Ed Cowan Endorses Patrick Mara

At a candidates' forum Monday evening in Zion Baptist Church on Blagden Avenue NW, the youngest candidate for the At-Large council seat, Joshua Lopez, told the 75 people present that “if you elect the same people over and over, nothing will change.” Lopez promised that if elected, he would bring “new ideas” to the District government, which he said needs “checks and balances.”

Lopez was right about what is needed. But at age 27, he is not yet the candidate to establish “checks and balances” and to be the voice of a political opposition on the oh-so-cozy, 13-member council.

That candidate is Patrick Mara, the only Republican running in the April 26 special election to fill an At-Large seat. It is now held provisionally by Sekou Biddle, who was appointed in January by the DC Democratic Committee.

(Biddle did not come to Monday night's forum. As someone announced for him, he was being arrested by the U.S. Capitol Police, along with Mayor Vincent Gray, Chairman Kwame Brown and four other council members. Gray's office boasted in a press release that they were arrested for “civil disobedience” as a result of their protest on the Capitol grounds of the Congress's restrictions on District budget autonomy in last weekend's 11th hour spending agreement for 2011. It was political theater, designed to make a point about the District's lack of complete self-government.)

Mara, elected in November to the Ward 1 seat on the Board of Education, is a sensible, urban Republican. He would be the only Republican on the Council. It now consists of 11 avowed Democrats, one Independent, David Catania (At Large, who was a Republican when first elected in 1997), and one faux Independent, Michael Brown (At Large), who is a Democrat to the bone.and has not denied it.

Enhancing DC Democracy
Readers of these Reports to DC Voters will recognize that since their inception in 2005, they have endorsed no candidate. I depart from that abstemious neutrality now because I see in this special election an unusual opportunity for the enhancement of democratic (small d) politics in the District.

Putting a Republican on the council would create an Opposition, always a good thing in a representative legislature, especially a small one dominated by one party. It would be a step towards making the District a two-party polity, one that Democrats, locally and nationally, can no longer take for granted. Winning the Democratic nomination might no longer assure victory at the general election. The November balloting could become meaningful. Who could oppose that?

Mara Can Win
Mara is attractive, and he can win. He took the Republican nomination away from veteran council member Carol Schwartz (At Large) in the 2008 primary and last November he won his Board of Education seat by ousting an incumbent. With two prominent, regular Democrats (Biddle and Vincent Orange, a National Committeeman and former two-term council member) and two independent but little-known Democrats (Lopez and Bryan Weaver) on the ballot, Democratic votes will be scattered and Mara could grab a plurality—and victory.

Patrick Mara is 40 years old, owns a house on 11th Street NW in Columbia Heights, owns an interest in a pub down the street, and has his own political and business consulting enterprise, Dolan Associates. He is a small businessman, and he argues that the District should offer more “incentives” to the creation of small business.

Of middling height, with auburn hair (“it turns red in summer”) and blue eyes, he has an open, outgoing manner and is not afraid to admit in public that he doesn't know something (I have heard him do it).

Against Tax Increases, For Less Spending
Mara portrays himself as “socially progressive, fiscally responsible.” Which is to say, he supports the District's same-sex marriage law and would cut the municipal budget—the payroll of 32,000 employees (too many for a city of 600,000, he says) and the fleet of official cars.

He opposes all tax increases. He would help the District's jobless find work by offering them adult education and job training, not by imposing hiring requirements on employers.

He would end what he calls the “preferences” of council members, notably the official license plates that immunize them from parking tickets. He would cut their salary ($125,000) by 10 percent. He says the cut should be larger but, if elected, he would go for 10 percent as attainable.

Under the heading of transparency, he would require elected officials to disclose—on the Internet-- their financial holdings (and their spouses' holdings) and publish their tax returns. Would he publish his return before the voting on April 26 or a list of his assets? Mara blushed and demurred, saying such disclosure would reveal how little income he has and that to do it alone “wouldn't be fair” to him. His job on the Board of Education pays $15,000.

Mara, a tad vaguely, says he would require DC government employees with official credit or debit cards to disclose more about how they use those cards to spend the taxpayers' money.

An Envoy to Hill Republicans
Mara argues that if elected, he could serve as the District's first envoy to Republicans in Congress. He would strive to persuade them that DC deserves a vote in the House. He said Monday evening that he has already met with more than 20 Hill Republicans.

A graduate of Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY, where is is president of the alumni association and holds a seat on the board of trustees, Mara has an MBA from Babson College. He avers that he has a strong interest in renewable energy and has been an advocate of “green” policies since his student days.

The special election takes place on Tuesday, April 26. Early voting has begun at the Board of Elections, 441 4th Street NW. For more information, go to www. dc.boee.us. []