Gray campaign aide says he voiced concerns to candidate about how efforts were being funded

The man running field operations for Vincent C. Gray’s 2010 mayoral campaign wanted answers.

David Dzidzienyo had watched scores of people toil on Gray’s behalf in the summer heat of 2010, rallying at his stump speeches and knocking on doors to get out the vote. But some did not report to Dzidzienyo — he said they reported to Vernon E. Hawkins, Gray’s longtime friend and a veteran election operative.

Graphic

A primer on recent D.C. corruption scandals.

Post archives: The mayor’s campaign

Officials are conducting an investigation into aspects of Gray’s 2010 mayoral campaign.

• Dec. 5, 2012 - FBI said to probe allegations that Gray campaign staff concealed donations
• Nov. 17, 2012 - Gray campaign aide says he voiced concerns over funding
• July 22, 2012 - Gray’s 2010 campaign had database of public-housing residents
• July 18, 2012 - Gray should resign, most D.C. residents say
• July 14, 2012 - Gray: at work while under siege
• July 11, 2012 - Gray knew of campaign finance violations in January, sources say
• July 10, 2012 - Vast ‘shadow campaign’ said to have aided Gray
• July 9, 2012 - Jeanne Clarke Harris charged in ongoing probe of Gray campaign
• Oct. 15, 2011 - Gray campaign under vigorous federal scrutiny
• July 18, 2011 - Gray campaign accepted cash donations above legal limit, review shows

While Dzidzienyo struggled to pay his staffers and, at times, ran out of supplies, Hawkins’s efforts seemed flush. Dzidzienyo feared that Hawkins’s operation was siphoning funds from his budget.

He said he alerted Gray, fearing the unknown nature of Hawkins’s undertaking. “Where is this money coming from?” he recalled asking Gray at a campaign church luncheon in August 2010.

Gray, he said, responded: “I don’t want to hear about problems. I just want to be the candidate.”

Dzidzienyo’s account is the first public allegation that Gray was made aware in the summer of 2010 of his own campaign staffers’ unease about the nameless funding of the side effort that would become known as the “shadow campaign” to get the then-D.C. Council chairman elected mayor.

About the time Dzidzienyo said he raised concerns, the shadow operation began ratcheting up its activities, eventually spending $653,000 to help win the election, according to a timetable described by federal prosecutors now investigating Gray’s mayoral bid. The money was not properly reported, as required by law, and operated outside Gray’s regular campaign operation, federal authorities said.

“I would be curious to hear what [Gray’s] response is when he says something, if he ever says something,” Dzidzienyo said. “There is a cloud over the mayor, and this city loses some of its credibility.”

Gray, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, declined to comment on Dzidzienyo’s assertion or other specific allegations regarding the shadow campaign. He has generally said, “This was not the campaign we intended to run.”

Prosecutors have said public-relations executive Jeanne Clarke Harris doled out the funds for the covert campaign over a few months.

On several occasions, Harris — from the back seat of her chauffeured Volvo — also fed instructions to aides on how to get out the vote, according to several people with knowledge of the Gray campaign. The aides would gather in an office adjacent to Gray’s campaign headquarters at Sixth Street NW — a conspicuous arrangement that also confused those who worked on the mayor’s campaign. Workers on the official campaign found Hawkins’s operation unnecessary, especially in light of the success Dzidzienyo was having with the field operation and straw polls.

Harris faces up to 37 years in prison after pleading guilty in July to conspiring to evade federal and local campaign laws and obstruction of justice in a federal probe that has ensnared two other Gray campaign associates. Consultant Howard L. Brooks and assistant treasurer Thomas W. Gore pleaded guilty, acknowledging that they helped pay minor mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown to publicly disparage the incumbent, Adrian M. Fenty, during the campaign. Brooks has been sentenced to two years’ probation.