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Potomac Confidential: 2002 Elections Special
With Marc Fisher
Post Metro Columnist
Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2002; 10 p.m. ET
The 2002 election season is a busy one for the D.C. metro area. District voters are choosing candidates for mayor and City Council, and Maryland voters are choosing the contenders for the 8th Congressional District, governor and Prince Georges County executive. Will the candidates' sniping keep voters from the polls? How will the write-in vote for D.C. mayor affect the tabulating and the results?
Metro columnist Marc Fisher was online for a special election edition of Potomac Confidential as the votes rolled in on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
The transcript follows.
Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control
over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
Marc Fisher: Welcome, politicos of the night, to a special edition of Potomac Confidential. We've got elections and we've got returns, or at least some returns. The District's new voting system produced quick and efficient returns, and the Prince George's numbers are pouring in as well, but the Mongtomery numbers are being very slow tonight, so we'll have to see what happens over the course of our hour together.
The headlines: In the District, Mayor Williams wins an overwhelming victory, according to a Washington Post exit poll. The official numbers won't be in for a week or so as the write-in votes are hand-counted, but the exit poll numbers make it look extremely big for the mayor.
In Prince George's County, State's Attorney Jack Johnson appears to be headed for a promotion to County Executive, with a small but consistent lead over Jim Estepp; the others trail well behind.
And in the big congressional contest in Montgomery County, it's looking very close between Chris Van Hollen and Mark Shriver. Let's hear what's on your minds....
washingtonpost.com:
Good evening, Marc, and welcome. Do you know the estimated voter turnout was for today's local primary elections?
Marc Fisher: Our reporters kept hearing all day that turnout was quite low, both in Maryland and the city, but that's largely anecdotal and we won't have a good handle on turnout for a while.
Washington, D.C.:
Washingtonpost.com is leading with a story that says Mayor Williams is leading in the exit polls. After such a disastrous effort to get on the ballot, are you surprised that a write-in campaign would be successful? washingtonpost.com:
Story: Williams Leads in Exit Polls (Post, Sept. 10, 2002)
Marc Fisher: Not at all, given the lack of any serious opposition on the printed ballot and the late entry of Willie Wilson as something of a protest candidate on the write-in side.
The exit polling indicates that the mayor, despite all his embarrassing troubles of this summer, has won strong support from all quarters of the city, winning handily among both blacks and whites.
Washington, D.C.:
Any ETA on exactly when we'll know who our mayoral candidates are?
Marc Fisher: You may not know officially for a few days, but the numbers in our exit poll are pretty persuasive, with Williams winning overwhelmingly. Whether he will face any Republican opposition remains to be seen; there was much talk before today about council member Carol Schwartz jumping in as the GOP candidate. I doubt that she will do that, especially given the strength of Williams' victory today.
Denver, Colo.:
How is the race in the 8th District in Maryland shaping up? My son is Mark Shriver's finance director.
Katie
Marc Fisher: You're lucky to be in the Mountain time zone, where you won't have to stay up nearly as late as those of us on the East Coast to get the final word on what looks like a very tight race.
Van Hollen's staff seemed quite optimistic today, but Shriver's campaign workers were out til the last minute, scrambling to transport voters to the polls. The Montgomery numbers just aren't there yet. Stand by. I hope to have more during this hour.
Silver Spring, Md.:
What's your impression of the Kennedy-Townshend/Erlich race? Do you think he has what it takes?
Marc Fisher: Poor Townsend seems to be having a very rough time of it lately; today, even the standard photo opportunity of the candidate going to cast her ballot blew up in her face, as an overzealous pollworker tried to stop the Lt. Governor from voting because he thought she was violating some rule by bringing TV cameramen into the polling place. It made for some hilarious TV footage.
Anyway, this has all the makings of a tight race, and however Shriver and Townsend end up faring, it's fair to say that there's no automatic Kennedy advantage in Maryland.
Chevy Chase, Washington, D.C.:
Do you recall any local write-in campaign ever being as successful as Williams's appears to be?
Marc Fisher: I do not--not that we've had much experience with write-in campaigns in this area. And it's really not fair to compare this to other write-in campaigns, given that Williams is the incumbent. But it's still a pretty remarkable achievement to get tens of thousands of voters to write in your name, even after weeks of miserable publicity about you.
Alexandria, Va.:
How long will we need to wait before Williams can start campaigning for November? Will the count really take a week?
Marc Fisher: More than 90 percent of the votes cast today for mayor were write-ins, a total of about 60,000 ballots thus far (that's with about 60 percent of precincts reporting.) So that's a huge counting job that must be done by hand. The board of elections says it could take up to 10 days, but unofficially they're saying it'll be less than that, probably just short of a week.
