“Why should these hundreds of students with no real vested interest in the District of Columbia, rather than the hundreds of thousands of voters who do have a vested interest, decide my fate, the potential fate of our city and the possible fate of workers who need sick leave?”–Carol Schwartz, D.C. Council (R, At-Large), 9/15/2008.
Answer: It’s a democracy, madam. It may not seem like it, given that you are (were) the highest ranking—and only—Republican in official city government, and likely have been since 1984, but this is what happens in primaries when you have a challenger who finds a way to beat you and is successful. And if the students there have the legal right to vote in Washington, D.C., who are you to question it?
You lose. And you have lost.
Now I know that seems crass, especially in a city that continues to reelect Marion Barry to any political office, but that’s the plain truth of the matter—you have lost. And if think that devaluing the student vote is a smart way to start off your write-in campaign, good luck with that on November 4th. You’re going to need it.
You just can’t say things like these and expect to sit on that council again. I mean, do you not think that the challenger who defeated you in D.C.’s Primary Election, Patrick Mara, will use that to his benefit; especially since your claim is that those students helped to put him over the top?
No matter their basic insignificance to you and your efforts to keep your job, Ms. Schwartz, students have absolute import in the economic efforts of the District of Columbia, even for the short abundance of time they are spending there. They work and spend taxes in that city; they spend money in that city. How patronizing to imply that students have no vested interest in the city in which they attend school, when it’s more than likely they’re the ones serving the councilwoman her coffee in the morning.
Or would you rather they spend all their money in Northern Virginia, Montgomery or Prince George’s Counties?
And how easy is it to suggest that it was the students who put Mara over the top, when it was you, Ms. Schwartz, who seemed to run a campaign that says to this observer, over 40 miles north of there, “you know me, you know my name, and I’m going to win again, because…well, it’s me! Nobody beats me.” Those students could not have simply accounted for a 20 percentage point win for Mara on their own. Let’s face facts: Mara beat you in the primary because he outworked you on the ground, and in the community; his message hit the right tone with voters, while you expected to ride your own coattails to another primary win.
In that effort, you failed.
And no wonder you lost—typical Electoral Incumbency Syndrome. I’ve seen it happen to many politicians in this area, and you’re now a statistic in that category. Too many years in office, too many easy primaries, not enough work put in after 16 years. Now you are forced, Ms. Schwartz, to run perhaps your hardest campaign since you ran for mayor and nearly defeated Barry in 1994.
Perhaps this is the impetus you need to finally understand that you cannot simply float in on name recognition, unless you are Marion Barry—unfortunately. In a city that is 92% Democrat, where you are the lone elected Republican by a mercy law, you can’t afford a luxury of laying back and expecting the Republicans in D.C. to just assimilate to you, because next to your name there’s the R. Now we’ll see how hard you’re willing to work to keep your job. Because Mara’s shown he’s willing to work just as hard to take it. And now, he has the advantage of being the Republican candidate, whereas you, councilwoman, now have to resort to a write-in campaign. That might have worked for former mayor Anthony Williams, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen for you.
But if it is going to happen at all, you might want to stop denigrating a voting bloc that you’re going to need in the fall, just for starters.
