WaPo Owes an Apology to the DC Mayor It Drove From Office
When I became a journalist over 15 years ago, I did so to highlight the voices of activists—not top city officials. But things took an unexpected turn in 2014, as the Washington Post sought to end DC Mayor Vincent Gray’s career.
As his reelection bid neared, Gray comfortably led all polls—much to the chagrin of the Post, which hadn’t forgiven him for winning office four years earlier.
In that prior 2010 contest, Gray, riding a wave of Black support, upended the incumbent DC mayor, Adrian Fenty. It was an act for which the Post never forgave Gray, as Fenty was the paper’s dream come true.
Fenty had run as a progressive in 2006, and won in a landslide. But upon taking office, Fenty flipped and adopted the Post’s anti-labor, pro-gentrification agenda as his own. The shocking about-face earned Fenty the Post’s ever-lasting love, but cost him Black voters—and his reelection.
While Fenty conceded to Gray in 2010, the Post had a harder time moving on. And the paper would spend the next four years attacking Gray, particularly on the eve of the 2014 election.
Dog-whistling
As the 2014 election neared, anti-Gray editorials, already commonplace, started running multiple times a week, and then nearly daily. In the nine days leading up to the start of early voting, the Post (3/9–17/14) ran an incredible seven editorials targeting Gray.
And it wasn’t just the editorial page that was busy electioneering.
Two days into early voting, Gray received the endorsement of Marion Barry, the former four-term DC mayor. In his column on the endorsement, the Post’s Dana Milbank (3/19/14) dismissed Barry, who came out of the civil rights movement, as an “old race warrior” who “has inflamed racial tensions for decades.”
Milbank opened by taking advantage of the slurred speech of the ailing Barry (who’d live just eight more months):
Embattled Washington Mayor Vincent Gray called in a notorious predecessor, Marion Barry, to prop up his reelection campaign Wednesday afternoon. Gray got exactly what he deserved.
“Vince Gray,” Barry told a modest crowd in a church basement in Southeast Washington, “is a leader with a solid crack record.”
The self-proclaimed mayor for life caught this Freudian slip. “Track record,” he corrected.
Barry, now a 78-year-old City Council member in failing health, is, famously, the one with the crack record.
Milbank’s racialized attacks were not a one-off. A week earlier, Post columnist Mike DeBonis (3/13/14) gratuitously dropped Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s name into the mix, in an attempt to tie him to Gray:
If Gray is engaging in tribal politics, he’s certainly doing it more subtly than the master of the trade, Marion Barry…[who] after his 1990 drug arrest…was not shy about sending signals to his African-American base—embracing the support of Louis Farrakhan and other controversial activists.
Not only does Gray lack ties to Farrakhan—notorious for his history of antisemitism—but as a student at George Washington University, Gray joined a Jewish fraternity, where he was one of three Black students to integrate the school’s all-white fraternity system.
DeBonis was too busy dog-whistling to white voters to mention this in his column, ironically headlined “Is Vincent Gray Dog-Whistling to Black Voters?”
The day before DeBonis’ piece, Jonetta Rose Barras’ Post column (3/12/14) associated Gray with “some Third World dictatorship” and “snake-oil sellers.”
‘Growing ex-prisoner vote’
Meanwhile, with early-voting underway, here’s how Post reporter Aaron Davis opened his story, “In DC Mayor’s Race, Embattled Gray May Have a Secret Weapon in Growing Ex-Prisoner Vote” (3/22/14):
Above an official portrait of Mayor Vincent C. Gray, crisp silver lettering spells out a welcome to one of the shiniest new places in DC government—the Office on Returning Citizen Affairs.
And on a flier lying nearby: “YOU CAN LEGALLY VOTE!”
The bustling facility is designed solely for convicted criminals…a slice of the population growing by thousands each year. Ex-offenders account for at least one in 10 DC residents and perhaps many more…. Any taboo that previously muted politicking with prisoners, some of whom once preyed on city residents, has fallen away in favor of winning a few thousand votes that could tip the balance in a close race….
[And] no one is doing more to capture this vote than Gray, the embattled mayor seeking a second term.
In case the dog-whistling wasn’t loud enough, Davis all but accused Gray of buying the votes of ex-offenders, who in DC are disproportionately Black. He wrote that under Gray, DC
has hired 534 former inmates—most for positions with benefits, including hundreds into jobs that were once off-limits because of their proximity to children, such as school bus attendants, drivers and camp directors.
Despite the Post’s racialized attacks, the paper’s editorial board (3/12/14)—in a textbook example of projection—accused Gray of “injecting race” into the election.
‘Charges should be brought now’
The Post’s dog-whistles to white voters could get the paper only so far—because DC is nearly half Black, and Black DC voters have a history of stubbornly defying the Post at the ballot box.
Knowing this, the Post sought to preempt DC voters by getting rid of Gray before he stood for reelection—via an indictment over his campaign four years earlier.
Gray’s 2010 campaign was aided by $650,000 in undisclosed funds. While Gray maintained he didn’t know about the funds (and he may not have), the Post had what it needed to get him indicted—at least if the US attorney was willing to play ball.
Flattering portrayals of Gray’s would-be-prosecutor, US Attorney Ron Machen, were commonplace in the Post; he was even hailed as “DC’s person of the year” and “St. Ron” in the lead up to the election.
In addition to glowing compliments, the Post also gave Machen his marching orders.
“He already has enough evidence to indict the mayor,” insisted Post columnist Robert McCartney (3/12/14), who previously called Gray “a liar” (5/23/12) who’d “have to resign in disgrace” or go “possibly to prison” (7/14/12). Fellow Post columnist Colbert King’s instructions (3/7/14) to Machen were no less clear: “Charges should be brought now—before DC voters head to the polls. Just get on with it.”
‘Vincent Gray Knew’
While Machen was able to secure seven guilty pleas among Gray’s aides over their roles in the 2010 campaign, he didn’t have the evidence to charge Gray. So he got creative. Just as voters were set to go to the polls, Machen stood before a bank of TV cameras, with FBI and IRS agents as his backdrop, and all but promised to indict the mayor.
The Post took it from there. Blazed atop the next day’s paper—”in type large enough for declarations of war,” noted the late housing organizer Jim McGrath—was Gray’s guilt. “Prosecutors: Vincent Gray Knew,” read the five-column headline (3/11/14).
Only Gray was never convicted of a crime. In fact, he would never even be charged with one. But with the Post and Machen all but promising an imminent indictment, Black turnout was depressed—”suppressed” might be the more apt word.
This is how Gray’s rock-solid lead vanished and he lost to the Post-endorsed Muriel Bowser—who remains mayor to this day, much to the paper’s delight.
Do the right thing
Once Gray was out of office, a new US attorney quietly brought Machen’s five-year investigation to a close.
Gray, now 81 and facing health struggles, recently announced (Washington Post, 12/20/23) that he won’t seek re-election as Ward 7 councilmember, the position he’s held since 2017.
With 2024 marking Gray’s last year in office, the Post should finally do right by him—and apologize.
Photo: Vincent Gray at Obama’s second inauguration (CC photo: Adam Fagen)
