On December 1, the District of Columbia Republican Party filed a lawsuit against the D.C. Board of Elections, seeking to claim one of the City Council-at-large seats for a Republican candidate.
Washington, D.C., elects two city council-at-large members every two years. Political parties are only permitted to run one nominee for this office. The goal of this law is to prevent D.C. from having a city council that is composed of nothing but Democrats.
Last month, Democratic nominee Kwame R. Brown won one of the seats. He polled 172,272 votes. The second-place finisher, with 71,720 votes, was Michael A. Brown, listed on the ballot as “Independent”. However, the Republican Party charges that Michael A. Brown should not have been on the ballot with the label “independent”, because, the party argues, he was a de facto Democrat. He had been registered Democratic until May 20, 2008, and had voted in the Democratic presidential primary earlier this year. His campaign literature described himself as “Independent*Democrat”, and he held himself out as a leading representative of the Obama campaign.
If Michael A. Brown was “really” a Democrat, he could not have been on the November ballot, since the Democratic Party was only permitted to run one nominee. If Brown is disqualified, the seat would either go to the ballot-listed Republican nominee, Patrick Mara (who polled 37,447 votes), or to Carol Schwartz, an incumbent Republican who ran a write-in campaign. D.C. hasn’t tallied the write-ins for Schwartz, but 39,493 write-ins were cast for City Council-at-Large, so at this point no one knows who got more votes, Schwartz or Mara.
The Republican Party lawsuit is Kabel v D.C. Bd. of Elections, 08-AA-1513, D.C. Court of Appeals.
The republican party is just being jealous because they lost to an independent, and independents rarely win elections. So they have to go and bash the little guys.
“Little guys?” Michael Brown is hardly a “little guy,” he’s a well-connected and rather powerful player in the D.C. political scene and the son of former cabinet member Ron Brown. He’s an “independent” kind of the way Michael Bloomberg became a Republican — not by getting a surprise revelation from on high regarding deeply held fundamental beliefs, but simply because he wanted to do an end run around a crowded primary field in a city that is overwhelmingly Democratic.
Michael Brown knew he had no chance of beating Kwame Brown in D.C.’s de faco election – the Democratic Party primary – so he simply changed the party affiliation on his voter registration. That’s it. Everybody in D.C. knows that this is the case, that he was and remains a Democrat, and that he clearly violated the spirit of the law, which is to ensure that true political minorities have at least one representative on the city council. But he did not violate the strict letter of this poorly written law, so the Republican Party of D.C., which has a legitimate complaint, will likely not prevail in court.
Ron Brown was also Democratic national chairman.
Brown’s actions are troubling, but the Republican lawsuit is not the answer. The Republicans should acknowledge that limited nomination is a flawed method and advocate a more meaningful system of proportional representation.
There is no way to stop the legal looting of the City of Washington. They will find a way around the law to legally steal and waste all of the money. Without Carol on the Council, you won’t notice until the trash stops getting picked up.
It would be nice if at the moment Michael A. Brown takes the oath of office, a swat team would swoop in and arrest all those rascals. The BoEE too. How long could they be held? Can they be held until the DC GOP can come up with something for them to be charged with? Why aren’t the Republicans on the Hill outraged and calling for the end of home rule? Can’t the government hold people indefinitely without charging them? Maybe Brown and his conspirators could be charged with domestic terrorism. After all, I’m pretty terrified, aren’t you? 😉
does anyone notice how duplicitous this lawsuit is, given that the republicans essentially had two nominees as well?
The law says one cannot be “affiliated” with, in this case, the Democratic Party. While formal party membership registration would be one indication of party “affiliation,” it is not the only way. Michael Brown is clearly affiliated with the Democrats.
On the Republican front, by way of background, Carol Schwartz lost the Republican Primary to Patrick Mara and then ran as a write-in candidate. There is no duplicity: either of them would be the only Republican on council if elected–not the “no more than three including the chairman” that the Democrats have. Republican-turned-Independent David Catania holds the other non-Democratic seat).