The shadow campaign weighs on public opinion. According to a poll by the Washington Post, 54 percent of respondents want the mayor to resign while 37 percent think he should stay. The disapproval stretches over all races, classes, and sections of the city. The poll also reveals a growing dissatisfaction among District residents with the D.C. government at large. Of those polled, 63 percent believe Gray is not running an ethical administration and 61 percent don’t find him trustworthy. For the first time in six years, a plurality of D.C. residents think the city is headed in the wrong direction.

Gray was rocked by scandal last week as the full details of the so-called “shadow campaign” came to light. Third-party agents conspired to illegally purchase the Gray campaign $653,000 worth of campaign staff, apparel, and consulting work—a third of all the money spent on behalf on Gray in the 2010 mayoral election. Federal prosecutors stopped short of accusing Gray of wrongdoing, but three members of the D.C. City Council are calling on Gray to resign.

Needless to say, Gray’s reelection appears increasingly unlikely. The poll additionally showed that, if the 2010 Democratic mayoral primary were held again today, Fenty would win by a two-to-one margin. At the same time, the survey showed that other possible mayoral hopefuls are largely unknown by the general public. Interim Chairman of the D.C. Council Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) lead the pack, each with about 30 percent approving, 10 percent opposing, the rest with no opinion.

Gray continues his bout of silence. By the advice of his attorney, Gray refuses to speak at length about any ongoing investigation involving his administration, although he did take an opportunity to fire back at his critics. Appearing last Friday on NewsChannel 8′s Newstalk, Bruce DePuyt asked Gray to respond to the D.C. Council members calling for his resignation. Of his most outspoken critics, David Catania (I-At Large), Gray said: “Let’s be honest, David Catania is a Republican who became an independent. We forget that we have partisan politics in the District of Columbia… He never supported me; he certainly didn’t support me in the election.”

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Yesterday night, the student-run advocacy group DC Students Speak reintroduced an online petition against the D.C. Council’s proposed law to discourage students from parking around the District. The D.C. Council will vote today on this “Residential Parking Protection Act of 2011,” which, according to DCSS, “will, if passed, impose unnecessary and costly burdens on student drivers” and “remove common-sense rules with regard to college drivers in the District.” As of this morning at 10:30 a.m., the petition had 750 signatures.

The D.C. Council’s Residential Parking Protection Act on today’s voting agenda is part of a larger effort to reduce the number of residents with parking passes. Full-time students may be the first residents targeted for the denial of these privileges. The bill, according to the WJLA, “could mean those $35 a year residential parking permits will become more expensive, street parking rates may vary by demand and guest parking passes could come with a fee.”

DCSS encourages students to sign the petition to Mayor Vince Gray and Attorney General Irvin Nathan before today’s vote. According to the group, the law will force students to register their motor vehicles in D.C. and purchase D.C. car insurance. “Students will also be required to pay fees in order to register their car and obtain a D.C. driver’s license, potentially in excess of $150,” the petition reads. The group has introduced a Twitter hashtag, “right2park,” to spread awareness on the issue.

Photo: DC Students Speak website

At an event hosted by DC Students Speak last night, D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6) addressed approximately twenty students about a variety of issues facing the District and the Council, including Georgetown University’s 2010 campus plan, the use of RFK Stadium, and ethics reform.

While he spent most of the evening addressing District issues, Wells also discussed the vitriol that has defined the 2010 campus plan process. After lauding DC Students Speak for getting students involved in local politics, he compared the campus plan processes at Georgetown University and George Washington University. While GWU has an aggressive building plan that neighbors have sometimes disliked, its campus plan approval has not been a difficult fight. Wells credits this to the make-up of their leadership and their engagement with the community. ”GW has local influential people on their Board of Trustees,” Wells pointed out. GWU also employed a communications firm to interact with neighborhood groups to ease the process.

