Alan Roth: For Mendelson and others, ‘winning ugly’ will reverberate harshly
At first glance, DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson may appear to have achieved a complete victory last week in his efforts to maintain or even maximize control of the legislature. Despite strong objections from several colleagues, Mendelson passed his committee reorganization plan; defeated an effort to strip Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans of his committee assignments; enabled Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) board member Corbett Price to keep his seat despite Price’s lies about Metro’s investigation of Evans; limited the scope of the council’s own investigation; and got a sole-source sports gambling contract approved. With some of these measures approved by a one-vote margin, Mendelson obviously counted votes carefully.
Some may be tempted to see these votes purely as a split between the council’s left-leaning and more moderate members. But the voters who decide the outcome of almost every major elected office in the District — those who turn out in the Democratic primaries — are more discerning than that. Whether they are ultra-progressives, centrists, or somewhere in between, the vast majority have no use for corrupt politicians and those perceived as coddling them.
It would be a mistake, therefore, to view last Tuesday’s council meeting in isolation. Mendelson won several battles, but he may have lost the war for the hearts and minds of his political base. Despite protestations to the contrary, Mendelson is widely viewed as buying votes for the gambling bill with the spoils that came from dissolving Evans’ Finance and Revenue Committee while simultaneously protecting the Ward 2 lawmaker from serious discipline over accusations of influence-peddling.
Evans will continue to serve on Ward 5 Council member Kenyan McDuffie’s Business and Economic Development Committee, which took over virtually all of Evans’ tax and finance jurisdiction. There, Evans will continue rubbing elbows with the very same special interests who propped up his career while he chaired the Finance and Revenue Committee — relationships and connections he touted while pitching at least two law firms on the business he could bring them as a partner.
McDuffie and Evans returned the favor by voting with Mendelson up and down the line for the entire day. And at-large Council member Robert White similarly stuck to the Mendelson playbook on key votes after picking up authority over Metro from Evans’ disbanded committee (except for one feel-good vote to strip Evans of his other committee assignments, rendered meaningless because Mendelson defeated the item on a 6-6 tie by failing to press the obviously conflicted Evans to recuse himself). Ward 4 Council member Brandon Todd typically does what he’s told by Mayor Muriel Bowser, who was supportive of Evans until she was belatedly against him. Predictably, Todd allowed Mendelson to facilitate Evans’ continued committee service despite the evidence arrayed against him.
Mendelson repeatedly deflected but never denied accusations of vote-trading to get his way. Were an elected official’s ethics not the central issue at hand, this sort of legislative log-rolling would be neither surprising nor even necessarily objectionable. But had Mendelson not been so determined to protect Evans, or to punish those council members he finds annoying, there were many ways he could have preserved his own and the council’s integrity while still winning with grace.
For example, he could have retained the Finance and Revenue Committee and offered that chair to McDuffie together with the tax abatement jurisdiction he’d previously stripped from Evans — a real plum. (We demand statehood, but few if any state legislatures lack a committee dedicated specifically to the function of taxation.) The chairmanship of the Business and Economic Development Committee could then have been given to another council member.
If Mendelson wanted to give Council member Robert White more of a hand in WMATA’s business, he could have cited the Metro board’s ethics findings to kick Evans off Mary Cheh’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment, where WMATA logically belongs, and given Evans’ seat to White, while beefing up White’s Facilities and Procurement Committee with Events DC and Destination DC. Both of those sat in Finance and Revenue only on account of Evans’ megalomania.
Mendelson’s success last week, however, conjured up the term “winning ugly.”
Primary voters have long memories. Looking ahead to 2022, if Mendelson and McDuffie seek re-election or higher office, each will be remembered for going out of his way to protect Evans in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing — and in McDuffie’s case, of feathering his own nest in the process. In next June’s Democratic primary, highly motivated voters will hear Brandon Todd’s deafening silence and seek a more active, ethical voice for Ward 4. And Robert White will have to justify his flip-flop on the gambling bill after Mendelson handed him WMATA. All in all, last Tuesday’s only winner was Ward 8 Council member Trayon White, who was absent to welcome a new baby into the world.
Alan Roth is a former chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1C (Adams Morgan). He also served from 2007 to 2016 on the DC Water and Sewer Authority Board of Directors.
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This sums up the mess the council made last Tuesday very neatly, and I especially appreciate the point about the Chairman not urging CM Evans to recuse himself from voting on the amendment to strip him of all committee assignments. That is like a criminal suspect being given the right to participate in making the rules by which his case will be handled and was a conflict of interest being enacted right before the public’s eyes.
I would add too that in his insistence to get his way that CM Evans would not be punished for wrongs that had not yet been proven conclusively , the Chairman wound up punishing the people’s legislative body by dismantling the Finance and Revenue Committee and scattering its oversight hither and yon so that it will be even harder now for the Council and the public to know what decisions are being made.
I concur with all of the substantive points made here. But the concluding sentence, as adroit as it may read, does not properly credit the Council members who cast ethical votes over a long unsavory session.
Andrea, thank you for your comment. I certainly didn’t mean to take anything away from the five CMs who consistently stood up last week for holding Jack Evans accountable. Unfortunately, they didn’t win a single vote. I hold Chairman Mendelson largely responsible for that, although the others I mentioned share much of the blame – as does CM Anita Bonds, who subsequent to my writing this piece was quoted as turning these votes into some sort of bizarre loyalty test.
I think the world of CM Mendelson but I am so very very disappointed in this whole cabal. Jack Evans is not worth selling your politically ambitious soul.