Cropp and Fenty Have Pursued Their Legislative Agendas By Opposite Means

Seizing an Opening

Fenty won the Ward 4 council seat in 1999 after a relentless door-to-door campaign to oust Charlene Drew Jarvis.

With no council committee chairmanship assigned to him during his first four-year term, he focused on constituent services. Fenty, armed with his ever-present BlackBerry, and his staff answered 200 e-mails a day, distributed bulletins to 2,500 constituents and posted replies on six neighborhood Listservs.

Sara Green, a Ward 4 advisory neighborhood commissioner, said she had unsuccessfully lobbied the city's Transportation Department to install a stop sign at an intersection. At a neighborhood meeting, Green said, a Fenty staff member challenged a transportation official, who agreed to reconsider.

Fenty popped up so often at meetings that residents of other wards began calling him. Not all of Fenty's constituents were as enamored, however. Dwayne Toliver, former head of the Shepherd Park Citizens Association, said Fenty was slow to respond when asked to clean up an abandoned property on 14th Street NW and to stop construction of multiple homes near a park.

"He's done a lot with the easy issues -- streetlights, potholes, cutting grass," Toliver said. "But more challenging issues -- nothing."

Inside the District government building, Fenty found ways to insert himself into big issues even though he was a junior member.

For example, in 2003, he proposed implementing a commuter tax on suburbanites even though the D.C. Appleseed Center, a leading proponent of the tax, advised him to wait until a federal lawsuit had been decided. Fenty's aggressive maneuver risked angering Congress, but it illustrated his willingness to take a stand. Also that year, Fenty held a news conference with school activists decrying the condition of buildings at the same moment the council was meeting with the mayor to discuss education.

His tendency for theatrics put Fenty in the headlines but drew colleagues' criticism that he was more interested in media coverage than in the hard work of legislating -- fine-tuning proposals and negotiating with fellow council members.

Last year, Fenty took reporters on a tour of the city's dilapidated public schools and proposed using lottery proceeds to fund $1 billion in construction bonds to renovate them. But council members promptly mocked the idea when the city's chief financial officer ruled that the lottery revenue could not support the bonds.

"He did not know what he was doing. He was just grandstanding," said Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who has long been critical of Fenty. "I don't think he's a serious person."

By then, school activists had bombarded the council with calls and e-mails. Under pressure, Cropp, Evans and Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3) worked out a new financing plan, with Fenty excluded from the deliberations.

On his campaign Web site, Fenty lists the measure as his top achievement.