As the mayoral campaign between Washington, D.C.'s top two Democratic candidates — Adrian Fenty and Vince Gray — heads into its last weeks, TBD will be tracking away. Herewith, all the controversy, debates, forums, issues, endorsements, statistics and killer quotes we can muster. This is the archive of the first day of the tracker. See today's coverage here.

Continue reading

Monday, Aug 23, 8:26 p.m.

There are a number of baffling things about the mayor's no-show tonight. A short list (sorry, @jennyismsTBD!):

• Ward 5 is one of the most strongly contested parts of the city. According to the Clarus poll released last week, Fenty and Gray are even — with 37 percent support each — in Wards 1, 4 and 5. Fenty's campaign has made a point of arguing that straw polls are relatively meaningless, but until this point, they've never totally conceded one.
• There were multiple sno-cone machines. There was a Vincent Orange-supplied moon bounce. There was no mayor. 
• Even without one of the campaigns trying to get out the vote, turnout was still strong. There was a steady line of people working their way through Michigan Park Christian Church from 6 p.m., when voting opened, until around 8 p.m. or so. (Voters must be in line by 8:30 to cast their ballots.)

— @kevinrobillard

Monday, Aug. 23, 7:34 p.m.

Where is Adrian Fenty?

Not at the straw poll and endorsement in Ward 5 on Monday night.

D.C.'s mayor is a no-show at the event at Michigan Park Christian Church in Northeast D.C., as is his campaign operation. There were no green Fenty signs, Fenty volunteers or stacks of Fenty literature to be seen.

"Basically, we were never contacted by the organization, invited to the event ... So we're not participating," said Fenty campaign spokesman Sean Madigan, who also cited short notice of the event. (According to tweets, Fenty was canvassing in Eckington during at least some of the event.)

Fenty's absence confused the mayor's main challenger in the upcoming primary, Vince Gray, who spoke with reporters outside the church.

"What do you mean he wasn't invited? Gray said. "You don't need to be invited, you just show up."

Ward 5 Democrats Chairperson Angel Alston said it was "not true" the Fenty campaign wasn't invited. She showed a reporter a text message sent earlier in the day to a Fenty campaign staffer, and also promised to forward an e-mailed invitation that was sent to all the Democratic mayoral candidates.

Robert Vinson Brannum, first vice chairman of the Ward 5 Democrats and a Gray supporter, says he believes the candidates were given "timely" notice of Monday's straw poll.

"We told all the candidates what was going on tonight," he said."They were aware and he decided, or his campaign decided, not to have a presence."

— @slarimer, @kevinrobillard

Monday, Aug. 23, 6:33 p.m.

D.C. Council Chairman Vince Gray is expected to release the details of his public safety plan on Tuesday afternoon, according to a news release from the Gray campaign.

Gray has already released education and economic development plans.

— @slarimer

Monday, Aug. 23, 4:54 p.m.

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty is in the midst of his Apology Tour Extravaganza©, promising voters he’ll be more inclusive if elected to another term. On Monday, however, when pressed to list specific incidents that he personally believed could have been better handled during his tenure, he didn’t.

Fenty was repeatedly asked to name incidents that he believed his office should have dealt with differently. He instead said voters weren’t bothered by individual occurrences and were seeking a basic reassurance that they would be heard.

“I don’t think the citizens are saying this is about one time or the other time,” Fenty said. “In fact, I know they’re not. Because I ask them, I say, ‘OK, you want to give me some specifics?’ And they say, ‘To be honest with you Mayor Fenty, it’s not about any one particular time.’”

The mayor probably could have referenced a bungled non-meeting with civil rights leader Dorothy Height and poet Maya Angelou. Or his noted absence at services for victims of the 2009 Metro crash. Both incidents were mentioned in a recent Washington Post story about Fenty’s more contrite campaign.

“Whatever the decision is, (residents) want to know that my administration heard their concerns, that they were listened to and that at the end of the day, we took into account their decisions, even if we don’t ultimately agree with them,” Fenty said. “Citizens are very intuitive. They know you can’t agree with them every time. But you can be listened to every time.”

In the past few weeks, Fenty has said that he’ll change his style. In a campaign ad released earlier this month, the mayor tells viewers: "Like anyone else, I've made my share of mistakes. Going forward, I’ll learn from them and be more inclusive, which will make me a better mayor. What I will never do is go back to the ways of the past."

Fenty, who spoke to reporters after touring J.O. Wilson Elementary School in Northeast D.C., called questions about his inclusiveness a “top issue for D.C. voters.”

“Results are important, results are in many ways the bottom line,” Fenty said. “But making sure that people are heard and listened to has got to be important as well. And I’ll do a better job of that going forward.”

— @slarimer

Monday, Aug. 23, 4:03 p.m.

Fenty spokesman Attorney General Peter Nickles broke a somewhat odd period of media silence today with an appearance on TBD NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt. During his appearance, Nickles didn't appear ready to join incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty's Apology Tour Extravaganza©, as The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis wrote.

In an interview after his appearance, we asked Nickles if he felt the mayor needed to apologize for anything. His response? "I think the mayor feels he needs to make an extra effort to be inclusive," Nickles said. "I think the agenda he had, particularly the schools, preoccupied him so much that he forgot to look left and right."

Does Nickles need to stop and "look left and right?" The attorney general said his years of suing the city on behalf of the mentally ill, female prisoners and other aggrieved groups during the 1980s and 1990s taught him not to wait.

"If I had permitted myself to get bogged down in process, I never would have gotten the reforms," he said. "With me, if I should change and not pursue some of these people who are hurting our citizens, I don't buy that argument."

Nickles' argument about his performance was similar to the one Fenty's mayoral campaign had advanced about why straw poll results should be ignored. They argued that while advisory neighborhood commissioners and activists might get angry when the mayor refuses their phone calls, average citizens — who will ultimately decide the race — only care about the results Fenty has delivered.

And while the process-obsessed might get angry with Nickles, he said regular people appreciated and supported his efforts to fight law-breaking used car lots, "slumlords" and "brothels."

Oh, and the people who are complaining about Fenty's lack of inclusiveness? Many of them, Nickles said, are "those who have been let go because they weren't performing." They're being led by "people like Marion Barry."

— @kevinrobillard