Harry Jaffe, The Examiner
2007-07-03 07:00:00.0
Current rank: # 3,060 of 4,916

WASHINGTON -

Wednesday’s Palisades Parade is one of the best July Fourth celebrations around. Snaking along MacArthur Boulevard in the District of Columbia community along bluffs over the Potomac River, it combines the neighborhood feel of vintage cars and kids in soccer uniforms with the pomp of marching bands. And politicians. Lots of them.

The 41st annual march will be the starting gate for the 2008 campaign season. Get ready for fireworks for the next 16 months: Five council seats are up for grabs, and in the Fenty Era of perpetual campaigning, the races have begun.

Take Kwame Brown, who’s defending his at-large seat. He’s already raising cash, putting campaign signs up all over town and marching in Palisades.

“I’ll be there,” Carol Schwartz tells me.

The city’s lone Republican officeholder, Schwartz probably has walked, waved and grinned her way down MacArthur Boulevard on Independence Day more times than any other pol. If she hasn’t held an office, she’s run for it: two terms on the school board starting in 1974, four terms as at-large council member, four campaigns for mayor.

You might think Schwartz’s seat is safe. Her name is a brand almost as strong as Marion Barry’s. She can munch bagels in Brookland and chomp fried chicken in Anacostia. People love Carol in all eight wards. As a legislator, she’s helped reform the DMV; now, she’s got her eye on procurement.

“We need people who have some wisdom and experience,” she tells me. Something tells me she had better strap on those campaign shoes, hit the street and start knocking on doors.

At least two pretenders want her seat. Dee Hunter’s name has been mentioned as a contender. The more serious challenge could come from Adam Clampitt, a political novice in the Fenty mold. He wants to do to Schwartz what Fenty did to Charlene Drew Jarvis and Linda Cropp.

“I’m going to run a very energetic, door-knocking campaign for the next 16 months,” says Clampitt, 32. As a kid, he worked in Barry’s summer youth program and volunteered in council campaigns.

Now, he works public relations and marketing for Burson-Marsteller, a firm run by political pollster Mark Penn. He created Districtmatters.com, a Web site on local politics and policy.

Clampitt also has opened an exploratory committee and started raising money. His base is on Capitol Hill, thanks to an association with Council Member Tommy Wells, for whom he’s worked press. But Schwartz is no Cropp. The woman can connect — despite her Republican affiliation, which is a handicap in this bluest town in America. The Home Rule Charter mandates that two council members must represent a party other than Democratic.

When David Catania abandoned the GOP to become an independent, that left Schwartz. Being a Republican in D.C. has always been hurtful, she tells me. But when Schwartz gets revved up, flashes those big brown eyes and belts out her throaty laugh, the voters see “Carol,” without the GOP drag. How soon will they see her campaign?

“When I start,” she says.

It starts Wednesday in Palisades.

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