Wells contrasted this success story with Georgetown’s own efforts:

Georgetown did everything internally, and their board is not a board of local civic leaders, so they were isolated when they came out, so there wasn’t really a counterpunch to the neighbors that said, we don’t like this, guys. There wasn’t other neighbors or other influential folks to stand up and say, well we can compromise but we’re not going to give up our campus plan. There wasn’t effective pushback and the groundwork was not done.

Wells also relayed a lovely anecdote of his own interaction with the Office of Planning, which had recommended last year that Georgetown be mandated to house all of its undergraduates on campus offer housing (on or off-campus) to 100% of its undergraduate population by 2016 if it wanted to maintain its current enrollment cap:

I asked the person who’s head of the Office of Planning, why did you say Georgetown needs to do this—this isn’t realistic, no other universities are being asked to do this in terms of the number of students to be housed on campus and she essentially said, we just don’t like their attitude. And I said, well you don’t get to have that opinion, this is about planning. You can’t change based on attitude.

Wells’ take on luring the Redskins into the District, ethics reform, and Kwame Brown’s Lincoln Navigator after the jump…

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Fiona Greig, D.C. Council candidate for Ward 2, has announced that she is dropping out of the race. Greig cited the alleged intimidation campaign run by opposition Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and his supporters as her reason for dropping out.

“At home, I received muffled phone calls telling me about the ‘dirt’ my opponent had on me,” Greig wrote in her statement. “Someone wanting to hold a ‘Meet and Greet’ for me received nasty emails from the opposing campaign. And I learned from a city agency that a well-known private investigator whose firm does ‘surveillance’ and ‘domestic investigations’ had requested my records. Maybe that explains the man who repeatedly walked past my house one night, looking in the windows.”

Whether these actions constitute an intimidation campaign or are just normal tactics (or whether they were even instituted by Evans) is unclear. But this does show that Greig, who received a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Harvard and works at consulting firm McKinsey & Co., was not ready for the D.C. political scene.

From the start, Greig faced an uphill battle against Evans. She emphasized smart growth and retaining young families in Ward 2 as much instituting Council ethics reform, but she was seen by many as the  ”Not Jack Evans” candidate (which is, in this blogger’s mind, a legitimate platform).

Although she may not have had much of a chance against Evans’s fundraising and political prowess (especially when she has her own fundraising issues), Greig’s candidacy can hopefully serve as a stepping stone for others who are fed up with the Council.

Greig, who may have been recruited by David Alpert and Ken Archer, was willing to challenge the the norm of D.C. politics. She was also enthusiastic about including students in her campaign, which she demonstrated by working with DC Students Speak and appointing campus captains.

Vox recently sat down with Dave Stroup (COL’ 06), a recent Voice alum that led the campaign to draft candidate Bryan Weaver into the latest at-large D.C. Council race. Stroup, who works in field support and operations at the Sierra Club, offered his perspectives on this campaign and on student involvement in city politics at-large.

VP: Why did you ask Weaver to run?

DS: I thought it was a great opportunity for someone to shake things up. Basically, the thing that really stuck me was his concerns for the neighborhood he lived in and, by extension, the city.

VP: How did you first get involved in D.C. politics?

DS: When I came to Georgetown, I learned everything about D.C. politics from Mike DeBonis, who was actually my editor at the Voice. I wrote the City on Hill [D.C. affairs] column for two years.

Since I stayed in D.C. and am naturally a progressive Democrat. I just felt like this was a fascinating town for politics. There’s a lot of history, which is often difficult to overcome. But there are also a lot of younger people that are trying to do a lot.

VP: What is your opinion of efforts like DC Students Speak?

DS: I was amazed by what I’ve seen just in this race and over the last few months with student involvement because it’s hugely different from when I was at Georgetown.

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Photos by Sam Brothers

Vincent Orange, a former D.C. councilmember and Pepco lobbyist, won  the vacant at-large seat on the D.C. Council. Orange is also a strong opponent of the 2010 Campus Plan.

