Fenty Goes on the Road for Obama Campaign

During his first year in office, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty didn't look for reasons to leave the District.

He made a couple of trips to New York to visit Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I). He attended a convention of shopping center developers in Las Vegas. He took a day trip to the beach and went to the Caribbean for his annual summer vacation with his family. But, otherwise, Fenty (D) stayed put -- ever mindful of the political drubbing his predecessor, Anthony A. Williams (D), took for being a frequent flier.

Until lately, that is. In January, Fenty attended the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, as a guest of Capitals owner Ted Leonsis, who had financed a documentary about the Japanese occupation of Nanking, China.

This month, Fenty was in Newark on Super Tuesday, and in Dallas and Houston last weekend to campaign for Sen. Barack Obama. This weekend, he plans to be in Ohio for more campaigning.

When Fenty endorsed the Illinois Democrat's presidential bid in the summer at a joint appearance at a community center in Ward 6, the mayor promised to do anything to help Obama win the Democratic nomination and the White House. (Obama has promised to push for D.C. voting rights in Congress if he wins.)

So there was Fenty, knocking on doors in Houston with a camera from the Fox TV affiliate following him. "This is a campaign that is really going to change America," Fenty told the station. "The Obama campaign is not going to rest."

Washingtonians who recall Fenty's relentless two-year, door-to-door marathon to win office know his playbook well. A report on the Fox station in Houston showed Fenty, in tie and shirtsleeves (must have been warm), knocking on the door of an elderly man.

"Can we count on your support?" Fenty asked him.

"Oh, yes," the man replied.

"When you go after every vote, when you knock on every door, you not only have a much better chance of winning, but you energize people," Fenty told the Fox reporter.

In an interview, Fenty said he ran into Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who also has endorsed Obama, on the plane to Dallas. It's not clear where Fenty will appear in Ohio, the other key state that Obama and his rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, are contesting Tuesday. One mayoral aide suggested Fenty might return to his alma mater, Oberlin College, near Cleveland. But the mayor said Monday night that his itinerary wasn't set.

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