Harry Jaffe: Playing the race card in D.C.’s Republican party

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - As if the D.C. Republican Party isn’t marginal enough, the top of the ticket is blowing up as we head into the prime campaign season.

After I filed my Tuesday column, in which lamented the fact that D.C. is a one-party town and introduced GOP mayoral hopeful Dennis Moore, David Kranich called.

“I just challenged the petitions of my two competitors,” said Kranich, who’s running for mayor. “I will be the only Republican on the ballot.”

Kranich, sounding as if he had squashed a couple of ants, said Moore had collected only 154 signatures on his petitions. Albert Ceccone, another GOP hopeful, had too many Democrats and Independents to make the 300 required GOP signatures.

I checked with the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. Indeed, Moore and Ceccone are off. Kranich will be the only name on the primary ballot.

Moore scoffed at the lack of names on his petitions and dissed the entire petition process.

“I’m running full force as a write-in candidate,” he said.

Then he insinuated the D.C. Republican Committee has a race problem.

“The DCRC has a white, upper-class, country club style,” Moore said. He’s the only African-American running for mayor as a Republican. “They are more used to their own clique,” which he described as “white, blue-blood D.C. Republican aristocracy.”

Robert Kabel, chair of the local GOP, was taken by surprise.

“First time I’ve heard any criticism at all,” he told me. “Dennis never came to us. I’m sure he feels stung, but it’s his fault, not ours. He never asked for help.”

As for race and the Republicans, Kabel says there are 30 African-Americans on the 100-member central committee, though none in leadership.

In the fall elections, the GOP is fielding Theresa Conroy, a Caucasian, for Ward 3; Marcus Skelton, an African-American, for at large; and Antonio Williams, a Hispanic, in Ward 6.

Says Kabel: “That’s a pretty broad spectrum.”

Kabel stretches the national GOP spectrum. He’s the first and only openly gay chair of a Republican state committee.

This squabble at the top only cements the pathetic picture for the D.C. Republicans. They are mostly white in a black city. There are 30,000 of them; the number of Democrats is closer to 300,000.

The GOP ticket is now topped by Kranich, a young, hard-charging real estate broker from suburban Philly. He’s been in town for 12 years. Kabel calls him “a nice young man who will run a credible campaign. He understands the problems with his age and lack of experience in politics.”

And his blinding whiteness. I tell Kranich his chances are as good as a snowball’s in a D.C. heat wave. He says: “Better than that.”

Not really. But he does have a better chance at highlighting the poverty of the local GOP — in funds, in activists, in issues. Kranich vows to shake the tree of national GOP contributors to rain cash on the D.C. party.

The party could turn ugly if Dennis Moore paints the primary as black vs. white.

Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.

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