A Good Deal for the District?

The main flaw in Fenty's bill was its reliance on lottery money, which was not a dependable source of revenue. "Adrian's plan was absolutely absurd," says Jack Evans, chairman of the council's finance committee. "The financing was hopeless -- and the financing was the whole point."

Cropp referred the bill to the finance committee, and Evans was inclined to bury it. But Fenty kept ginning up press, and school advocates finally persuaded Evans to hold a hearing that July. After dozens of parents begged for the bill, the finance committee grudgingly sent it to Patterson's education committee by a 1-0 vote; Patterson voted yes, while everyone else abstained. "Fenty's bill was ridiculous, and it was going nowhere before Patterson rescued it," says Mary Filardo, director of the 21st Century School Fund. "But Fenty did get it started."

The advocates were grateful to Fenty, but they were also worried that his unpopularity with his colleagues -- and his candidacy for mayor -- would doom a "Fenty bill." So on July 15, Borbely sent Fenty an e-mail suggesting that he step back and let his colleagues "claim ownership" of the bill. "My thought is that, moving forwards, improvements and solutions and new ideas should come from them," Borbely wrote.

That's what happened. Patterson beefed up the bill's oversight and changed its funding mechanism to business taxes. But the business community went berserk, and Evans demanded that the bill return to his committee, because the financing had changed. This is where Cropp entered the picture, brokering a deal in which Patterson agreed to return the bill to Evans, who agreed to move it that winter. "Linda deserves a huge amount of credit for making sure it moved forward," says Borbely, who is supporting Fenty for mayor.

Fenty was the only member to oppose the deal; he didn't mind his bill getting rewritten, but he didn't want it to get buried. But Evans put the bill on much sounder financial footing, creating a 15-year, $3 billion plan guaranteed by sales taxes and the capital budget. The council passed it unanimously.

"Adrian introduced the bill, and that's it," Evans says. "He doesn't participate in the actual workings of government."

But Patterson doesn't see it that way. "Linda kept the train on the track, but Adrian got that train moving," she says. "He saw a huge gaping need, and he took steps to address it. You can say he just did it for political reasons, but it got done in the end."

Over Labor Day weekend, I spent a rainy afternoon watching Cropp knock on doors in one of the city's richer and whiter precincts. Not too many voters were home, and not many voters who were home seemed to appreciate that she has helped restore the city's fiscal sanity. She's a former teacher, guidance counselor and school board member, but I watched her spend 10 minutes trying to convince Dan Charles that she cares about schools. "I just think Fenty's got more energy," Charles told me later. Then I watched her give a 15-minute school spiel to Craig and Marcia Hoogstra, including references to "unencumbered funding" and "facilitating stakeholders."

"I just retired from a company because they didn't appreciate experience, but I can see the benefit of new blood," Marcia Hoogstra told me afterward. "Fenty has fresh ideas." Such as? "Well, I can't think of any right now," she acknowledged.

Cropp has succeeded at herding cats and "facilitating stakeholders" on the council, but she seems out of her element on the trail. Sporting a track suit and a Nationals cap that didn't fit, she fumbled her attempt to sing to a little girl: "It's raining, it's snowing. Snoring? The old man is snoring?"

"Flash-splash isn't my style," she told me with a smile. "I guess that's not helping me in the campaign, is it?"

Fenty, by contrast, is a terrific salesman. He's not exactly flash-splash -- he's got a pleasantly goofy grin, and a slightly awkward pitch -- but he's a closer. I watched him door-knock in a working-class minority neighborhood, and he didn't spend 10 or 15 minutes talking to anyone; his meet-and-greets were purely transactional, usually less than a minute. I didn't see him ask a single voter about their lives or their concerns, but they liked his youth, his energy and the fact that they had seen him before: "I tell you, it seems like he's everywhere," said Evelyn Stephens, a 66-year-old substitute teacher. "I just hope we still see him out here when he's mayor."

As mayor, Fenty would have to do more than show up at the front door. He would have to work with Congress and the council, and deal with economic development and public safety. "It's nice that he's making contact with people, but then what?" Cropp asked. Dwayne Toliver, a Democratic activist in Fenty's ward, says Fenty is great at attending meetings, moderating meetings and proposing more meetings, but not so great at making things happen: "Adrian takes care of the low-hanging fruit -- trees, trash and traffic -- but good government is more than making a call to get a pothole fixed."

But what is good government, if not responding to people's needs? It didn't take a genius or a workhorse to see that the District's schools needed help, but Fenty forced the issue. Maybe he did it only to get elected; maybe that's why he gets potholes fixed, too. Fenty's opponents deride him as an old-style machine politician, but Washington could reap the benefits if his machine works. Just as his bungled legal case shows he's capable of neglecting his duties, his council record suggests he's capable of taking care of business. There's nothing wrong with personal ambition -- as long as it's harnessed to municipal ambition.

The Barry era gave charisma a bad name. The Williams era gave boredom a much better name. The Fenty machine wants the city to believe that a mayor can be charismatic and fiscally responsible. It is, after all, the nation's capital of the United States of America.

grunwaldmr@washpost.com

Michael Grunwald is a Washington Post staff writer.