Poll Puts Fenty and Cropp Neck and Neck

By Lori Montgomery and Yolanda Woodlee
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 11, 2006

At last the results are in from the eagerly awaited 2006 pre-pre-primary George Washington University- Bernard Demczuk Supermarket Poll. And the big news is we're in for an exciting summer: The D.C. mayor's race is a statistical dead heat.

Or it would be a statistical dead heat had Demczuk bothered to calculate the statistical margin of error. Given that his poll is essentially an intensive exercise in that standby of local journalism, the man-on-the-street interview, such calculations are probably beside the point.

But that doesn't mean we can't learn something useful from those 625 interviews of actual Democratic voters scrupulously surveyed by Demczuk, a former chief lobbyist for former mayor Marion Barry , along with a bevy of GWU students. Indeed, in the 20 years since Demczuk started accosting people at CVS and Giant and Safeway and Eastern Market and the big chair and Whole Foods and Ben's Chili Bowl -- at least three spots in every ward -- he has compiled a record of eerie accuracy.

His August 1998 poll, for example, predicted that Mayor Anthony A. Williams would beat then-council member Kevin P. Chavous by 18 percentage points. The actual spread in the September primary was 17 points. Demczuk also correctly predicted that Williams would win in Wards 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6.

This poll is much earlier than that one, and even Demczuk, now GWU's assistant vice president for government affairs, is making no grand claims about its predictive powers. But he is nonetheless offering it to a wide array of political insiders.

So what's the bottom line?

Compared with previous surveys, Demczuk shows the race tightening between council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) and council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4), with Fenty claiming 41 percent of those surveyed and Cropp taking 38 percent. Lobbyist Michael A. Brown , council member Vincent B. Orange Sr. (D-Ward 5) and former telecommunications executive Marie C. Johns were all in single digits, a finding mirrored in other polls.

"The election for mayor is too close to call for the two front-runners," Demczuk writes. "Both leading candidates are doing well in all neighborhoods and among all categories of voters."

Other nuggets of wisdom: "Voters in general feel satisfied with the Quality of Life in the city but do not think the city is heading in the right direction," Demczuk writes. "Blacks, in particular, are very angry at the lack of affordable housing, poor education and crime. . . . Whites, on the other hand, are generally pleased with the city [but] believe the city government must prevent the city from becoming all-rich and all-white.

"Both whites and blacks believe that affordable housing, education and crime are the top issues. The new stadium and building a new hospital virtually never surfaced as issues, not even in black neighborhoods."

Cropp Enlists Spokesman

In other campaign news, Cropp has hired a new spokesman: Ron Eckstein is a former Washington reporter and Hill staffer who did time in North Carolina and Minnesota for Sen. John Kerry 's presidential campaign. A D.C. resident since 1995, Eckstein is making his debut in city politics fresh from the crushing disappointment of Lise Van Susteren 's aborted run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

Van Susteren, Greta's big sister, dropped out last month after failing to raise enough cash to challenge the big boys in the Maryland Democratic primary, U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin and former congressman Kweisi Mfume , Eckstein said. Eckstein comes to Cropp on a recommendation from her pollster, Diane Feldman , who also worked for Van Susteren.

"I'm really excited," he said. "Working with Linda is a joy. She knows every intricacy of every bill in the District. I think she deserves a lot of credit for the way the city has progressed over the last 10 years."

Commissioner Giving Up Bid

Robert Brannum likes being an elected official, and he isn't taking any chances. Rather than give up his Advisory Neighborhood Commission seat, he has decided to abandon his bid for chairman of the D.C. Council.

Brannum, a first-term Ward 5 ANC member, said he announced earlier this week that he wouldn't seek the council chairmanship because he is hatched.

"Everyone I have talked to about this [said] that this is the law," Brannum said in an e-mail statement.

In last week's District Notebook, Brannum said that a lawyer for the Hatch Act unit of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel recently told an assembly of commissioners that they are covered by the federal law that prohibits federal and District employees from participating in partisan politics.

"I was placed in a difficult position from other ANC commissioners because I was put on notice from a [federal] attorney that I was in violation," Brannum said. "The law is the law, and as a public official I could not at the end of the day ignore it."

School board member Tommy Wells , who is running for the Ward 6 council seat, said that he was unaware that school board members were hatched.

"This is the first I've heard of this," Wells said, adding that his school board colleague William Lockridge ran unsuccessfully for Ward 8 and that the Hatch Act issue "never came up."

"I'm surprised, considering how many have run before," Wells said. "Obviously, if there's a ruling, I'm certainly not going to do anything illegal."