Dragging a Mayoral Contest Into the Muck

To give you an idea of its length, the opposition research dossier on Adrian Fenty, the Ward 4 D.C. Council member running for mayor, begins with an index that covers three pages by itself. Pages 5 through 10 contain background and personal information on Fenty, his wife, Michelle Cross Fenty, their children, his parents and Fenty's two brothers, as well as the results of police record searches. The report ends 146 pages later.

The intervening 136 pages are devoted to an examination of Fenty's law career, a lawsuit over a financial transaction that he and his wife settled out of court, chapters on his handling of two probate cases, additional background and personal information on two Fenty personal and campaign associates, and a lengthy voting record critique. Interspersed throughout the dossier are disparaging remarks about Fenty and insinuations of improper behavior by him, his wife and his friends.

The identity of the dossier's author (or perhaps authors, since the document contains phrases such as "We know the second law firm . . ." and "We have not identified . . .") was not disclosed by the person who handed the document to me after first demanding anonymity. The name of the client who commissioned the research also was not disclosed.

This much, however, I can say: The report on Fenty was given to me by a longtime supporter of council chairman and mayoral hopeful Linda Cropp.

Welcome, Washington residents, to the politics of disparagement.

The dossier seeks to assassinate Fenty's character, denigrate his family and friends, and discredit him as a public official.

What makes the exercise truly distasteful, at least in my view, is that the opposition to Fenty is attempting to keep its own hands clean by surreptitiously leaking the derogatory information to the press, leaving it to journalists to do the dirty work.

That, of course, explains why the Cropp supporter called to let it be known that a thick document on Fenty was available for the taking, provided the supporter's name was not disclosed.

I don't know whether copies of the "research" have been slipped to other journalists or whether contents of the dossier have been parceled out to individual reporters as "tips."

Between now and Election Day, other anti-Fenty stories may turn up in the media. It's a good bet that some of them will be based on information in the dossier. The only question is whether news organizations, if they use the information, will disclose to the public that the source is a Fenty opponent. Or will they pretend they dug it up on their own? Never mind, I'm not the ombudsman or a news editor.

On Thursday afternoon I met Linda Cropp at a restaurant to discuss the dossier. Cropp, after being shown its table of contents, said she might have seen parts of the report, but not the report in its entirety. She said her campaign had not ordered or paid for a report on Fenty, and she stressed that her charges related to Fenty's record as a lawyer are based on public records. Cropp said members of her campaign staff are under strict orders to confine their scrutiny to Fenty's public record and not his family. Yesterday, after a lunch with Post editors and reporters, Cropp told me that her attacks on Fenty's handling of probate cases were based on news reports and public records her campaign staff gained independently of the dossier.

So who bought and paid for the dossier on Fenty, his family and friends?