Posts about Fiona Greig

A good candidate must have all of these qualities at the same time:

• Ability to talk like a think tank expert about any policy issue;
  
• The right positions as viewed by every different issue group they court;
  
• Charisma so that voters "want to have a beer with" the candidate;
  
• Stamina to talk to voters nonstop, all day, every day for months, and politely listen to everyone no matter how crazy;
  
• Toughness to endure all manner of nasty treatment from opponents and voters;
  
• Willingness to ask for money, which if you've never done you can't possibly realize how hard it is;
  
• Expert management skills to hire a terrific team cheaply in just a few months;
  
• An absolutely squeaky-clean background;
  
• And much more.

If a candidate doesn't have one of these, we blame the candidate. They ran a lousy campaign. We just didn't like them personally. They don't know enough about the issues. Every candidate has a thousand ways to be a doofus.

With this set of expectations, it should come as no surprise that we get a fair number of candidates with particularly strong personal desire to acquire power. Those with ambition but who don't care so much about making the world better can survive this process and learn to sound caring enough about issues to get by on the issues, while most of those more motivated by love of their city find another career.

If winning is about being a good candidate, then the leaders we get are good candidates rather than good leaders. Wouldn't it be nice if, instead of a system that rewards the toughest and most ambitious, rewards those who actually have the best visions for the future? But that's a pipe dream.

It's important to be tough, not just to win office but to pass important legislation once in power. The attacks won't stop with the campaign, but continue into the policy debates. And leaders who take poor positions absolutely need to face criticism for those actions.

The campaign filing dustup only told us what we already knew about Greig, that she was a fairly inexperienced newcomer facing a seasoned veteran. Her dropping out did tell us something new, that she lacked at least one of the qualities we expect in a great candidate, the toughness.

We learned in this spring's special election that Sekou Biddle lacked the management component, at least at the time; Bryan Weaver lacked the fundraising capacity, Joshua Lopez lacked the policy expertise, and so on.

But ask yourself: Do you have all of these qualities? Do you have even half of them? And how many people have them all? Maybe Vincent Orange did; all he lacked was an interest in helping anyone but himself.

I think that a lot of the incumbents on today's DC Council ought to be replaced. A lot of people think that. This past summer, many people said to me, individually or in groups, that they were looking around for people to run for various offices. I've heard secondhand about many others searching for the same thing.

And in most cases, they came up short. Many names that had been thrown around as fantastic potential candidates didn't run. Some did, and as we get to know the candidates, we'll find out if any of them are really exciting, or all fall victim to one of the many pitfalls of a campaign, or get written off too early by the horse-race press coverage.

This is the reality of politics. Everyone knows it, and those that don't quickly learn. It's often a choice between the lesser of two evils. Often, if there's someone you're extremely excited about, they're a long-shot candidate because they don't excel in every one of the necessary criteria.

The main reason I'm particularly a fan of Tommy Wells is that he actually does have most of these qualities, at least in moderate measure. He's extremely good on policy, but also able to go to a community meeting or church or block party and mingle with everyone without quickly getting sick of it. He's pretty likable, but also fairly tough. He has hired some great staff. And so on.

He represents one of the best opportunities to get a politician who really cares about making better communities in DC, and can actually win elections as necessary to accomplish important things.

How many people can do that, and want to? We need more of them. At least 14: one per ward, 4 at-large, one chairman, and one mayor. Not to mention 436 representatives, 100 senators, 1 vice-president, 1 president, and countless state and local legislators all across the country. Where are they?

It was clear to us early that Greig (pronounced "Greg") could win. The demographic shift in Ward 2 since 2000 has been tremendous, and Evans has not really tried to connect with the new young residents to understand their concerns. Neither did Evans' last opponent, Cary Silverman. Evans beat Cary Silverman in 2008 and a ragtag collection of opponents in 2000 by only 1,500 out of a total of 5,000 votes.

The response of voters to Greig's door-to-door canvassing was overwhelmingly positive. Greig's message of retaining young families by improving school options, parks and transit while applying her consulting expertise to re-engineer DC agencies instantly resonated with these voters on doorsteps across the ward.

While he's raised way more so far ($233,000) than he had at the same point in the 2008 campaign ($160,824), he's raised much less from Ward 2 individuals so far ($36,200) than he had at the same point in the 2008 campaign ($55,931). Where's the money coming from then? For starters, one developer in Maryland gave Evans $6,000 ($500 from each of his separately incorporated properties) while Clyde's Restaurant gave him $3,500 ($500 from each separately incorporated restaurant location).

While Greig was going door-to-door connecting with voters, Evans pursued a very different campaign strategy. He hired a private investigator.

We found this out when Greig received a phone call from a journalist asking about a list of 40 fundraising targets inadvertently included in the first filing of her exploratory committee by a volunteer. Greig explained the context and the journalist decided the story wasn't newsworthy. We called the Office of Campaign Finance, who told us that a private investigator had requested the file.

