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Candidates Hustle on a Day of Politics and Parades
Anna Hawk, 2, watches the annual Greenbelt Labor Day Festival Parade. Several candidates seeking to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes were also in attendance.
(By Marvin Joseph -- The Washington Post)
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Jones said the new mayor needs to address the dynamic in communities such as LeDroit Park in which new residents pay high prices for homes while drug dealing and other criminal activity happen outside their doors.
Affordable housing and crime are "two issues that will make or break this city," Covington said.
Jessica McGee, 26, said she was interested in buying a home in the next few years. She worried that mayoral candidates were targeting different parts of the city, dividing the electorate. She recently moved to Capitol Hill from Northwest Washington's Ward 3, where she encountered Fenty campaigning on her moving day. Fenty helped load her mattress into her car but hasn't won her vote. She's choosing between him and council Chairman Linda W. Cropp (D).
Glenda Wheeler of the 800 block of E Street NE said stability and a track record were what she was looking for in a candidate. "One of the things I hope is that the city will continue to prosper but prosper responsibly," Wheeler said. "I trust Linda Cropp to do that."
In Kensington, parade watchers were trying to decide between the Democratic front-runners to replace Duncan, former County Council member Isiah "Ike" Leggett and at-large council member Steven A. Silverman. Although many residents praise Duncan for sparking economic revitalization in some parts of the county, they worry that the county's politicians have not properly overseen developers.
"It's a chance to start doing things right, to limit the developers' influence," said Amy Rosenberg, 54, a physician from Kensington. She thinks the candidates are "very much the same on a lot of issues" and hasn't decided whom to support.
In Greenbelt, Carolyn Dent, a computer scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, sat on a grassy hill taking in the Labor Day spectacle with hundreds of other potential voters. "There's going to be change, sure," she said. "But whether or not that results in a change in policies remains to be seen."
Most of the candidates who want to replace Sarbanes were at the parade, and Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D) scrambled for votes just feet away from his potential opponent, Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele (R).
Cardin predicted "a year of change" and said the Senate could shift to Democratic control. "Not with my election, it won't," Steele said.
Democrat Josh Rales, who has spent $5 million of his own money on the primary, protested the media's description of him as a "money candidate" and added that "I'm hustling" for every vote. His fellow Democratic contender and former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume said he felt a desire for change at the federal level like the one that propelled him and other Democrats into Congress in 1986. "There's something going on," he said.
Political observers are wondering whether there is a desire for change in Virginia.
"Webb winning wouldn't mean much policywise to the region, because senators have less impact" regionally, said Virginia Tech's Lang. "But it would show a huge change in the region, because if somebody like Webb won, he'd win because of Northern Virginia."
