jonetta rose barras: Mary Cheh as chief nanny and antagonist

While reprising her role as the DC Council’s nanny-in-chief and attempting to twist the arms of her colleagues to win passage of a so-called soda tax, Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh resorted to an old pattern of behavior: sullying the reputation of segments of the business community and casting aspersion on the integrity of opponents, including Council Chairman Pro Tempore Kenyan McDuffie.

“He is comfortable carrying the water for large corporations,” Cheh told the Washington City Paper, following a budget discussion during which McDuffie renewed his opposition to Cheh’s attempt to impose an additional 1 percent tax on sales of sodas and other so-called sugary drinks. That would increase the tax on such beverages from 7 percent to 8 percent. Cheh wants to use revenues from the tax increase to cover the cost of nutritional programs that Mayor Muriel Bowser didn’t fund in her budget.

Cheh made that proposal from her perch as chair of the council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment. However, according to council rules, tax proposals are under the purview of the Committee on Finance and Revenue, which Ward 2’s Jack Evans chairs. McDuffie, Evans and DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson objected to Cheh’s end-run around those rules, though they ultimately went along with it.

“My issue was jurisdictional,” Evans told me, echoing the point made by others who all expressed support for the nutritional programs. “You can’t raise taxes to cover spending in a committee on transportation.”  

Despite criticism from multiple council members, Cheh zoomed in on McDuffie and injected race and class into the conversation about the soda tax. During last week’s budget work session she challenged McDuffie’s opposition to her proposal by hoisting the racial equity bill he introduced; Cheh is the only council member who did not sign on to that legislation. By raising the topic, she suggested hypocrisy by others and a superiority in her position, since the soda-tax revenue, she said, would truly be “helping people, low-income people, and poor children.”

“I hear a lot of talk in this body about racial equity. Here’s equity staring you right in the face,” Cheh told the City Paper afterward. “Are you going to stand up for ‘Big Soda’ on the one hand or nutrition for poor kids?”

She acknowledged to City Paper that she hadn’t seen McDuffie meeting with soda lobbyists and lacked any proof he was acting as a pawn for that industry. “I’m projecting because I know his behavior,” Cheh said.

“Offensive” was how McDuffie described Cheh’s comments in an interview with me. “The ad hominem attack is designed to distract people from the issue.”  

Multiple studies have called sales taxes regressive. Generally, low-income and poor people are hit hardest. What’s more, “Taxes rarely affect behavior,” Mendelson said during an appearance last week on WAMU radio’s Politics Hour With Kojo Nnamdi after veteran reporter Tom Sherwood raised this issue. Even if consumption is reduced, it may not have the effect some anti-soda proponents hope. Obesity is a very complicated issue that can involve hereditary traits.

Those facts and even the chairman’s objection to tax increases ultimately were of no consequence. The legislature gave preliminary approval on Tuesday to the so-called soda tax, without any discussion aside from general statements by Mendelson and others expressing concern about tax increases that come up late in the budget process.

Prior to that vote, however, residents and government officials with whom I spoke raised concerns about Cheh’s comments and her general approach for advocating her ideas. Ward 5 civic leader Robert Vinson Brannum defended McDuffie and demanded an apology from Cheh for her comments during the budget work session.

“Council member McDuffie is a water carrier for the people of Ward 5 and by extension all the people of the District of Columbia. He has integrity and has introduced legislation that proves that,” Brannum said.

“Council member Cheh was out of place, and she should apologize to him and the residents of Ward 5,” he added.

I asked Cheh to explain what she meant, hoping she would take the opportunity to reconstruct her statements while addressing suggestions by some that the dust-up with McDuffie is yet another instance where she has tossed accusations and unwarranted assaults at individuals and businesses. In several instances, I pointed out, these targets have been firms owned by people of color.

“It is clear to me that you are manufacturing content to make your blog provocative, and I will not dignify your self-serving speculations with any further response,” Cheh replied to me via email.

I have covered the District for more than 25 years. People who know my work know I am no racialist; I don’t assess the merit of any proposal or politician through the prism of race, ethnicity or gender. I don’t see racism in every oppositional episode involving persons of color and white people.

However, with President Donald J. Trump in the White House, I have become acutely aware of how seeds of derision can be planted and fertilized. I have become alarmed by the overall decline of American society, hastened by reckless speech and thoughtless actions by self-absorbed politicians on a national level. This has seemingly trickled down to the local sphere. These observations have strengthened my belief that elected officials and civic leaders have a critical role in guiding citizens toward a path of common ground; they must be called out and held accountable when they do otherwise.

On WAMU, Sherwood asked Mendelson whether he was troubled by the racial overtones of the soda tax conversation. “I think you’re reading too much into the disagreement,” said Mendelson. “They are policy disagreements.”

Except, as some people have asserted, Cheh has previously thrown around suggestions of wrongdoing by others a bit too easily. Consider for example that without any proof, she implied something was awry in the awarding of the homeless food service contract to Henry’s Soul Café instead of her preferred vendor, the nonprofit DC Central Kitchen; she asked DC Attorney General Karl Racine to investigate. However, several parties directly involved — Ward 1 Council member Brianne Nadeau, who has oversight of homeless programs; Laura Zeilinger, director of the Department of Human Services; and Sue Marshall, head of The Community Partnership, which awarded the contract — disputed Cheh’s claims and innuendos, as Washington Post columnist Colbert King explained in a recent column.

Cheh has also repeatedly attempted to taint Fort Myer Construction Corp., a Hispanic-founded business, implying it is illegally winning government contracts. During recent budget deliberations in her committee, she sought to change the certified business enterprises preference point. She described this as an effort to ensure competition and encourage the growth of new companies, but the effect would be to steer future contracts away from Fort Myer, a reputable company that has done work for Maryland and Virginia governments (disclosure: my nonprofit has received modest donations from Fort Myer). McDuffie, Evans and Ward 4 Council member Brandon Todd voted against Cheh’s plan, though she brought it up again at last week’s budget work session to no avail.

Cheh subsequently painted McDuffie as what amounts to Big Soda’s delivery boy. “I know how he comes out in favor of these large corporations. I don’t know why,” she said of the two-term Ward 5 legislator, according to City Paper’s report.

That sound you hear is Cheh seething.

In January, when Mendelson assigned committee chairmanships, Cheh made three failed attempts to have the Public Service Commission placed in her committee, removing it from McDuffie’s Committee on Business and Economic Development. She was upset McDuffie voted for the Pepco/Exelon merger and was on a campaign to prevent certain individuals from being named to the commission by Mayor Bowser.

Cheh doesn’t like losing. Who does?

This time she may have won, securing the soda tax hike she has sought since 2010. But at what cost to the relationship with one of her colleagues and the unflattering portrait of herself she painted?

As a veteran council member and a constitutional law professor, Cheh should be more adept at compromising after a loss and selling her proposals without resorting to personal attacks. Impassioned advocacy might be appropriate in the courtroom but ultimately could have adverse consequences for a politician.

Even when we respect an elected official, as I do Cheh, we should not shy away from demanding that they behave with civility in the public square, providing an example through their discourse and actions of how we, as average citizens, should work together to achieve the best for ourselves and for our community.

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jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.