By Nikita Stewart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Now that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray are done fighting over luxury boxes at Verizon Center and Nationals Park, they need something new to wrestle over.
Education reform, the master facilities plan for schools, and various appointments to various boards and commissions are all heady issues to chew on -- too heady for our purposes.
We need something petty, something that really doesn't touch the lives of average residents. Got it! Parking spaces -- reserved ones, of course.
Yes, those coveted ones behind the John A. Wilson Building, giving the city's leaders quick access to a back door.
No one wanted to speak publicly about the matter, but here is what we were told:
Gray recently arrived at the building to find both council spaces filled, one by the Tahoe used by his office and the other by a city car belonging to City Administrator Dan Tangherlini. One of the mayor's three spaces (one is where Tangherlini generally parks) was open, so Gray parked there.
That didn't sit well with the mayor's office, we're told. There was the threat of towing. In the mix, we're told, was Johnny Business himself. That's right, John Falcicchio, adviser to Fenty (D) and all-around get-it-done guy. Johnny Business can occasionally get mixed up in giving Gray (D) and his staff members the business and driving them up the wall. He was the one, we're told, hoarding the tickets to the skybox at Verizon Center last year.
In the recent squabble, the tow truck made it all the way to the Wilson Building. But Ronald Collins, deputy secretary to the council, traded words with the mayor's team. Something about how the council controls the parking spaces and how towing the chairman's car might result in a loss of those spaces.
That resulted, we're told, in a retreat.
Water, Water EverywhereWard 7 D.C. Council candidate Villareal "V.J." Johnson said he knows he will touch 2,016 people as he campaigns to unseat incumbent Yvette M. Alexander (D).
Johnson is one of three candidates challenging Alexander, who broke out of a pack of 16 candidates to win a special election last year to replace council Chairman Vincent C. Gray as the representative from Ward 7. It didn't hurt that she had Gray's endorsement. He has endorsed her this time around, too.
Robin Hammond Marlin, a Hillcrest resident and community activist, and John Campbell, a barber, are the other Democrats running for the seat.
So what is Johnson's strategy? He's hoping his water will help him make a splash. He had 2,016 bottles of natural spring water shipped from Chatsworth, Ga., and they are getting into the hands of residents entering or leaving the Metro or Safeway.
"We tested it out at the Metro," Johnson said.
The 16.9-ounce clear bottles are decorated with white labels with blue and red writing bearing Johnson's campaign office phone number, Web site and slogan, "Building Bridges and Connecting People."
Wait, that sounds familiar.
"Building Bridges, Finding Solutions" is council member Harry Thomas Jr.'s (D-Ward 5) signature slogan, still used as a sign-off on his voice-mail messages.
Johnson said, "So?"
Bottled water is also familiar. Anthony A. Williams (D) distributed it to inform the public that he was a write-in candidate in the 2002 mayoral race after he was infamously knocked off the ballot because some signatures on his nominating petition were deemed invalid.
Johnson, 31, said he is an organizational development consultant and a fourth-generation Washingtonian. His grandfather was the late Johnnie Johnson, a friend of council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and a freelance photographer who died in 1996 after he fell from a boat during a cruise for Barry's birthday party.
"That tragedy kind of turned off this generation [of the family] from politics," Johnson said.
He apparently is the exception. He said that Ward 7 residents are hungry for economic development and jobs, and that he wants to provide them as a council member.
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