August is a slow month in politics. This column is normally a space to explore the latest in D.C. politics, but political season doesn’t begin for another few weeks. Thus, in lieu of our normal helping of city council gossip, speculation on Metropolitan Police tactics or expos?s of federal government boondoggles, City on the Hill is dishing out the cardinal rules of D.C. politics.
Everyone is running for Mayor but Jack Evans (and Jack Evans is running for Mayor): If you have any position at all in city government, you’re running for mayor. Georgetown’s Councilmember Jack Evans (D-District 2) considered running but dropped the idea to retain chairmanship of the Finance Committee. It isn’t hard to imagine that he’d still run if he saw an opening, though. Virtually every councilmember has hinted at it or flirted with it, but so have local lawyers and boxing commissioners. This is because, of course…
Anyone can be Mayor of the District: There have only been four mayors in the District’s history (it didn’t win home rule until 1974): a corporate lawyer, a pioneering civil rights leader, a felony drug user and a glorified accountant. Current Mayor Tony Williams has a blog on par with that of your average depressed teenager, replete with Star Wars references and guilty notes about forgetting to post. With that benchmark, why not go for it?
You can’t win unless you’re a Democrat: In a city where 74% of the electorate is registered Democratic, it’s hard to win unless you have a (D) next to your name – and any®s that win are so iconoclastic that they’ll drop out of the party sooner or later, viz. our very own alumni David Catania (I-At Large).
You can’t win if you’re a Democrat: Because the Republican-dominated Congress has a veto on virtually all city spending, our democratic mayor and city council have to play nice. It also means that ambitious members of congress are always using D.C. as their public policy playground – Congress’ many attempts to end the city’s wildly popular ban on assault weapons, for example.
Though we didn’t get to the more specific rules (there will always be money for business development; there will never be money for schools; Marion Barry can do whatever he wants), keeping these four generalizations in mind will make understanding of the Byzantine world of D.C. government that much easier.
A final note: Georgetown Councilmember Jack Evans has begun releasing weekly podcasts that give C-SPAN a run for their boredom money. Kudos to the councilmember, though, for his efforts to use new technology to his advantage and to keep constituents in the loop. The budget isn’t the most exciting topic of audio discussion, though – let’s see council firebrands Catania or Adrian Fenty (D-Ward 4) on the airwaves complaining about Nationals’ stadium.
For now, with the Mayor blogging and Evans issuing podcasts, I fully expect a Catania webcam within the week.
