Posts about Politics

We asked the candidates to give their positions on 6 ethics proposals:

• Ban or limit outside employment
  
• Eliminate or constrain constituent service funds
  
• Ban corporate contributions to campaigns
  
• Ban "bundling" from multiple entities controlled by same person
  
• Ban contributions by contractors and/or lobbyists who do business with DC
  
• Forbid free or discounted legal services, travel gifts, sports tickets for councilmembers

Silverman touted her work on Initiative 70 pushing to enshrine the third of these into law. She, Frumin, Patrick Mara, John Settles, and Michael Brown all also endorsed public financing of elections. Paul Zukerberg explicitly opposed it; while we don't know why voters chose as they did, perhaps most of you disagreed and that contributed to his 6th place finish.

Michael Brown, meanwhile, opposed banning outside employment and changes to constituent service funds. He also did not address the proposals involving monetary or in-kind campaign contributions. As a consequence, 47% of you said he did not answer the question while giving him the lowest finish of any candidate on any question thus far on Let's Choose DC.

This week, we're asking about school truancy. See the responses and vote now!

Let's Choose DC is a partnership between Greater Greater Washington, DCist, and PoPville which aims to educate voters about candidates' positions for the April 23 race for DC Council at-large. This week, we got responses from Matthew Frumin, Perry Redd, John Settles, Elissa Silverman, and Paul Zukerberg.

John Settles has been removed from the ballot after a successful challenge to his nominating petition signatures left him short of the required number. Paul Zukerberg also faced a challenge, but survived; he denounced the process and competitor Elissa Silverman, whose supporter filed both challenges.

Sadly, Patrick Mara (who serves on the State Board of Education and has made education a significant part of his platform), Anita Bonds, and Michael Brown did not respond to the question this week.

The top 3 candidates retain the same 1-2-3 ranking as in questions 3 (education) and 4 (growth): Matt Frumin and Elissa Silverman a close 1 and 2, and John Settles a clear but still competitive 3rd. All three had over 60% of voters view their responses either "very persuasive" or "persuasive."

On the other end of the spectrum, the other 3 candidates who responded—Anita Bonds, Perry Redd, and Michael Brown—got less than 25% persuasive/very persuasive. Michael Brown did particularly poorly, with 29% of voters rating his response "very unpersuasive" and another 28% rating it "unpersuasive."

Patrick Mara and Paul Zukerberg did not respond to this question.

And don't forget to vote on this week's question, on ethics! For that one, we have responses from all 7 candidates except Ms. Bonds. You have until Monday to vote, but why not do it today when perhaps you have a less hectic schedule?

We asked the candidates to explain whether they were for or against each proposal, along with any explanation they wished to give and any other proposals besides these 6 which they would push for if elected. Perry Redd, Elissa Silverman, Matthew Frumin, Michael Brown, Paul Zukerberg, John Settles, and Patrick Mara submitted responses. Anita Bonds' campaign manager expressed interest in responding but did not yet submit something.

You can see and rate responses (starting with a randomly-selected candidate) now. Some candidates specifically addressed each of the proposals in their responses, while a few did not appear to specifically take a stand on each as the question asked. When you rate the responses, please factor that in to your rating on whether, or how fully, the candidate answered the question.

We asked you about each possible spending category that any candidate mentioned in his or her responses. (There are lots of other possible budget priorities that the candidates did not mention; for space, we didn't include any of those.)

74% of you said that putting at least some money into the DC rainy-day fund is a moderator or high priority. Other spending areas that rated highly include parks, recreation, libraries, and schools (71%), supporting troubled or underperforming students (63%) and job training (58%).

On the other end of the spectrum, tax cuts were some of the lowest-ranking categories, with lower taxes for seniors (something Perry Redd mentioned in his response only getting 19% support for being a moderate or high priority, lower business taxes (something a few candidates mentioned) at 24%, and lower taxes overall 33%.

How do the candidates stack up?

In past weeks, we've created a single bar graph for how you judged candidates' responses to our questions. But when it comes to the budget, you're probably more interested in what a candidate said he or she would do with the money than the way he or she said it.

We wanted to understand how voters who cared about different budget priorities rated each candidate. Did voters who care about affordable housing see the candidates differently from those that would prioritize police and fire facilities?

