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Does Muriel Bowser thinks the Pigskins’ actual name is offensive or not? After first dodging an initial question about it yesterday, Bowser said it’s offensive when LL asked her about. The mayor’s reticence is understandable—-an NBC4 report from last month cited an anonymous Bowser official saying that the mayor plans to use the team name again to woo the football team back to the District.
What Bowser really thinks about the hapless NFL team’s name is mostly academic until Bowser finally gets her meeting with Pigskins owner Dan Snyder. But according to a new Freedom of Information Act request, Bowser’s staff was just as baffled as the rest of us by the NBC4 report and its anonymous official.
After NBC4’s Mark Segraves tweeted about Bowser’s purported flip-flop on the name, Bowser spokesman Michael Czin huddled with Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development spokesman Joaquin McPeek. McPeek asked Czin if he knew about the supposed new position on the team name.
“Not really…just an annon source,” Czin wrote back.
Meanwhile, staffers in Bowser’s federal and regional affairs office were similarly wary in an email chain.
“Leaks,” wrote federal and regional relations director LaDavia Drane. “I smell a rat.”
When deputy director Robert Downing asked whether she could ask Czin about it, Drane didn’t expect to find out much.
“He probably won’t be honest if he knows anything but you can ask,” she wrote back.
Photo by Darrow Montgomery