On D.C. Council, outsider Carol Schwartz struggled to leave her mark
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Version 0 of 1. As a Republican on the D.C. Council in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, Carol Schwartz was by definition a political outsider. She pushed a list of pet priorities that some Council members supported and others did not: lower taxes, environmental regulation, more efficient city services and benefits for those she thought needed them. She railed with drama and emotion against the city’s Democratic power structure, sometimes ending her pleas for support from fellow lawmakers in tears. Once, she fought for so long against a budget proposal by then-Mayor Marion Barry that the entire D.C. Council got up and left the room. “I was fighting city hall from within city hall,” Schwartz said this month. “I was a rebel with a cause,” she said. “I was always fighting for better service.” Sometimes Schwartz moved the needle on legislation, championing a mandate that employers provide sick leave, for instance. But far more often, as in her perpetual efforts to curtail spending, she did not. Now 70, Schwartz has jumped into her fifth contest for mayor, running as an independent against Democrat Muriel E. Bowser and independent David A. Catania. One of her challenges will be to demonstrate what she accomplished during her stint on the D.C. Council, which ended six years ago. On the campaign trail, Schwartz presents herself as the battle-hardened veteran with a heart of gold, a tax-cutting former Republican and last remaining candidate who understands the District as the benevolent home of what Barry always called “the last, the lost and the least.” But an examination of her record over a political career spanning the city’s history of self-governance shows that Schwartz achieved far more rhetorically than legislatively, that some of her natural allies decided they could get more done by dealing with her Democratic rivals, and that her party status kept her on the fringes of power. Schwartz first won a council seat reserved for a minority party in 1984. Being the only Republican on the D.C. Council was often “hurtful to me, but helpful for the city,” she said during the first mayoral debate this month. Amid a series of tax increases sought by Barry, Schwartz was repeatedly the most vocal holdout. Perennially, she introduced measures to drastically scale back Barry’s spending plans. Most went nowhere. One of her most controversial accomplishments was done in concert with liberal Democrats, not fellow Republicans. It was an eight-page piece of legislation that Schwartz is perhaps best known for — a measure she continues to take credit for even though it ended her council career. The Accrued Sick and Safe Leave Act of 2008 made the District the second major city behind San Francisco to guarantee workers a right to paid sick days. The measure was the handiwork of labor unions and a liberal colleague of Schwartz’s. To the dismay of fellow Republicans, Schwartz picked it up and pushed it through the D.C. Council. In the process, she became a public part of the lawmaking process. She lectured the labor groups supporting the measure not to get overzealous or go around her back. She called together a ballroom full of business leaders and lectured them to go along, too. Before the final votes were cast, Schwartz published a committee report memorializing the effort, thanking herself and others for having “worked tirelessly” to reach a deal. Today, Schwartz points to the sick-leave measure as the “proudest moment” of her career. For Schwartz and her supporters, it shows a genuine urge, born of humble beginnings in rural Texas, to do good and to help others. She mentions it regularly despite losing her bid for reelection the following year in the Republican primary largely because of her vote, which her opponent portrayed as anti-business. “It was just happenstance that it came to her committee, but once it did, she bought in to making it happen and did,” said Ed Lazere, executive director of the liberal D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute. “She pushed it through.” To Schwartz’s critics, the bill was a misplaced effort that betrayed her political allies in the business community and the Republican Party. And it showed, they said, that she cared more about the publicity than the outcome. “Even in this election, Carol loves the adoration and the attention,” said Barbara Lang, former head of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce, who broke ties with Schwartz over the sick-leave bill and backs Catania for mayor. “There were some good things she did as a legislator, there really were. But on [sick leave], Carol got way out on a limb and she couldn’t dial it back.” Much of Schwartz’s legislative record is harder to measure. During her first term on the council, from 1985 to 1989, just one bill passed with Schwartz’s sole sponsorship — a measure to study special tax districts to spur development. During her second, third and fourth terms, from 1997 to 2009, she authored or co-authored successful legislation to increase registration fees on luxury SUVs, and to cut those costs for owners of hybrid vehicles. She helped draft a law to repopulate the city’s tree canopy, and she advocated for others to expand legal protections for gays and lesbians. Among dozens of other achievements listed on her bright-yellow campaign literature, Schwartz claims credit for restarting the city’s recycling program, which had collapsed under mismanagement and a lack of funding, and for creating the District’s Department of the Environment. Both claims are true; the first was initiated at the request of the mayor, and the second came with widespread support from Democrats at a time when high levels of lead had been discovered in city drinking water. Many other cases are murkier because measures that ultimately passed into law were frequently authored by Democrats, sometimes after Schwartz’s proposals were incorporated or discarded entirely. Yet getting credit with voters for those past achievements is crucial to her strategy to defeat Bowser, whom Schwartz described as inexperienced and having a “thin” legislative record, and Catania, who she said is too caustic to be an effective mayor. “You need to have a record that shows the kind of activism that a mayor needs to well serve the people,” Schwartz said. “If you haven’t exerted that kind of activism as a member of the council, why do I believe you are going to take the initiative to tackle the problems as mayor?” In 1999, she introduced a far-reaching tax bill to lower income, sales and business taxes, which she now casts as the impetus for what amounted to the broadest change to D.C. tax policy in a generation. But it wasn’t Schwartz’s bill that passed. It was a measure from Council members Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and Catania (I-At Large), and it offered no lip service to Schwartz’s earlier bill. In a recent interview, Evans said it was disingenuous for Schwartz to claim credit. “I’m grasping to recall if she was even involved,” Evans said of Schwartz. “David and I did it. We rallied the group, we spent a lot of time going around and getting the support of the control board, talking to the mayor and lining up nine votes on the council.” Schwartz said the record is what it is: She put in a bill on tax cuts first. “Cross my heart and hope to die, I did it first. Check the record,” she said. Perhaps Schwartz’s most popular solo legislative achievement was passage of a sales tax holiday, which was repealed in 2009 during the economic downturn. Last year, Bowser introduced a measure that would have reinstated it, dubbed the “Carol Schwartz Sales Tax Holiday Act.” It did not pass. Schwartz has resonated with many city voters; in an NBC4/Washington Post/Marist poll of the mayor’s race released this month, she earned the support of 16 percent of likely voters. Much of that support comes from longtime city residents who remember her service on the D.C. Council: Voters 60 and older have a far more favorable view of Schwartz than of either Bowser or Catania. But not everyone accepts Schwartz’s versions of events — including her account of her role in reducing District taxes in 1987. Then-council member John A. Wilson, chairman of the Finance Committee, seized on a windfall from federal tax changes to propose corresponding cuts to District income tax rates. Among them was a proposal to notch down the city’s top tax bracket from 10 percent to 9.5 percent. Schwartz had a different recollection of her role, and remembered the income tax drop as being more dramatic: “Our income tax was 11 percent then, like, can you imagine? Eleven percent? So, I got it down to 9.5 percent — all my initiation,” Schwartz said. “A lot of times . . . these legislative things that I have done were self-initiated. They were just a problem that I saw or read about that triggered me to get the ball rolling.” Schwartz proposed a competing scheme to make District taxes 33 percent of whatever is paid in federal income taxes. She later abandoned her plan and backed Wilson’s, which passed and Barry signed. Asked to explain the discrepancy of recollections, Schwartz insisted that she put the bill in first and championed it as much as anyone else. “I lowered the income tax,” she said. “I just put forward legislation and got my colleagues to back it.” |