Candidates Hustle on a Day of Politics and Parades
D.C., Md. Races Enter Week Before Primaries

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 5, 2006

A battalion of candidates fanned out across the Washington region yesterday in a Labor Day tradition of hand-to-hand politicking, and in one week voters will make their first choices in 2006 elections that will radically alter the area's political leadership.

The District mayoral candidates crisscrossed the city, tracking down voters one at a time and changing a few minds in the process. Maryland candidates marched down voter-lined streets in Greenbelt, Gaithersburg and Kensington. Virginia Sen. George Allen (R) rode a brown and white horse named Bubba while Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and former governor Mark R. Warner (D) stumped for Allen's Democratic opponent in the tiny town of Buena Vista, the annual host of the commonwealth's Labor Day politics.

Allen and opponent James Webb are already on the November ballot, but when voters in Maryland and the District go to the polls next Tuesday, they will be choosing from more than 750 candidates in the Washington suburbs and more than 50 names on the District ballot.

There's a reason for the interest.

When it's all over, the District will have a new mayor, council chairman and at least three new council members. Montgomery County will get its first new executive since 1994. Maryland will have a new U.S. senator and attorney general for the first time in 20 years, and its other statewide incumbents are facing their toughest challengers ever. And the suddenly tight contest between Allen and Webb will yield new information about how growth and immigration have altered the commonwealth's political landscape, especially in increasingly influential Northern Virginia.

"One of the things making this election so noteworthy is that there are so many people leaving," said Scott Sterling, vice president for government relations for the Greater Washington Board of Trade. He was referring to the decisions of D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams, Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, Maryland Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes and Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., all Democrats, not to seek reelection.

But for all the changes in personnel, dramatically different political philosophies don't appear likely.

"It doesn't look like a radical shift in policies," said Robert E. Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, which is based in Alexandria. He sees the region's growth fueled by immigrants and workers from other parts of the country drawn by job growth, and the resulting diversity doesn't lend itself to candidates who appeal only to bloc-voting groups.

As he puts it: "Characters need not apply."

What is significant, according to James C. Dinegar, president and chief executive of the Board of Trade, is that all of those departing elected officials chose to retire.

"There isn't a throw-the-bums-out [sentiment] in any of the elections," he said.

In the District, though, there is a feeling that there's much work to be done. LeDroit Park residents Cyril Jones and Charles Covington encountered mayoral candidate Marie C. Johns on her campaign walk yesterday, where she persuaded him and a friend to consider her over D.C. Council member Adrian M. Fenty (D-Ward 4).

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."

The region's shift -- with Fairfax County voting for John F. Kerry in 2004 and Kaine adding Loudoun and Prince William counties for a sweep of Northern Virginia a year later -- is the great hope of Virginia Democrats.

A Webb victory, Warner said yesterday, would cement the notion that Virginia has changed since the late 1990s, when GOP control of the legislature and the governor's mansion seemed to indicate an overwhelmingly conservative electorate.

For his part, Allen dismissed polls that suggested the race was tied as "all very interesting to political scientists."

"I majored in history," he said, "not political science."

Staff writers Michael Laris, Michael D. Shear, Elissa Silverman, Nikita Stewart and Nancy Trejos contributed to this report.

Post questions about the local elections for Robert Barnes on washingtonpost.com. He will answer them on his weekly chat, Beltway and Beyond, at 2 p.m. Thursday.