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See How He Runs
Fenty says his volunteers have visited every house in D.C. and he's personally been to more than half of them: "Door-to-door is the purest form of political campaigning."
(Andrea Bruce -- The Washington Post)
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Fenty acknowledges that he indeed taps away on his BlackBerry during those work sessions, preferring to converse with constituents rather than with colleagues. "When it's time to vote, I vote publicly," he says. "And I don't vote 'present,' I vote yes or no."
None of Fenty's colleagues has endorsed him. But one rose to defend him, sort of.
Jim Graham, who represents Ward 1, said he considers Fenty a friend. They sit next to each other on the council dais, and Graham described Fenty as an ideological soul mate, a fellow liberal.
Right now, there's a hiccup in the friendship. Graham is still steamed at Fenty for voting against a segment of the rent control bill. (Fenty voted for the overall legislation that passed.) Graham also is unhappy that Fenty has refused to cut ties with a campaign worker with whom Graham has clashed.
Still, he says this about Fenty: "He is one of the most mature persons I know. I say that from . . . watching all of the ways in which people have tried to provoke him, and he does not rise to the bait."
Graham signed onto Fenty's mayoral exploratory committee in 2005, because "I believe Adrian represents a new politics for the District of Columbia, a fresh approach to leadership."
He said he still believes that, but he can't bring himself to endorse Fenty.
Lessons Learned
Fenty's brief career as a practicing attorney was unremarkable, except for his fumbling of a case assigned to him by D.C. Superior Court. Like many lawyers, Fenty signed up to take probate cases for wards of the city. In such cases, the lawyers are generally paid from the clients' assets. The court assigned him in 1999 to oversee the affairs of William Hardy Sr., an elderly man who was suffering from dementia and whose money the court thought was being pilfered by relatives.
During the year that Fenty acted as conservator for Hardy, $22,500 disappeared from the man's credit union account. The court found no evidence that Fenty had stolen from Hardy, but it did find that he made mistakes in filing documents and monitoring Hardy's affairs that allowed Hardy's relatives to exploit him. Fenty repaid $15,000 to Hardy's estate and received an informal admonishment from the Office of the Bar Counsel.
Cropp has used the Hardy case, and that of another probate client whose case Fenty was dismissed from, to question Fenty's readiness for the mayor's office. Fenty "turned his back on the elderly," said one Cropp brochure; another said he "abandoned" Hardy.
What happened in that case doesn't jibe with the image of the council member known as intensely passionate about individual attention to constituents. Fenty will not discuss how it happened, brushing aside questions about whether his inexperience led to the mistake or he was distracted by his preparations to run for the Ward 4 council seat.
"No excuses. It shouldn't have happened," he says. "I've always said I made a mistake, and I learned from that mistake."
