Fenty May Well Be A Born Manager

It's easy to understand why the organized business community is not wild about the prospect of Adrian Fenty as the next mayor of Washington.

The rap on Fenty is that he's a reliable ally of labor unions and tenant-rights activists who has backed "anti-business" policies such as rent control, the new "living wage" requirement for city contractors, and a ban on Wal-Mart and other "big box" retailers. He opposed the stadium project and favors requiring developers to include middle- and lower-income units in all future housing developments.

Moreover, Fenty is a relentless press hound who has shown spotty interest in the day-to-day work of the D.C. Council, where he's served for six years, nor any aptitude for putting together the coalition necessary to get legislation passed. Nor has he ever managed anything larger than his own campaign.

This is the sort of establishment critique we often get when a liberal city council member runs for an open mayoral seat in any city. There's nothing inaccurate in it. But to a large extent it is irrelevant because it ignores the more important questions about the job and the candidate.

Let's start with the management issue. In truth, few candidates ever have the relevant experience to manage as difficult and sprawling an operation as the District government. And if that were all it took, Sharon Pratt Kelly -- a darling of the business community -- would have been a huge success.

In fact, Adrian Fenty has succeeded brilliantly at every management task he's been presented, whether it has been running winning campaigns or running what is arguably the best constituent-service operation that anyone has ever seen. These are different tasks, to be sure, but the thread that runs through them all has been Fenty's ability to figure out what the challenges were, come up with creative ways to meet them, hire good people, and execute those strategies with incredible focus, determination and energy. As core leadership competencies go, that sounds like a pretty good list to me.

There's no denying Fenty's support for some of the D.C. Council's loopier efforts to regulate the private economy. But in my own conversations with him, I found a principled determination to achieve liberal goals such as providing more middle-class housing or raising living standards for hardworking janitors and security guards, and an openness to reasonable compromises on how to achieve them.

It's also telling that, when it came to endorsements, the labor unions largely threw their support to the same establishment candidate, Linda Cropp, as the business community. Tenant groups are furious that Fenty has backed some useful reforms to the sacred texts of the city's antiquated rent-control law. He's now in the enviable position of being able to enter his first term as mayor politically beholden to none of the city's most powerful special interests.

Instead, Fenty's strength has been in retail politics, which is perhaps fitting for a young man whose parents for decades ran a shoe store in Adams Morgan. You'd think this focus on constituent-as-customer would appeal to the business community, along with Fenty's pledge to ruthlessly organize his administration around improved "customer service." It remains to be seen whether he'll really be able to hold departments accountable by measuring -- and publicizing -- their performance and customer-satisfaction ratings. But I can assure you that no other candidate for mayor comes anywhere near Fenty in conceiving the job in such purely management terms.

Like the business community, and most of the other candidates, Fenty's top priority is fixing the public schools. To his credit, he's admitted, in effect, that he was wrong when he opposed Mayor Anthony A. Williams for wanting to take control of the public schools. And should he succeed where Williams failed, he's prepared to blow up the system's central bureaucracy, empower principals, extend the school day and the school year, and offer the teachers union a deal they won't be allowed to refuse: better pay for better performance.

Finally, Fenty's liberal bent should not be mistaken for fiscal profligacy. Here's the rare committee chairman who opposed a funding increase for the social-service agencies under his purview until they could spend their existing budgets effectively. He's also pledged not to raise taxes. And while the business community has come to rely on city subsidies for pet projects, including the baseball stadium, it's hard to characterize Fenty's skepticism toward such subsidies as anything but consistent, principled and conservative. It's also encouraging that while he may not know the names of all the bond-rating agencies, Fenty hopes to keep Nat Gandhi, a Wall Street favorite, on for another term as the city's chief financial officer.

More than 20 years ago, back in Boston, I came to know another ambitious and populist city council member named Ray Flynn. Flynn could be counted on to show up at any multi-alarm fire in the city, no matter the time of day or the number of beers Ray had consumed. Political reporters and other politicians dismissed Flynn's fire runs as political grandstanding, but Boston voters thought they spied a genuine concern for ordinary people and public services. They went on to elect him mayor thrice -- the first time over the strong opposition of the business establishment, the other times with its support.

I see some of the same qualities, and same potential, in Adrian Fenty. The success of his door-by-door campaign, fueled by donations of time and money from satisfied constituents, taps into a hunger by District residents for better service, more efficient use of tax dollars and a closer connection to their government. Wouldn't it be swell if the business community could see that more as an opportunity than a threat?

Steven Pearlstein can be reached at pearlsteins@washpost.com.