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Vince Gray wasn’t exactly making a Nostradamus-like leap when he warned that his mayoral opponents would want to hear more about his 2010 campaign, and now his prediction has come true. In a press release from his D.C. Council office, fellow mayoral Vincent Orange says he’ll introduce a Council resolution asking for the release of the long-delayed Office of Campaign Finance report on Gray’s earlier mayoral campaign.
Orange’s resolution echoes a Monday Washington Post editorial, which called for the release of the report that was finished in May 2012. OCF has refused to release the audit, claiming Ron Machen‘s U.S. Attorney’s Office asked them not to (LL’s waiting to hear back from both agencies).
In a letter to Gray, Orange asks him to ask OCF to release the report. “As I am sure you agree, preferential treatment should not be given to some audits over others,” Orange writes.
As unlikely as it may seem, Orange insists to LL that running for mayor himself wasn’t what motivated him to ask for the report. As the former chairman of the Council’s government operations committee, he’s just interested in making sure that no District pols get special treatment from OCF.
“When a report is finished, it should be released,” Orange says.
Gray campaign manager Chuck Thies declined to comment to LL on the grounds that Orange’s request wasn’t directed to the campaign. “As such, I am sure his concerns have nothing to do with politics,” Thies writes in an email.
Read the letter here:
[documentcloud url=”https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1008954-vincent-orange-audit-letter.html”]
Photo by Darrow Montgomery