The question is whether the mayor will need to do any real campaigning for November, and that depends on whether there are Republican or Independent challengers. There is a Statehood/Green candidate, but unless Schwartz or some other big name steps forward, it's fair to say that Williams will be able to get back to governing rather than politicking.
Rockville, Md.:
As a Republican in Montgomery County, I don't have much to be interested in, except for one thing: Who's going to be facing Connie Morella? At what time tonight would you guess we'll have a decent idea between Shriver, Van Hollen, or Shapiro?
Marc Fisher: Not clear--ordinarily, we'd have most of the numbers by this time. The county is saying that it's not the new touch-screen computer voting system that's causing the delays, but it's hard to imagine what else the problem could be. I just checked in on my favorite state House race, the District 20 contest to see if wife-punching Del. Dana Dembrow will be reelected, but no returns there yet. I'll keep you posted on that.
In the race to face Morella, there are only scattered returns, which show Shriver up by a wide margin, but these are only the barest of returns and have no meaning. Stand by.
Bethesda, Md.:
Totally unofficial -- just scuttlebutt really -- but Van Hollen, sadly, beat Shriver by about 2 to 1 at the Bethesda precinct where I was working until just now.
Marc Fisher: Could be, but the first precincts officially reporting have the opposite results, Shriver up by 75-12 over Van Hollen, but obviously that won't hold.
In two other interesting congressional races, Dutch Ruppersberger is opening up a decent lead over Oz Bengur in the Democratic race in District 2 in Howard and Baltimore counties, and incumbent Wayne Gilchrest is pretty handily winning over challenger Dave Fischer in District 1's GOP primary in Anne Arundel and the Eastern Shore.
San Francisco, Calif.:
How do the Maryland State Delegate races Look?
Marc Fisher: Very few numbers in from Montgomery; in Prince George's most incumbents seem to be winning. In Baltimore, it looks like Sen. Barbara Hoffman, who was redistricted into a heap of trouble, looks like she may lose to Lisa Gladden, and Clarence Mitchell IV looks like he's losing his seat to Verna Jones.
Washington, D.C.:
Do you think we should be worried for the city's future concerning votes to the racist candidates for mayor like James Clark?
Marc Fisher: If anything, you should be heartened by the fact that with 70 percent of the vote counted, James Clark, who ran an overtly racist campaign calling for government jobs for blacks and for Washington to be "a city for the blacks," has a grand total of 941 votes, or 1.5 percent of the total. He did beat both Faith the Broadway bugler and Osie Thorp, another perennial candidate.
Arlington, Va.:
Did Wilson ever have a chance over Williams?
Marc Fisher: Slim and none. Wilson's appeal is very much to the diehard Marion Barry fans, a small but significant part of the city, people who feel left out of Washington's boom and unwanted in Anthony Williams' vision of the future D.C.
But Wilson's candidacy probably scared more voters into coming out to support Williams than it attracted disaffected ex-Barryites.
Washington, D.C.:
How are you getting your information on returns? I use the state Web usually but tonight it's unbearably slow. Any good ideas?
Marc Fisher: The state site in Maryland is very slow and at least in my attempts very hard to get into tonight. Here in the newsroom, we use a combination of Associated Press returns, numbers phoned in by our own reporters, and Board of Elections numbers. Some are faster than others on any given set of returns. We're putting them up on the website as fast as we can.
Washington, D.C.:
Any sense of who's ahead in the D.C. Ward 3 race between Erik Gaull and Kathy Patterson?
Marc Fisher: Patterson has won that race overwhelmingly, despite an energetic challenge from Gaull. I must say, Gaull's last minute campaign literature, which was distributed today at polling places in Ward 3, took a lot of gall--he asked voters to vote "The Williams-Gaull Ticket," heavily implying that the mayor had endorsed him, when in fact the opposite was true.
With 76 percent of the vote counted, Patterson has 74 percent of the vote. Not even close. All the other DC Council incumbents won too.
Arlington, Va.:
There seem to be a lot of uncontested primary races. Is this typical for local midterms?
Marc Fisher: Alas, this is increasingly typical for all races, and not just in our region. Check out local elections in most southern states and you'll be astonished at how little there is in the way of competition. It's all of a piece with the low turnouts in these elections. Democracy needs to be watered regularly with real challenges, otherwise voters correctly conclude that incumbency is equivalent to reelection.
Long Beach, Calif.:
Do you think the editorial by JulianBond, where he defended both Williams and bow ties, has helped the Mayor? And if so, to what extent?
Marc Fisher: I don't know whether NAACP chairman Julian Bond's op-ed in the Post about how wrong it is to judge Williams by "how black" he is ended up having any effect on the final numbers. I think those who judge the mayor in that way probably voted for Wilson or sat out the election, but I think the vote for Williams is heartening inasmuch as it shows that most people, black or white, do not put issues around color first in an election like this.
