By Nikita Stewart and Robert Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 20, 2006; DZ02

Council member Vincent Gray (D-Ward 7) is stomping through the wards and right over Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) in the race for council chairman, with two new endorsements by local Democratic committees.

Gray, who is in his first term, solidly won the endorsements of the Ward 1 and Ward 8 Democratic clubs, a feat that candidates for mayor, at-large council seats and shadow representative couldn't accomplish. And, unlike the real Sept. 12 Democratic primary, in which candidates need only a majority of the votes to win, both Democratic clubs require more for their endorsement: 60 percent in Ward 1 and two-thirds in Ward 8.

The ward endorsements often are an indication of how well a candidate will be able to get out the vote on election day.

"I feel really good about it," Gray said. "It demonstrates that we have a very viable campaign, and not just in one area of the city."

After hours of speeches and vote counting Saturday at the Washington Highlands Branch Library, Gray won the Ward 8 endorsement by a vote of 202 to 37. None of the mayoral candidates got enough votes to win. But council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D) received 137 votes, trouncing the four other major contenders -- council members Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4) and Vincent B. Orange Sr. (D-Ward 5), former Verizon executive Marie C. Johns and lobbyist Michael A. Brown -- who together received just 114.

In Ward 1, the Democratic club voted only on the chairman and at-large races at a meeting Monday night in the Whitelaw building. With about 100 people voting, Gray captured 62 percent to Patterson's 29 percent, according to Katherine Boettrich of the Ward 1 Democrats.

The endorsement wars in the at-large race have been less definitive.

Lawyer A. Scott Bolden won the overwhelming majority of votes -- 148 to 77 -- in Ward 8 against incumbent Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), but Bolden missed the required two-thirds. In Ward 1, Bolden again edged out Mendelson, 43 percent to 41 percent, though not enough for the endorsement.

Supporters of both men pulled out calculators and used pencil and paper to make sure there would be no repeat of the debacle that forced the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club to rescind its July 10 endorsement of Mendelson. He had received 59.82 percent of the vote, just shy of the 60 percent. Club officials had rounded the vote up -- a no-no, according to Robert's Rules of Order, said Darrin Glymph , the club's treasurer.

Before the mayoral candidates could lay out their platforms at a Sunday forum, they had to pass through metal detectors and barbed wire and submit to pat-downs for contraband.

The site: Oak Hill Youth Center, the city's juvenile detention facility and jail in Laurel.

The audience: roughly 80 juvenile offenders, most of them black.

Vincent Schiraldi , director of the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, which operates Oak Hill, said it was the first forum and voter registration drive of its kind in a juvenile facility. He told his young charges that voting is fundamental to being a citizen, particularly for minorities, who were long denied the privilege.

"The only people who could vote were white men like me," Schiraldi said. "And a lot of people worked hard to keep black folks from voting."

Most attendees were too young to vote, but that didn't stop them from asking tough questions about the closure of D.C. General Hospital, the rising cost of housing in the city, the shabby state of the public schools and the kind of programs the candidates would establish to keep youth busy.

"What are you going to do for us?" asked one boy who, under the rules governing the forum, may not be identified by name.

Three of the five major candidates -- Fenty, Johns and Brown -- shared the stage with lesser-known candidates, including Jason Alexander , who is running as an independent and so will not appear on the party primary ballots in September.

Wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Alexander railed against what he called the prison industrial complex -- a system worth billions of dollars -- which depends on the continued incarceration of young black men. And he told the youth that they shouldn't expect help from the government.

"If we are going to improve the system, it's going to take us," he said. "They're building jails anticipating that you're going to commit crimes."

Johns stressed her own humble roots and told the boys that mistakes they made early in life do not have to define the rest of it.

"It doesn't matter where you start," she said. "It matters what you do with the life that God has given you. The fact that you made a mistake is not the end of the world."

Fenty, who arrived late after a full day of campaigning, was a hit, saying that not everyone who gets into trouble ought to be locked up.

"Kids who get into a little bit of trouble ought not to have to come to Oak Hill," he said to cheers. He asked for their votes and the votes of their parents, the only candidate to do so.

Some candidates could barely be heard over the chatter among the boys. Other candidates, including Brown and Johns, spent a lot of time talking individually to youths in the audience.

About 80 boys, in two separate sessions, attended, and those eligible to vote in September were registered to vote by the Justice 4 D.C. Youth! Coalition, which sponsored the event. The group advocates for better living conditions and less incarceration of youth.

In mock elections held afterward, Brown won one contest, and Alexander won the other.

Other candidates who participated included Chris Otten of the D.C. Statehood Green Party, Democrat Artee Milligan and Republicans David W. Kranich and Albert Ceccone . Orange and Cropp did not attend.