Orange
We will have a colorful city council next year with Vincent Gray and Kwame Brown coming on board. They will add to the Orange and Schwartz (black) we already have. Maybe next election season we can get someone named White, Gold, Rosa, Gelb, or Azul to run. Anyway I joke.
TheWashington City Paper's Loose Lips reported Ward 5 councilman Vincent Orange's investigation into running for mayor. Not to be discouraging but you can run for mayor, I just don't think you can win. Not that Tony Williams is a wonderful catch. So far William's main good points is that he's never been caught smoking crack on camera, the city is financially stable, and he has the personality of a dead cat. However, when I mention who my ward councilmember is, I get blank stares. Orange who?
I can't tell you how annoyed I was when I discovered I had moved to the wrong side of New Jersey Avenue, out of Ward 2 and into Ward 5. In the one year I lived in Logan Circle I saw Jack Evans a dozen or so times. I knew who he was. I moved to Truxton Circle a year later and ..... Orange who? And it wasn't a matter of knowing Evans because I had lived in his ward, but that helped. I knew who Jim Graham was and a little bit about how he served his ward and the city as a whole. Currently I'm slightly annoyed with Graham for being another non-metro taking Metro boardmember, but whatever..... Adrian Fenty, I know more about Adrian Fenty than I do my own councilman. Fenty is my hero right now for banning single sales of beer in his ward. He's also a damned good looking man. Too sexy I say, too sex-ey. If anyone should have a snowball chance in Hell for running and winning the mayoral slot it would be Fenty (hubba-hubba).
As I said Tony Williams has the overall warmth and charm of a dead cat. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Heck I'll even forgive him of the AADD he seems to have, with the zoning out and what not. So far the dead cat serves me well. The city is getting to be more of a place I want to live and shop. The city is becoming more of a center for the DC metro area, rather than some big rotted cavity between VA and MD. Housing prices are still high despite crappy schools. So anyone wanting to replace Tony will have to show me that he (or she) will keep the advancements the city has made in the last few years and not embarrass the city in such a way that it endangers the slow creep to Congressional representation.
posted by Mari @ 10.12.04
2 Comments:
I think you need to think about the root of improvements in DC. Was it leadership by Williams, or was it by Williams not being thoroughly incompetent during a time when other factors helped? Williams's "success" is due to a simple thing: there's a housing shortage in the DC area, so home values skyrocketed, and with that came lots of revenues from property taxes. Once that ends, you're back to the basic problem that DC's current financing does not work and the city is screwed again.
Williams has made only the most minimal progress on improving city operations since his first year in office, has pushed the incredibly stupid financing scheme for the baseball stadium, has spent a large chunk of his time out of the city, and is generally out of touch with the people who live in the city. He's also willing to foist things like school vouchers onto the city to cozy up to the Bush administration. He's a pretty rotten mayor; I don't think DC could do any worse with any other non-crack smoking non-incompetent mayor, and you might actually get a leader for the city.
I love your blog. :-)
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