D.C. Mayor Gray should resign or face recall

What had been a political tragedy in the District has been raised to the level of democratic farce. Residents are suffering political convulsions over recent revelations that supporters of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s 2010 campaign schemed to subvert the democratic election process by paying a second-tier mayoral candidate to trash the sitting mayor; waging an off-the-books “shadow” campaign with an enormous illegitimate fund; and accessing secretly, if not illegally, the identities of 6,000 public housing residents.

The good people of the District deserve better than a mayor who cast himself as a champion for D.C. democratic rights before, during and after his election campaign yet benefited from an election that may have been free but was certainly not fair.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

Personal Post

In light of Mr. Gray’s campaign staff’s transgressions, it seems only proper that the mayor resign, effective immediately, as others have called on him to do. His legitimacy as mayor has come to a sorry end, regardless of whether he knowingly consented to illegal campaign tactics. As head of that campaign, he was responsible.

If Mr. Gray refuses to resign, then perhaps he should be recalled. Such is the level of damage done by his campaign to the free and fair election process in a city that yearns to be a state and, regrettably, enjoys altogether too few democratic rights as it is.

What rights we have must be protected, even from our own.

Timothy Cooper, Washington

The writer is executive director of the nongovernmental organization Worldrights.