Philadelphia, Pa.:
Hey Marc.
You'll be glad to know that while going in and out of classes today, I watched CNN quite a bit and saw nothing about the mayor's race.
I think for now we are saved from the late-night jokes. What about you?
Jonathan Tannenwald
University of Pennsylvania
Marc Fisher: Williams has certainly opened himself to plenty of late-night ribbing with the petition mess, but once he's back to governing, he's not likely to make it to Letterman or Leno much. Even if he can't fix the DMV, they'll have to go back to chuckling over Janet Reno's Dance Party (but wait--they may lose even Reno. Florida's polls just closed, so we won't know that for a while.)
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.:
I had heard voter turnout was stronger than expected in the District. Are you hearing that as well or contrary to that? You mentioned that Maryland voter turnout was lower.
Marc Fisher: Extrapolating from the returns already counted, it looks like turnout in the District will fall pretty squarely in the middle between the 1994 high turnout for Barry's reelection and the 1998 low turnout for Williams' first election.
Adams Morgan, Washington, D.C.:
Looks like Ambrose will be a big upset. Did anyone predict that? I don't remeber seeing anywhere that she was expecting such a close race.
Marc Fisher: With almost all the votes counted, incumbent Ward 6 (Capitol Hill) council member Sharon Ambrose is easily beating challenger Keith Andrew Perry, 61-39. I don't see any surprise there.
Adams Morgan, Washington, D.C.:
You say all D.C. Council incumbents won, but NewChannel 8 is reporting Ambrose way behind with almost all precincts reported. What gives?
Marc Fisher: NewsChannel8 must have early numbers. The DC Board of Elections reports having counted 87.5 percent of the vote and Ambrose is up 61-39.
Laurel, Md.:
Good Evening Mr. Fisher,
Do you know of a good Web site that gives in-depth information on each of the candidates? I often feel the need to do more research on the candidates rather than rely on their television ads. washingtonpost.com:
Maryland Voters Guide (washingtonpost.com)
Marc Fisher: You should also check out each candidate's websites, some of which are rudimentary, but some of which contain lots of issue papers and press releases that you might find helpful. Also online, you'll find voters guides from the League of Women Voters and many interest groups, such as those that question candidates on the environment, business interests, gay issues, etc.
Chevy Chase, Md.:
I went to vote in the Maryland primary today. At Somerset Elementary, the computers were placed on the same cubicle-type tables which had been used for punch ballots in previous years. Since the monitors were at eye level, the computerized votes being cast were highly visible to anyone waiting in line.
Can we expect more emphasis on privacy in November?
Marc Fisher: I've heard this same complaint from a good many people. Montgomery is usually pretty good about responding to public unhappiness, so you should make your concern known to the elections board and to your county council members.
Bethesda, Md.:
Marc:
Any results in yet on the race for state comptroller? I'd love to hear that William Donald Schaeffer has been given the boot!
Marc Fisher: Sorry--I bear the opposite news, a solid thrashing of challenger John Willis by the ex-governor. It's quite the rebuke to Gov. Glendening, who, you'll recall, pumped his own campaign money into nasty ads against his nemesis, Schaefer. Schaefer is up 62-34 with two thirds of the vote in.
Washington, D.C.:
I went to high school with you.
I thought the mayor ran an arrogant campaign, even after the signature dust up. "Mistakes were made by this mayor" was not the kind of mea culpa I was looking for.
Martin Hamburger
Marc Fisher: Williams did start out very hesitant about taking the full blame for the petition scandal, but as the campaign went on, he pointed his considerable dry wit at himself and became anything but arrogant about the mess. He seems genuinely shaken by what happened; the big question is whether that will result in a change in his attitude and attention toward those neighborhoods in which he is least trusted.
Burke, Va.:
I'm getting nothing on the Montgomery County Council races from the Post's site. Why does the post show virtually zero results in Montgomery two and one-half hours after the polls close? It seems you could have had stringers calling in the results from campaign headquarters. Any word on the county council races pitting the pro-connector slate vs. the heads-in-the-sand Ewing crew?
Marc Fisher: Alas, the reason you aren't seeing Montgomery numbers on our site is the same reason they're not on the county's own site--the elections board hasn't put them out yet. Until the machines spit out results and the board releases them, there's nothing our reporters can do.
But ah-hah--we now have numbers on exactly those races you ask about: With 15 percent reporting, incumbents Silverman, Subin and Ewing lead the pack in the at large race.
Rockville, Md.:
Out of curiosity while we're waiting, has there been any polling done (or maybe just your hunch) on who would make the stronger candidate against Morella (Van Hollen or Shriver)?
Marc Fisher: I thought throughout the primary campaign that Shriver would make the stronger candidate against Morella--Shriver seems far more assured and connects better with voters in his appearannces. But Van Hollen staged quite an impressive comeback in the final days, and his staff has claimed all along that Morella secretly dreads facing off against Van Hollen. Morella denies that, but who knows?
