The re-elect Anthony Williams signs went up this week in my Northwest Washington neighborhood. The Democratic primary is on Sept. 10, and in this heavily Democratic city, it’s the ticket to victory in November. All Williams needed were 2,000 signatures to secure his place on the ballot. Surely the man known as “Mr. Detail,” who never met a number he didn’t like, could handle the most basic element of grass-roots politics?
Imagine the surprise when residents of the District learned that the petitions submitted by Williams contained such notables as Kofi Annan and Bruce Springsteen. While we would welcome them as neighbors, it didn’t take long to realize that these were phony signatures. The joke machine about the city went into high gear, and Williams reacted like it was an imposition to expect him to gather names like an ordinary politician. After contracting out this mundane political task for a dollar a signature, he initially resisted taking responsibility for the unfortunate outcome. The D.C. election board fined Williams $250,000, the largest penalty ever imposed, though well short of the $1.1 million it could have levied because there was no evidence Williams was actively involved in the fraud. He had just looked the other way.
In Washington, how you handle an embarrassing incident sometimes has more impact than the event itself. Williams’s high-and-mighty reaction enraged voters more than his initial blunder. Some of my neighbors who supported him four years ago are threatening to stay home and not vote on Election Day. I, for one, have been toying with writing in the mayor of my dreams–maybe Kofi Annan or Bruce Springsteen.
It took a while for Williams to get contrite. Now he’s running scared. Practicing tough love, the D.C. election board denied Williams a place on the ballot as a Democrat, forcing him to run a write-in campaign. And the rules they’ve imposed are exacting. They’ll accept Tony, Anthony or Anthony A., but only if one of the three is coupled with Williams and voters draw an unbroken line to the arrow indicating a voter’s choice. The District doesn’t need images like those during the Florida vote count of Campaign 2000, where local officials had to pore over ballots to determine voter intent. Much of the $1 million Williams has raised in campaign cash will have to go for voter education.
And Williams’s problems don’t stop there. Where he once had a cakewalk to reelection, he now has a serious opponent in the Rev. Willie Wilson, a Baptist minister whose 7,500-member church is a model of social responsibility to the surrounding community. Both candidates are black, but the fiery preacher’s presence in the race exposes the divide in the city between the well-heeled elite of lawyers, lobbyists and, yes, talking heads, and the poorer areas, where people feel disenfranchised and angry because their neighborhood isn’t benefiting from any kind of revitalization. The statistics show that Williams has made improvements. There’s less crime, more jobs and more businesses staying open in the city. But decades under the thumb of Congress have left residual resentment that Williams, a darling of Congress and a favorite of the largely white professional class, has not been able to dent.
I’m afraid there is an ugly race ahead. Race and poverty are so intertwined that to pull them apart is impossible. A neighbor of mine said she hoped Williams concentrates on the wards in the city “where people can spell.” The whiter, wealthier wards will support Williams; the downtrodden and poorer neighborhoods will back Wilson, who is former mayor Barry’s minister. Barry maintains an emotional hold over the city’s black voters, who identify with his anti-establishment style and believe he was the victim of government entrapment. Barry did little for the poorest wards, but they love him anyway. It’s a matter of style. And playing kingmaker gets Barry back in the game. “He’s like a moth to the fire,” says a local Democrat. “He can’t stay away.”
With or without Barry’s open support, Wilson is a formidable candidate in the uncertain climate of a write-in campaign. “You’ll never see him use race, but it’s out there and that’s the great tragedy,” says a local official. Wilson is capable of demagoguery and will do well among African-American voters who have never warmed to Williams. The contest is shaping up as a battle between the haves and the have-nots, with racial tension just beneath the surface.
Williams prides himself on not being a politician, but politics in America is democracy. His supporters would have gladly gathered those signatures if only he had asked. “He’s told me he’s embarrassed by this,” says Republican Joe Knollenberg, who chairs the House Subcommittee on the District of Columbia. “But he’s still the very best person to lead the city. I’d be very disappointed if he did not win. Since he’s been there, there have been more requests from members to increase funding for the city. I don’t think that kind of support would be there if just anyone popped up as a contender. It’s largely due to the respect that he has as a leader.” District Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton agrees. “I do not expect the mayor’s problems in the campaign to have any effect in the Congress, which is likely to judge him by specific issues and improvements in the city.”
Aloof from politics and aloof from people, Williams would be happier, says a colleague, if he were still the city’s chief financial officer, the position he held during the last years of the Barry administration. “If there are more than 10 people in a room, he starts shifting around and getting nervous. He didn’t want to campaign, and that’s one of the ugly sides of American politics. You have to campaign all the time.” Now the reticent Williams is running around the city, shaking hands in restaurants and joining pick-up basketball games in local gyms. Even at the exclusive fitness club where he works out each morning, he has abandoned his usual blank look and now exchanges greetings in the locker room. Mr. Detail is behaving like a politician. And that’s not all bad.
