On a warm recent evening, Kevin P. Chavous loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves and knocked on the door of 89-year-old Eloise Rice in a working-class neighborhood called Capital View.
She looked shocked.
Campaigning for a fourth four-year term on the D.C. Council, Kevin P. Chavous (D-Ward 7) greets a potential voter outside a supermarket.
(Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
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"You know what I was just telling someone about you?" she asked the Ward 7 D.C. Council member. "I said, 'The only way you'll see him in this neighborhood is on that [campaign] sign out there.' "
A few houses later, an elderly man exclaimed: "Kevin Chavous! I haven't seen you around here in four years." Farther down the block, a young woman refused to shake his hand.
This was not the kind of welcome that Chavous had hoped for on a day when he was campaigning for a fourth four-year term. But like it or not, Chavous, 47, has been dogged by criticism from residents, activists and political rivals -- most notably Vincent C. Gray, his chief competitor in the Sept. 14 Democratic primary -- that he has lost touch with his constituents.
This sentiment has put Chavous in perhaps his most difficult council race since he upset incumbent H.R. Crawford in 1992. Once a rising star, Chavous has lost some support not just in his ward but also among the city's political establishment. And the pressure has begun to show.
When the Democratic State Committee endorsed Gray last week, Chavous first dismissed the move as irrelevant. But Monday, Chavous blasted party Chairman A. Scott Bolden, contending that Bolden was unfairly playing partisan politics with his friend Gray.
At an AARP-run candidates' debate last month, Chavous, facing questions about his commitment, raised his voice and said: "The reason you do not see me at your front door is that I'm downtown [at city hall] doing my job."
He boasted that he has renovated and reopened two schools, Randle Highlands and Kelly Miller, and brought two planned libraries to the ward, Deanwood and Francis A. Gregory .
In a 60-page package that he distributes to voters, Chavous details legislation he has pushed to open a new hospital on the grounds of D.C. General and takes credit for facilitating a planned makeover of the run-down Skyland Shopping Center.
"I have a record that I am proud of," he said at the debate, eliciting a few "amen" calls from supporters. "No one can quarrel with my effectiveness. Some might say they haven't seen me enough, and for that I'm sorry."
But Gray said that Chavous is "deluding himself" if he thinks Ward 7 has benefited from his representation. Gray, who also won the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, spoke of the need to develop a comprehensive economic development plan, saying he would take activists and business leaders on a bus tour of the ward to collaborate with him.
Local AFL-CIO President Joslyn N. Williams said the city needs council members who make "a full-time commitment to working families to ensure that all of our citizens benefit from the city's emerging prosperity."
But some say Gray has no public service record on which to be judged.