The voters seem very evenly divided on that question so far tonight. Both the Shriver and Van Hollen camps claimed of course that their guy would do better against Morella.
Washington, D.C.:
I've always admired your columns -- combined wit with compassion. Isn't it refreshing, as we are on the eve of the one-year anniversary of last year's tragic events, to see democracy vividly in action here in D.C. and Maryland -- it's a tribute to our citizens.
Marc Fisher: Many thanks--it is an odd juxtaposition, but yes, one that is moving. I was leery of Tom Ridge's choice of the word "defiant" today when he asked Americans to take the heightened alert status as a time to be both cautious and defiant, but if charging ahead with the business of governing ourselves is being defiant, then I'm happy to accept that term.
Washington, D.C.:
Any thoughts on the Ward 1 race and challenger Dee Hunter's chances?
Marc Fisher: Hunter's challenge to incumbent Jim Graham fell far short. In the latest official numbers, with almost 2/3 of the votes counted, Graham is up over challenger Shelore Williams by 64-16, with Dee Hunter in third place with 13 percent of the vote.
Punta Gorda, Fla.:
I have two questions, if I may. 1. Who will win the Democratic election tonight Reno or McBride? 2. Who will win in New Hampshire Senate race?
Marc Fisher: With scattered returns so far, Bill McBride is up 50-37 over Janet Reno in the Florida governor's race. With most of the votes counted in New Hampshire, John Sununu appears headed toward ousting incumbent Sen. Bob Smith. Sununu's up 53-45.
Washington, D.C.:
Assuming Williams does indeed win the general election, what changes do you foresee in his administration's policies? For example, will he finally be able to reform the taxicab situation or tackle other politically charged issues that he couldn't address successfully in a first administration?
Marc Fisher: If our exit poll numbers hold up, that would indicate quite a mandate for Williams to charge ahead with his agenda. That said, he's going to face a much more difficult financial situation than he had in the first term. It won't be smooth sailing, that's for sure. But he'd at least be able to argue that he has broad support for his vision of the city.
Washington, D.C.:
Evening Marc,
I didn't vote today; as a newcomer to the area I realized too late the utter pointlessness of being a registered Republican in D.C. Well, registered as anything other than a Democrat, actually. So much for two-party politics.
Oh, must females (married, I presume) have a hyphenated last name to be a member of the Statehood Green party?
Marc Fisher: I know many folks who've been independents or Repos all their lives but who register as Democrats to vote in D.C.--it seems almost pointless to register in the other parties, given their almost vestigial status here. It remains inexcusable that the Republicans didn't even come up with a mayoral candidate this year.
Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C.:
I'm curious what kind of feedback you might have heard about voters' reactions to the new D.C. ballots. Rather than the old punch cards which were difficult to double check once you'd pulled them out of the card-guide, our ballots are now more like a connect-the-dots exercise. I hadn't seen much public education about using the new ballots.
At my polling place, the guy who helped me put my ballot in the ballot box told me he'd gotten some complaints from people that the new balloting system wasn't very "secret." You insert your ballot face up into the ballot box, and anyone standing by can see who you've voted for. That's not great from my perspective -- especially in a city like D.C., where people are personally involved in politics. Have you had any feedback on that either?
Marc Fisher: The city tried, sending out flyers showing how the new system works. I stopped in at four polling places today and at all four, in four different wards, pollworkers said voters seemed to have no problems with the new system.
I far prefer the feeling of the old system, actually punching a card. That feels like voting, whereas connecting an arrow feels like taking a standardized test. But such is progress, I guess.
Washington, D.C.:
Does being Live Online with us help you figure out what the public is interested in and cause you to refashion on your reporting?
Marc Fisher: Absolutely. Between our online shows and the email I receive from readers, I get a strong sense of the issues you care about, and that certainly helps shape my choice of topics, though I still depend heavily on my colleagues at the Post and my own bizarre sense of what's important.
Minneapolis, Min.:
I saw very early numbers in Montgomery County with Shriver ahead 47 percent to 38 percent. Should those numbers hold up?
Thanks.
Marc Fisher: With 18 percent of the vote in, Shriver is up 51-34, but still very early. That will tighten.
Washington, D.C.:
Correction to that last question from someone: the new ballots in D.C. are inserted FACE DOWN into the machine; that's the ONLY way the machine reads them, and thus your vote is secret (although a poll worker could illegally flip up your ballot to see it and claim it was an accident, I guess).
Marc Fisher: My ballot went into the machine face up.
Marc Fisher: That wraps it up for tonight. Thanks for staying up with me. More in the paper on Thursday and back here online at noon Thursday. Thanks again.
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