The next day another journalist contacted us about the embarrassing file, Greig explained the context, and the journalist didn't run the story. It was clear that Jack Evans' full-time campaign staff was shopping the file they had received from their private investigator to different journalists.

Meanwhile, Greig received a call at her home by someone she met at a campaign event telling her that Evans' staff knows about her husband's divorce, and the problematic timing of his divorce vis-a-vis their wedding in November of last year. Obviously few people knew such personal details of her family's life.

Finally, Evans' staff found a journalist to run the story and release the file of fundraising targets. Particularly embarrassing in the file was the volunteer's note that one of the targets was a gay colleague of Greig's at McKinsey.

No mention was made about Greig's testimony earlier in the week to the DC Council on the alarming rise in hate crimes in the District. In fact, few journalists covered the hate crimes hearing at all. The minutiae of campaign missteps was more important than the rash of violence this summer against members of the transgender community.

Last week, I walked to Greig's house during all this drama, talking on my cell about the campaign to a colleague while I walked, and noticed a man walking close behind me smoking a cigar. When I stopped in front of Greig's house, he stopped. He then kept walking and then turned around to pace up and down her block about a dozen times. Greig's husband arrived later pushing Ella in a stroller, talking to friend on the phone. We told him about the investigator pacing the block and he came inside.

And that's just the intimidation from Evans' private investigator. Chair Anita Bonds of the DC Democratic Party, for example, refused to return our repeated phone calls and emails requesting to purchase enhanced voter data that the party resells to candidates. At the end of all of this, Greig considered her wonderful husband of one year, her beautiful new daughter, and decided that it wasn't worth it. I can't say I blame her.

Should she have expected these hardball tactics? Probably. But ask yourself this. How many other talented young individuals in DC have made the same decision to avoid politics? DC residents complain all the time about our councilmembers. But we can't complain about our representatives while defending the process that keeps better people from running.

It's a shame that Ward 2 voters now have no choice when it comes to their councilmember. I'm not discouraged, though. Every day it seems more and more District residents are fed up with politics as usual. I'm hoping to hear from others in Ward 2 who want a more inclusive government, and are more interested in digging through budgets than through an insurgent candidate's trash.

20 years ago the city was hemorrhaging residents and attracting few new residents to take their place. This damaged our tax base, and contributed to our fiscal problems.

Today, attracting new residents isn't a problem—retaining them once they have children is the new strategic challenge to growing our city's tax base. Schools, parks and walkable, livable communities are the issues that are critical to retaining these families and thus to growing our tax base.

One would expect that the DC Council would have pivoted to focus on schools, parks and walkable, livable communities. Yet we still have councilmembers who see parks and transportation as constituent services, not as the linchpins to improving our city's fiscal position. We have councilmembers who disengage from education issues instead of holding the Mayor accountable for outcomes in their Ward.

In Ward 2, parents aren't asked by their councilmember what would convince them to send their kids to their public schools. Their councilmember isn't engaged in the discussion on middle schools, despite the fact that half the elementary schools in Ward 2 feed into a middle school (Shaw) with 29% reading proficiency.

20 years ago the city was mired in bloated, slow-moving agencies that couldn't deliver basic government services. Today, DC agencies generally deliver the services that residents pay for with their taxes.

The challenge for the future is to deliver more with less through smarter government. Yet we still have councilmembers who believe that 5% across the board cuts will make government more efficient. Instead, we must look to re-engineer government processes to squeeze out waste and fraud in a targeted way.

Earlier this year, KPMG warned in an audit that conditions at the Office of Tax and Revenue were ripe for continued theft, and sure enough another theft was discovered last month. My own councilmember refuses to hold hearings on the conditions at the Office of Tax and Revenue, which is under his oversight. He says, "My job is to do oversight. It's not to catch people who are stealing".

Our council won't be able to effectively address this new strategic agenda while it's mired in the ethics scandals that have so tarnished the city's past. With this next election, it's time to send a message that conflicts of interest are no longer tolerated and that ethics scandals are not just embarrassing to the Council, but, more importantly, to residents.

My councilmember has not offered any ethics legislation and has said the problem the Council is facing "is not because the laws need changing." I couldn't disagree more. Even the General Counsel for the Board of Elections and Ethics says that "the ethics laws of the district are not sufficient."

Do you believe that the DC Council needs a bolder vision for the future? What do you believe the strategic issues are that the council must address?

Come out and let me know what you think tonight, Thursday, October 27th, 6:30 pm at Stoneys (1433 P Street, NW). I'll be there with others who want to move past ethics scandals and yesterday's news and start talking about the future of the District of Columbia.

Fiona Greig is a prospective candidate for the DC Council from Ward 2. The views in this article are hers and do not necessarily represent those of Greater Greater Washington. We invite all candidates running for the DC Council to share their views with our community, but reserve the right to edit posts to fit our content and format rules. If you are a candidate and would like to submit an article, please contact endorsements@ggwash.org.