This week's Post article about the rosy outlook for D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on the eve of her 2018 reelection campaign sent me rushing to the archives for a column I wrote in May 2009 about then-Mayor Adrian Fenty's reelection prospects in the lead-up to the Sept. 14, 2010, Democratic primary. Now I am trying to shake the sense of having lived through something like this before.
According to a new Post poll, Bowser enjoys a 67 percent voter approval rating, suggesting she is far and away the favorite among the possible seekers of her current job. She also seems to be on top of the issues that mean most to voters.
But so was Fenty at a similar stage in his first, and last, term as mayor.
He was, in fact, in better shape.
Fenty had a $2 million reelection campaign kitty and a donor list to make mayoral wannabes weep with envy.
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Business interests, lobbyists and developers were falling over themselves to find favor with His Honor. No serious opponents loomed.
Follow this authorColbert I. King's opinionsHe was heading into a reelection bid on the strength of a winning track record, having crushed mayoral front-runner and then-council chairman Linda W. Cropp and capturing all 142 precincts in the 2006 Democratic mayoral campaign.
He continued to work the crowds, leaving no voter’s hand unshaken, no photo op unexploited. Every D.C. government good deed came with a credit-taking Fenty news release.
As with Bowser today, Fenty in 2009 was riding high.
Yet on Primary Day 2010, he was brought low.
Can history repeat itself?
To state the obvious, Muriel Bowser is not Adrian Fenty.
True, Bowser is described in some D.C. political circles as “Fenty Lite.” That labeling stems from the fact that so much of Bowser’s political fundraising and campaign infrastructure — as well as key Bowser administration staffers — appear to have been passed down from Fenty.
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So, too, Fenty’s persona?
Some of the haughtiness that crept into Fenty’s bearing after a year as mayor seems to be present in Bowser’s demeanor. A cloak of self-importance seems to have enveloped her, as it did Fenty. A glimpse of his scorn for the media is detected in her. A fawning staff, also carefully cultivated by Fenty, keeps Bowser’s company.
The trappings of his job may have caused Fenty to lose his bearings. But it was his governance and optics that got him off the rails.
He elevated dog parks and bike lanes above needs deemed more essential by many African American Democrats. He left himself open to charges of steering contracts to his fraternity brothers — an allegation that caused me personal anguish since Fenty and I are members of the same fraternity. I was, as with so much in this life, well before his time. But that's another story.
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He made hiring decisions that were spectacularly bad, and he refused to consider the possibility that Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee wasn't always right.
His abrasive style, and aloofness from the people who put him where he was, proved costly. By the time 2010 arrived, his poll numbers were significantly under water.
And Bowser?
To start: Folks still underestimate her. She is an astute, hard-working and canny politician.
But Bowser operates with a keen sense of peril, knowing that only a handful of folks — her mom, Joan Bowser (my junior high school classmate and one of the city’s savviest political observers), her dad, Joe, brother and a few close friends who have passed the test of time — have her best interests at heart.
The rest are opportunists, and straphangers, along for the ride, who will run to the nearest exit at the first sign of trouble.
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And hence the flaw that Bowser shares with Fenty:
They begin to think they are the smartest persons in the room, and that they can control what happens next.
He couldn’t and didn’t. She can’t and won’t.
Go back to her glowing poll numbers.
Look closely at where Bowser gets whacked: on combating homelessness and curbing the influence of wealthy political donors. Unrelated? Hardly.
They go to the heart of what some voters find troubling about Bowser: She doesn’t manage, she presides, choosing to float above it all, rather than drilling down to learn what is or isn’t working and why.
Her administration’s talking points on homelessness suggest everything is hunky-dory. Folks on the ground know better. Putting roofs over heads is not the same as getting people on the way to self-sufficiency. You can’t learn that from the mayor’s suite, or do anything about it from there, either.
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So go fight the problem of rodents, while deeply entrenched contract steering, pay to play, preferential treatment — the ugly stuff of city government — continues. It stinks to high heaven. It's a stench that should penetrate the executive's office.
But not if the mayor is above it all, as was Fenty when the roof fell in.
Deja vu? How do you do?
Read more from Colbert King's archive.
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