Yesterday, President Obama did something that thousands of people do each day: He traveled from D.C. to Maryland. Obama went to Bowie to buoy Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is in a tight rematch with Bob Ehrlich.
While Democrats in close races across the country are ambivalent about campaigning with the president, Obama’s approval rating remains relatively high in Maryland, and is solid in the D.C. suburbs. The Bowie State University event wasn’t about changing minds -- it was about getting Obama’s fans excited enough to turn out for O’Malley. Nearly 200,000 more black Marylanders voted in 2008 as in 2004, and getting even a small number of that group to the polls for O’Malley could make the difference.
The Washington Post says in Prince George’s County, “where Obama’s approval rating is 85 percent, it was clearly far more Obama’s star power than excitement about the midterms that drew people to the rally.” About 7,000 “mostly black, young supporters” turned out. As the Washington Examiner’s Hayley Peterson writes, O’Malley is actually “putting some distance between himself” and Ehrlich in recent polls, but observers “say the race remains a tossup, in part because GOP voters are assumed to be more motivated.” Obama’s mission: to get black Democrats just as motivated for O’Malley.
About three dozen people got sick during the rally, with so many “fainting and feeling dizzy that a triage unit had to be set up in the Bowie State gymnasium,” DCist writes. Whether the president was making them swoon or making them ill may have depended on their party affiliation. The Baltimore Sun says it was Obama’s 59th appearance in Maryland since he took office.
Elsewhere in the DMV:
* The Purple Line “is starting to emerge as a polarizing issue” in the race between O’Malley and Ehrlich, WTOP reports. O’Malley “wants the 16-mile transit project that would link the Bethesda and New Carrollton Metro stations to be a light rail or streetcar-type system.” Ehrlich “says he will scrap that plan in favor of setting up a less expensive network of rapid buses.” The Post says that while in the past, “candidates worked to woo Montgomery voters with the $2.56 billion Intercounty Connector,” neither candidate is pushing big projects “with the economy still in a slump and state coffers depleted.”
* “Mayor” Vincent Gray was on Adrian Fenty’s turf Thursday evening, holding a town hall meeting in Ward 3. Though Gray beat Fenty by a fairly wide margin citywide, 79 percent of the Ward 3 Democratic primary vote went to Fenty -- so the session at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church in Tenleytown was the definition of a tough room for Gray. The near-certain mayor began with an unusually loud speech about education reform -- some observers said Gray was yelling -- but as the Examiner’s Freeman Klopott writes, Gray’s insistence that he supports reform “fell on a silent room” at first.
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Gray’s goal seemed to be to head off a debate about Michelle Rhee by exhausting the education issue up front, and it seemed to work. The Post says Rhee’s name “came up only in passing,” and many of the questions were on the budget and other issues. Gray dropped the news that ex-mayor Anthony Williams and ex-Control Board member Alice Rivlin will work with him on budget issues during the transition.
* As for Fenty, he gave one of his first post-primary interviews to a cable TV station -- in Brooklyn. The Post’s Mike DeBonis dissects the 15-minute “Urban Focus” interview, in which “Fenty made the case that he was a martyr to his own education reforms -- that he paid the price for being on ‘the leading edge of a movement.’” Fenty said, “If it’s a war, someone’s got to be at the front of the line, and they’ve got to get killed first. That’s how you win a war, is by going forward.” When asked if he had “properly balanced his reform efforts with the accompanying politics,” the outgoing mayor gave us a taste of the Fenty we know and love. “I didn’t balance it at all,” he replied. “And I wouldn’t change a thing about how I did it.”
As for his future, Fenty said he plans to stay in D.C., possibly working in law or education. Washington City Paper sums it up in a headline: “Hire Me, I’m A Martyr.”
And then there are the folks who want Fenty to stay in his current job, despite his complete lack of interest. The well-funded “Write Fenty In” campaign is now doing robocalls.
* DCentric says News Corp strongman Rupert Murdoch is one of Rhee’s fans. In a recent speech, Murdoch “said more people like Rhee need to stay in place to overhaul an educational system that overspends to protect ineffective teachers through their unions and the politicians who support them.” Rhee is not likely to stay on in D.C., but as the Post’s Bill Turque writes, she can have her pick of pretty much any high-profile education gig in the country.
* Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton asks on Facebook: “Were you as outraged as I that lenders were processing thousands of foreclosures without reading the documents?” Well, no more outraged than I am that Congress passes legislation without reading it.
* For anyone who followed this fall’s crazy At-Large Council primary, it should be no surprise that a “Confusion in Election Amendment Act of 2010” is being sponsored by Councilmembers Phil Mendelson and Michael A. Brown. The Examiner’s Klopott says the bill would cut the early voting period to just one week, and “would also require the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics to clarify on the ballot a candidate’s identity when there is the potential ‘for confusion among voters about the identity of a candidate because of the similarity of his or her name to another candidate, elected, or well-known individual.’”
* Larry Pretlow has been running an unusually aggressive campaign for an advisory neighborhood commission seat in Ward 8. On Wednesday night, TBD’s Sarah Larimer reports, Pretlow “finally attended an ANC meeting” for the first time. Pretlow’s “post-meeting analysis: ‘It was awful.’” As for his rival, 20-year incumbent, Mary Cuthbert: She said she doesn’t ‘talk to reporters.’” That’s probably wise.
* The Post’s Reliable Source marks the end of “The Real Housewives of D.C.” Said producer Abby Greensfelder (whose lovely daughter used to play with my sons at a park in Adams Morgan back in their toddling days): “It’s an entertainment. It’s not a news program.” Who can tell anymore?
* The U Street Neighborhood Association is hoping residents will weigh in on DDOT’s 14th Street Streetscape plans.
* The Annandale VA blog talks with some of the town’s Latino dayworkers about their daily lives.
* The Hill is Home wants to know what residents think about the notion of chain stores in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
* The Anti D.C. likes Metro’s new greeter, even if no one else does.
