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September 9: The final word on Gray at DHS (I hope).
Today’s Event: The Washington Post‘s publishes its much-hyped, triple-byline forensics on Vincent Gray‘s tenure at DHS in the early ’90s. The piece is so even-handed that the Blue Team even hypes it on Twitter as an “excellent story.” Pair this with the allegation that Mayor Adrian Fenty‘s campaign has extended his summer job’s program by paying kids to vote for him, and you have some big momentum going into the polls.
Influence: Slight. Gray can say he was a victim of budget cuts, and bad politics when he ran DHS. But he has no excuse for the fact that he refused federal funds to house homeless families. Gray told the Post that the move “was necessary to avoid creating an unsustainable entitlement to shelter.” I wonder what a Gray Administration would do for the hundreds of homeless families on the waiting list for shelter.
Net impact: Back to neutral.
But: I’m really tired of debating DHS in the early ’90s. Especially when we should be debating the state of the agency today.