“I know what happens when students move into the community,” he said in a February candidate forum. “It’s parties every single day.”

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Several students were turned away at the polls today in D.C.’s at-large council election because their names didn’t appear on the voter rolls and they lacked sufficient papers (i.e. a photo ID + a government, school, bank, etc. document or other bill attesting a DC address) to prove residency.

Students should have been offered special or provisional ballots that will be counted about a week after the election. As of 4:30 p.m. this afternoon, election officials were simply telling people that they could not vote. Vox called the DC Board of Elections and Ethics, and officials promised to contact the polling places and clarify their policy.

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Update: For anyone trying to fill out a same-day registration, your best bet is a driver’s license, bank statement, or tuition, phone, utility, or other bill in your name with a DC address on it. However, an official at the DC Board of Elections and Ethics has indicated that it would probably be sufficient to get a letter from University Housing saying that you live on campus. Housing provides these letters within twenty-four hours of a request. You can call them 9am to 5pm at (202) 687-4560 for details. Otherwise, you’ll have to cast a provisional ballot and provide this information at a later date.

Tomorrow, voters will elect a candidate to fill a vacancy in the DC Council’s at-large seat. Given that the current Council has passed measures such as the contentious noise law, their decision will shape student life for the next year until the 2012 General Election.

“At this moment, we’re seeing so much anti-student rhetoric and so many anti-student actions going on in this city,” student ANC Commissioner Jake Sticka (COL ’13) told the Voice in March as DC Students Speak’s first voter registration drive was winding down. The organization is trying to get students to vote in tomorrow’s election in order to curb what they see as a disturbing trend.

After an exhausting, months-long process of candidate forums and questionnaires, where even the the DC Food Truck Association saw fit to publish a candidate questionnaire, the race has narrowed down to four main contenders.

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A member of the Georgetown University Law Center faculty is likely joining incoming Mayor Vincent Gray’s administration.

Irvin Nathan, pending confirmation from the D.C. council, will replace current Attorney General Peter Nickles.

In 2007, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi appointed Nathan as the general counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives. He previously served as a deputy attorney general at the Department of Justice.

According to The Washington Post, Nathan’s appointment came as a surprise to insiders who suspected that Gray would likely appoint an African-American or a woman to the post.

In a statement announcing his appointments, Gray said that, “Nathan will join me in taking politics out of the office of the attorney general.”

Nathan is not listed on MyAccess to teach any classes next semester.

Photo: The Georgetown Dish

When D.C. Councilmember and alum David Catania (I-At Large, SFS ’90, LAW ’94) gave a speech at Georgetown in March of last year, he talked about same-sex marriage as an “undying civil rights” issue that he hoped to make progress on. What a difference a year makes: Yesterday, Catania was back on campus, discussing the successful same-sex marriage legalization bill he sponsored and the role race and religion played in the fight for marriage equality in the District.

The panel discussion—which also featured Cathy Renna, a media relations expert who specializes on LGBT topics, Richard Sincere (SFS ’81), the president of Gays and Lesbians for Liberty, Michael Crawford, the communications director of Freedom to Marry, and Joseph Palacios, a Georgetown professor and priest who has been vocally supportive of same-sex marriage—focused on how D.C.’s marriage equality movement found success by actively engaging minorities and people of faith.

Catania opened the discussion by emphasizing how D.C.’s civil rights legacy and the high amount of attention local religious groups pay to equality issues made the city well-suited to support same-sex marriage legalization.  Over 200 religious leaders joined the D.C. Clergy United for Marriage Equality alliance and, according to Catania, more clergy members testified for the same-sex marriage bill than against it.

“We’re just not a fertile ground for intolerance,” Catania said.

For Renna, involving religious people in the District’s same-sex marriage movement was particularly important because it challenges the perception that marriage equality is a “God versus Gay” issue.

“What happened in D.C. was incredible,” Renna said. “This community proved that that’s a false dichotomy.”

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