On the 17th of September, supporters of the Large Retailer Accountability Act gathered in front of the Wilson Building for an attempt to stiffen coucilmember’s backbones. Mayor Gray has chosen Wal-Mart over low income workers and good jobs by vetoing the bill, as this is written it is yet to be seen if the Council will have the backbone to override.
Many speakers warned that “their next mayor” supports the LRAA, meaning that the councilmembers who are running for Mayor lose their votes unless they vote to override the Mayor’s Wal-Mart ordered veto of the LRAA.
Some possible next steps:
1: A ballot initiative identical to the LRAA. Does not involve the city’s budget so it can be done by ballot initiative. Poll results for the LRAA indicate this would pass, and door to door work has already been done to collect some of the poll data
2: Recall campaigns could be mounted against Councilmembers who voted with the Mayor. Anita Bonds would be an obvious targets, but difficult as she is at-large.
Tommy Wells and Murial Bowser should forget about their campaigns for mayor, they may have just made themselves unelectable, effectively recalling themselves before they could ever be elected in the first place.
3: Allegations of financial ties between Mayor Gray and Wal-Mart should be pursued aggressively. The Mayor is already worried about the danger of indictment for soliciting illegal campaign contributions, and for failure to report “shadow campaign” income and expenses. If any illegal funds are traced to Wal-Mart, the Mayor’s career is over, regardless of whether or not any indictment is ever issued.
When if comes to dealing with Wal-Mart and the proliferation of jobs that don’t pay enough to stay off welfare, no option should be off the table, no punches should be pulled, no quarter asked or given.