Here's the graph:

Each of the clusters represents one budget category. If a voter rated that category moderately or very important, his or her votes show up there. Each vertical bar shows how many voters gave a particular candidate a "very persuasive" or "persuasive" rating on that budget category.

Every candidate got a different color—brown for Michael Brown, red for Perry Redd, and gray/silver for Elissa Silverman, with more arbitrary choices for the other 4.

For example, among voters who think saving money in the rainy-day fund is important, Matthew Frumin (green bars) and Elissa Silverman scored the highest for their responses.

In fact, Frumin and Silverman stick out (literally, on the graph) on all of the categories except tax cuts. Frumin barely beat out Silverman in most categories, while she took the top for safety net programs.

Only voters who prioritize tax cuts had a somewhat different view. Perhaps not surprisingly, Patrick Mara won among voters who cared most about general or business tax cuts. However, that was a small proportion of voters.

Despite some early expectations, Mara seems to be struggling to win over voters who might be sympathetic to his fiscal message but also prioritize other factors. He also skipped our question about DC's growth and this week's question on bicycling.

Vote on drivers vs. bicycles

This week, candidates weighed in on how drivers, cyclists, and others can just get along on our streets. If you haven't seen their responses yet, go vote now!

This week, we had responses from Anita Bonds, Michael Brown, Matt Frumin, Perry Redd, John Settles, and Elissa Silverman. Patrick Mara and Paul Zukerberg did not participate.

You can vote on the candidates' responses to this question until midnight Monday, February 18. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the results of last week's question, on how to spend the surplus, later this week.

79% of readers gave positive ratings to Matt Frumin. He talked about building mixed-use developments on commercial corridors and near Metro stations, and mentioned the need to let homeowners rent out spaces in their houses as accessory dwellings.

Frumin also emphasized how we need housing affordable for people at various income levels to keep neighborhoods desirable and diverse, and also talked about the importance of schools, which is one of the major touchpoints of his campaign.

Silverman discussed affordable housing as well, with specific ideas about how to shore up the finances for those programs. She also talked about the need to expand transit service and grow "without turning our streets into gridlock or a game of Frogger for pedestrians and bicyclists." 64% of readers rated her response positively.

Unfortunately, Patrick Mara did not decide to participate in this question, nor did Michael Brown or Anita Bonds. (Mara and Brown did submit answers to the following question, on the surplus.) You can vote on that question until midnight Monday.

This is now the fourth question with results. Elissa Silverman placed first in the first one, with Matt Frumin second. Silverman, Frumin, and John Settles were all very close on #2 and #3, and on this one, Frumin got a clear first and Silverman second. Overall, the voting on Let's Choose DC seems to put the two of them close together for the top spot, with John Settles decidedly in the hunt as well.

You can vote until midnight Monday, February 11. After that, we'll do some analysis to try to not only figure out whose responses was most popular, but how people with different sets of budget priorities felt about the candidates.

Meanwhile, stay tuned for the results of last week's question, on DC's growth, coming later this week.

Matthew Frumin slightly edged out Elissa Silverman in a close finish. John Settles placed third, followed by Patrick Mara, Perry Redd, and Paul Zukerberg much farther behind.

71% of voters gave positive reviews to Frumin's answer, compared to 70% for Silverman's. Silverman had more people rating her answer "very persuasive"—38% versus 30%—but also fewer people thought her answer "fully" answered the question—46% versus Frumin's 65%. 14% of voters said Silverman did not answer the question, while only 1% had that reaction to Frumin's response.

Voters were very divided on Patrick Mara's response, perhaps not a surprise since he essentially said he didn't like the premise of the question and that it wasn't possible to really discuss education in the available space. 48% of people said his response "partially" or "fully" answered the question, while 34% said it did not at all.

Most (75%) felt that Perry Redd answered the question, but actually agreed with it less than anyone else's, with 65% rating it as unpersuasive or very unpersuasive.

Once again, we had no responses from Anita Bonds or Michael Brown. Brown also did not attend a DC for Democracy forum last night.

You can still vote on Question 4, about candidates' views on growth, until Monday night.

Paul Zukerberg, Matthew Frumin, Elissa Silverman, and John Settles provided responses, and Perry Redd this morning promised to get one to us tonight. We did not receive responses from Anita Bonds, Michael Brown, or Patrick Mara. All of the other candidates have withdrawn from the race or did not file their petitions with the requisite number of signatures.