw about 35% turnout, while the tiny Statehood Green Party got 10% of its 5,000 voters out).
Also, many of the politically obsessed types who move here for work keep closer ties elsewhere than they do in Washington. Hill aides can vote in their home states — as anyone who's seen out-of-state license plates around town knows, many even keep their cars registered elsewhere, to avoid D.C.'s high car taxes and insurance rates. Fan clubs from just about city in the country gather on fall weekends at bars around town to root for their football teams, ignoring the local favorites. Career operatives who clear out every two years to work on campaigns just register to vote wherever they wind up living in November — the better to help ensure victory for the boss. For a company town, Washington is still pretty transient.
There might not be enough juice in District politics to get national buzz, even when the mayor's office is only a few blocks from the White House. The city's only federal elected office is the non-voting delegate to the House, and some of the biggest news incumbent Eleanor Holmes Norton (unchallenged by local Republicans this fall) has made in 16 years in office was when she called Stephen Colbert vanilla in July. The National Governors Association doesn't let D.C.'s top executive join, even though its annual meetings are held across the street from city hall. In official Washington's clout-counting hierarchy, where lobbyists can seem more glamorous than lawmakers, a municipal election without the chance to move up the ladder doesn't mean much. You just can't get very far in national politics if Washington is your base, and in that Washington, that may be what counts most.
—Mike Madden (mike_madden@mac.com) covers government and politics for Gannett News Service.
- MIKE MADDEN/WASHINGTON
- Why D.C.'s turnout is so low, even when the district is choosing its likely next mayor