WASHINGTON — I doubt Tony Williams could get elected mayor of New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Philadelphia or Detroit or Atlanta or Boston or Baltimore. Any city where politics really matters wouldn’t have Tony Williams leading it.
This does not make him unlikable. A chief executive who’s comfortable enough in his skin to risk embarrassment at a black-tie dinner with a stiff version of the line dance known as "the booty call" — I watched this, I admire this — deserves some props. But rump-shaking aside, Washington’s mayor is to politics what ketchup is to filet mignon: a bad match.
With no noticeable political instincts, no political ear, no taste for political organizing, no political speechmaking skills to brag about, Williams is the quintessential un-politician, meaning he is perfect for D.C., the city with no meaningful ward organizations, no political bosses, no party apparatuses to groom talent, and a Congress that hovers — hidden and meddlesome — like the Wizard of Oz.
No wonder there’s such a thin crop of would-be mayors on the horizon. The gig is a steppingstone to nothing. Oh, sure, there will always be a few promising aspirants, the Kevin Chavouses and David Catanias and Adrian Fentys, City Council members who may or may not graduate one day. But for most with grand ambitions and the gifts to match, some with national stature and national contacts, District politics is not an inviting stage. You cannot become Dianne Feinstein here, which is to say you cannot leap from mayor of San Francisco to the U.S. Senate, and find yourself on vice presidential mention lists, and occasionally be urged to run for the White House. You cannot become James McGreevey, the onetime mayor of a little-known New Jersey municipality but now occupant of the governor’s mansion. D.C. has no governor’s mansion.
It is here, and only here among major urban destinations, that a Tony Williams could succeed — and succeed again, I’ll bet, despite some hilariously inept blunders. We are talking about an incumbent who had $1.4 million in the campaign bank and couldn’t manage the eighth-grade task of getting 2,000 legitimate signatures to qualify for his party’s primary ballot. We are talking about a mayor who paid his top campaign consultant, Charles Duncan, $10,000 a month to "consult, advise and recommend" in a race where Williams faced no serious opponent.
Here’s how Duncan described his duties before the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics: "I had no check-writing authority; no authority to hire or terminate key campaign personnel; no authority to independently select individuals to serve as ward coordinators; no authority to enter contracts for media, advertising, rental equipment or real estate; and no authority to enter agreements that would obligate the committee to expend money."
Some might ask: What exactly did the mayor’s adviser do for 10 grand a month? The campaign no longer employs Duncan — somebody had to take the fall — and Williams has moved on. In the days leading up to the Sept. 10 primary, the mayor is all over town apologizing for his mistakes, requesting forgiveness and seeking four more years as a write-in candidate.
Should Williams ultimately prevail, he’ll partly have Marion Barry to thank. Barry was mayor for 16 of the 28 years Washington voters have been electing mayors. Whatever you think of Barry, he knew something about politics. It was Barry’s excesses, however, that set the table for Williams, who was elected four years ago as a self-described nerd promising a "back to the basics" reign of efficient government and financial stability. Not politics as usual, not politics at all.
"He was the anti-Barry," says Eric Holder, the former U.S. deputy attorney general who’s been courted to run for mayor himself. Whatever you think of the job Williams has done, he’s still the guy who ain’t Barry.
Holder, now an attorney in private practice, suggests the 2006 mayoral race will be the one to watch. By then, Barry’s long shadow will have finally faded and new leaders can emerge to test one another in a "more normal" election environment, as he puts it. I ask him whether he might be a candidate then — or someday — himself. "I don’t know, we’ll have to see," he says. "Possibly."
In the interim, we have Williams to watch, a sitting mayor in a Democratic city, forced to work overtime just to win a primary that was hardly worth writing about before.
"I think the only lesson is you should pay attention," counsels former D.C. mayor Walter Washington. "You can’t get too busy."
Too busy for politics.
Kevin Merida’s e-mail address is meridak@washpost.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
