| AU hosts first televised 2006 D.C. mayoral debate BY MATT GETTY The Washington, D.C., 2006 mayoral campaign got into full swing on campus last Wednesday, as the National Pan-Hellenic Council hosted the contest’s first televised debate in the Kay Spiritual Life Center. Students, faculty, and city residents crammed the building and overflowed onto the front steps as five candidates defined their stances on crime, education, urban development, D.C. statehood, and—of course—baseball. 
Photo by Jeff Watts
Washington, D.C., mayoral candidates, from left, Michael Brown, Linda Cropp, Adrian Fenty, Marie Johns, and Vincent Orange On crime, mayoral hopefuls Linda Cropp and Vincent Orange sparred over whether more police would make the city safer. Orange, a current city council member, pledged to increase the police force by 1,600, but Cropp, the current city council chair, argued that more wasn’t the answer. “We have more police officers per capita than any other city in this country, so it’s not the number it’s the deployment,” she said. “If we have all of our police officers protecting federal buildings and not in the neighborhoods, what good is that?” Former D.C. Boxing and Wrestling Commission vice chair Michael Brown, on the other hand, stressed the link between crime and education. “You can have police officers on every corner,” he said, “but until young people have hope, opportunity, and something to look forward to, there’s going to be crime in this city.” Improving D.C.’s education also played a central role in former Verizon CEO Marie Johns’s comments. Stressing involvement and accountability over facilities improvements, she pledged to unite the school board president and superintendent with the city council chair and the teacher’s union president to “produce better results.” The evening’s boldest statements came from current city council member Adrian Fenty, who said he would have rejected the major league baseball deal unless the owners agreed to fund the stadium and even promised to break the law for the D.C. statehood cause. “There is no way I’m going to stand by and let a federal law that I think is superseded by the Constitution of the United States say that we can’t spend local taxpayer dollars . . . how we want,” he said when asked whether he would use city funds to lobby for statehood even though a federal law prohibits it. Throughout the evening, the panel of questioners, which included WAMU’s Lisa Nurnberger and the Washington Post’s Vanessa Williams, steered the candidates away from campaign rhetoric with pointed questions—two of which came from the AU community. Debate moderator Bruce DePuyt, a NewsChannel 8 talk show host, not only ensured equal air time for each candidate but also consistently pushed for specific answers. To the candidates’ dismay, in fact, he twice asked them to indicate their answers by a show of hands. The resultant straight talk prompted spontaneous applause and shouts of support from the audience more than once. Such engagement offered evidence that Interim President Neil Kerwin, who introduced the event, was right when he said, “You picked the right place to stage this debate . . . The students who are in this audience tonight are among the most politically astute and prepared students in the United States.” 
Photo by Jeff Watts
Debate moderator Bruce DePuyt, second from left, and Interim President Neil Kerwin, third from right, pose with the D.C. mayoral candidates. |
