Catania, Solo at CAG Mayoral Forum, Displays Command of D.C. Issues


And then there was one.

The Citizens Association of Georgetown had invited the three major candidates running for mayor in the Nov. 4 general election to its debate and candidate forum Sept. 24. It’s almost a traditional ritual for community groups in neighborhoods throughout the city at election time, when candidates get a chance to duke it out on issues at the local level.

But that was before Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser, after avoiding any and all debates up until that point, announced that she would be participating in only four debates before the November, the first of which was held Sept. 17 at American University, an affair that produced some heated back-and-forths, but not much substantive debate.

Fellow Independent candidate and D.C. veteran councilmember and often-times mayoral candidate Carol Schwartz, who is Jewish, regretfully opted out because of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration. CAG president Pamla Moore said a call to Bowser’s campaign office produced a “We’ll get back to you” promise that never materialized.

So, Councilmember David Catania, who entered the fray back in April right before the Democratic Primary which Bowser won going away over scandal-plagued Mayor Vincent Gray, was for one night the only mayoral candidate on the dais, as he talked and answered questions from a panel that consisted of Georgetowner editor-in-chief Robert Devaney, David Kennedy, publisher of the Current newspapers, and Topher Matthews of the Georgetown Metropolitan before a packed audience at Dumbarton House of Q Street.

This kind of situation, leaving one candidate at an event which was billed as a debate among three candidates, can be a pitfall for the candidate or an opportunity. Catania clearly turned the turn of events into an opportunity to show off his ability to articulate policy matters and issues with sometimes long, but often revelatory explanations, to flash an appealing smile, along with some humor and warmth. Given Catania’s reputation for having a sharp temper—which never materialized—this was an experience-rich, smart, even visionary performance by a tough candidate who seemed to have the talents and strengths to run a credible campaign against Bowser. There was no sign in this confident Catania that he was trailing big-time in the most recent poll.

Faced with a question on how it felt to be the only candidate to show up at the CAG event, Catania resisted the temptation to take a shot at Bowser and instead said only that these events are important and an important part of democratic elections, that they allow people to have contact with the candidates contacts, learn about them and help voters to make an informed decision. “These debates are an obligiation that we owe to the voters,” he said.

Catania showed himself to be a walking encyclopedia on issues facing a Washington, D.C., which is blessed with a booming economy, about which he was not quite so sanguine. “We can look at all the cranes on our horizon and think that we’re doing really well,” he said. “The truth is that we’re in the middle of something of a recession. Our economy is based in large parts on government jobs and government activities, and that part of the economy is shrinking. We’ve lost government jobs, and they’re very difficult to replace without the proper education and training. We have a shrinking economic component.”

“Our biggest priorities—in addition to education—are to narrow the achievement gap, to address the fact that we have an affordable housing crisis and to safeguard our economic future,” Catania said.

He then launched into a fully detailed talk about health care, new economy jobs, infrastructure, human capital. “We need to have trained engineers,” he said. “Engineering jobs are job multipliers. It’s our best job creator. An engineering job creates 4.2 jobs around it.”

Catania said in a previous debate that he would prefer delaying the school boundaries issue for a year. “I think some very good work has been done here,” he said. “But we have to think in terms of fairness also, about what kind of schools we are creating—we allocate equal amounts of moneys to every school—which is to say a high-quality school with affluent and concerned parents gets the same amount of money a school in a poorer area with single parents does, which strikes me as unfairly advantageous to one school over another. That’s what a fair funding bill would be about.”

“When it comes to housing, we need to determine who needs housing the most—not just the homeless, but people with low incomes, and struggling middle class people,” he said. “Somebody once described a crisis as being “desperate but not serious.” Well, the housing crisis is desperate and serious. … When it comes to charter schools, we need to make sure that this doesn’t come down to DCPS [D.C. Public Schools] and charter schools sniping at each other. They have to work together. We can’t have an atmosphere of attacks.”

Catania was asked why he has not responded to questions about whether or not to retain key public officials like Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier. “Look, we do not as yet have a successor to the current mayor, and candidates don’t have any business talking as if they were mayor now,” he responded. “The chief and the chancellor answer to the mayor, not to me or to any other candidate. And I think you are inviting mischief, and you can do a lot of harm by talking about what you might or might not do.”

Asked about legalizing marijuana in the District, Catania said, “You’re talking about something that is likely to happen—it is happening elsewhere already.” Then, he told a very funny tale about his mother talking to him about drugs when he was five years old. “She would give me these detailed explanations about pros and cons, legality and such and then say sweetly, ‘And I know you won’t be doing anything like that because I would kill you if you do.’ Look, there’s a trajectory on this issue which is plain to see, but we should also look carefully at what happens in Colorado and Washington State.”

He may be, as he asserted, “a convener and a generalist,” but Catania also showed off a gift for attention to and articulation of details. All of which can be found in his campaign book “David Catania’s Vision to Security Our City’s Future,” a full-color, fully illustrated, 126-page tome — complete with graphs and interviews — that reads like Catania talks.

An occasion like this was, of course, all good for Catania, but then again, Bowser at least has no one but herself to blame for that.

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