A May 2 article about the pending sale of the Washington Nationals did not contain a full identification of sports broadcaster James T. Brown.
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Lerner Expected To Get Nationals
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It is not clear how much of the $450 million purchase price that MLB has set for the Nationals would be paid by the minorities in the Lerner or Malek-Zients groups. Smulyan has said minority investors would put up $50 million in cash.
Neither Orange nor Barry offered conclusive evidence that minorities in the Lerner group would play a smaller role in running the team than would minorities in the other two groups.
Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) has praised the Lerners for their major development projects, including White Flint Mall and Tysons Corner Center. Graham said yesterday that minority participation is "extremely important," and he added that he has no evidence that the Lerners are not committed to diversity.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), who has endorsed the Malek-Zients group, has said that he has never spoken with the Lerners. The mayor has not weighed in on whether he believes their minority partners would have a significant role in the franchise.
The Malek-Zients group includes such high-profile African Americans as former secretary of state Colin Powell and Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert.
Smulyan signed up more than a dozen District-based partners, including several African Americans such as former deputy U.S. attorney general Eric H. Holder. Smulyan has pledged to name a black team president.
The Lerner group has several minority partners, too. However, some appear to have been added only after MLB officials urged the family to add black investors two weeks ago. Former U.S. transportation secretary Rodney E. Slater and Washington area banker B. Doyle Mitchell Jr. were identified last week as having joined the Lerner group.
Both had been members of a bid by former Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten, who recently joined Lerner's group.
"They only got minorities the last few weeks," said Orange, who is running for mayor. "It's pretty much a front."
Messages left with Slater were not returned yesterday, and an MLB spokesman declined to comment.
Two sources with the Lerner family, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of baseball's directive not to talk about the sale, said yesterday that the Lerners had been in talks with minority investors for as long as a year and that they recently finalized agreements with those investors after prompting from MLB. Brown has been an investor with the Lerners since last year, according to a family source.
Orange and Barry vowed to introduce an emergency council resolution today calling on MLB to award the team to either the Malek-Zients group or the Smulyan group.
The resolution, which would be nonbinding, would need support from nine of the council's 13 members to be approved.
Staff writer Thomas Boswell contributed to this report.
