Activist Drops Campaign to Recall Mayor Gray, Council Chairman Brown
From Alden Leonard. Contact him at alden[AT]borderstan.com and follow him @aldenleonard on Twitter.
The Washington Times reports that the effort to recall Mayor Vincent Gray and Council Chairman Kwame Brown has fizzled. Fred Butler, who was organizing the effort, believes the ethics infractions of the city’s top officials will be revealed by ongoing federal investigations, and that his supporters’ money could be better used elsewhere.
Organizer Fred Butler drops effort to recall Mayor Vincent Gray and Council Chairman Kwame Brown.(Luis Gomez Photos)
Among other obstacles, Butler faced a tight deadline by which he needed to turn in 45,000 signatures from city residents. And that was just to get the ball rolling. From there, Butler faced a long, expensive road and near-insurmountable odds of getting Gray and/or Brown removed from office.
But perhaps the greatest challenge to the recall effort was visibility, or a lack thereof. During the lead-up to last week’s primaries, Butler’s organization was weak at best, with little to no presence around the city as voters went to the polls.
Butler’s attempt joins a handful of other failed recall efforts in the District’s 34-year history of home rule.
Like reading Borderstan’s Politics & Government stories? Get an RSS Feed for the P&G Section, or an RSS Feed for all Borderstan stories.
