4/11/11

DC Protest Presidential Candidate Suggestion

Over the weekend, Greater Greater Washington ran in piece in which it was suggested that former mayor Anthony Williams run for president in 2012 as a protest candidate. David C writes: 

I don't actually want Williams to be the next president. Nor do I want him to seek the nomination of either party or run a national campaign. I want him to run to win the 3 electoral votes for DC, and only those votesas a protest against, and to draw attention to, the secondary status of DC residents. Framed as such, I think Anthony Williams could win DC handily.
DC needs a high-profile protest move. It needs one even more now, after Congress reached a budget deal that avoided most national policy changes but meddled substantially in DC's own right to spend its own money.
And:

Williams would get plenty of opportunities to talk to the national media about why he's running and about DC's disenfranchisement. In the months-long, 24-hour-a-day news coverage, every media outlet will be looking for stories to cover. Williams' candidacy would certainly be one of them. If he's polling well in DC, and looks to win, as I think he would, he could even argue that he should be included in the debates.

If he went on to win DC, that would be covered throughout election night and in post-election coverage. Solutions to DC's second-class status range from statehood, to retrocession, to a constitutional amendment, but Williams wouldn't even need to pick a preferred tactic. He would merely need to advocate that there be a tactic to make DC voters whole. This means representation in both houses, as well as a voice in constitutional amendments and contingent elections. 
I like the idea, but I think that I've come upon a better choice for a candidate. Nothing against Williams, but there's already one person in Washington who has succeeded in uniting its citizens behind a common cause, who has drawn national media attention for speaking the truth about the rich and powerful, and who has catalogued and eloquently put words to the years of indignities, slights, injustices and woes suffered by the District's residents. That person is Dave McKenna and I think he can win more electoral votes than the Redskins will games in 2012.

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