An allegation of vote buying against Mayor Adrian Fenty's reelection team has the Vincent Gray campaign calling for law enforcement to investigate and claiming the incumbent has undermined the integrity of the primary election.
"The notion that the Fenty campaign at some level would be offering payment or employment to anybody in exchange for their vote undermines the integrity of what the electoral process should be about," Mo Elleithee, Gray's senior campaign adviser, said Thursday during a conference call with reporters.
Gray, the D.C. Council chairman, leads Fenty in every recent poll. The Democratic primary is Tuesday.
WJLA reported Wednesday that Fenty campaign teams are approaching young District residents and offering them jobs that pay upward of $100 a day, but they must first vote for Fenty at one of D.C.'s early voting centers. The report includes phone calls and text messages that seemingly corroborate the vote buying claims, but the allegations remain just that, allegations.
"We would never, ever condone any one of our workers offering anything in exchange for a vote," Sean Madigan, Fenty campaign spokesman, said in an e-mail. "We ask everyone on our team to sign and abide by a code of conduct because there is nothing more important than upholding the integrity of this process."
Lloyd Jordan, another Gray adviser and head of the candidate's legal team, said the campaign will ask the FBI to investigate, as well as the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, D.C. Inspector General and "any other law enforcement body to get involved with this process." In addition to teens, Jordan alleges, the Fenty campaign also is targeting the homeless with promises of lunch and money.
"This is about as corrupt as you can get in our American society," Jordan said.
"This thing has come to a head," he said. "We have to keep the integrity in the District of Columbia voting system. It has to stop."
Update:
Fenty addressed the allegations Thursday after a press event at United Medical Center. Thanks to my colleague Ben Fischer for writing this stuff down.
"All I have heard is some very loose allegations, which when offered by my opponent look to be done for one purpose, and that is to take everybody's mind off the real issues in the campaign," the mayor said. "He has a four-year record as the director of the Department of Human Services, which was well-chronicled in the Post this morning, which is completely underwhelming, where his budgets weren't balanced, programs mismanaged, courts overtook part of the agency, directors weren't appointed.
"If you compare that to the four years I've been mayor, which is a much bigger, much more involved job, even the most critical of polls say that over 65 percent of people believe we've done that job well, and we've been able to effectuate change for this city. So unless my opponent has some specifics that everyone is unaware of, I think the citizens of the District of Columbia want him to get back to either talking about his record or my record, and that's ultimately what should decide this election."