They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but we’re not sure that the story suggesting a possible run for Washington DC Mayor by Michael Powell even qualifies as smoke.
Powell, of course, is the former Republican FCC Chairman and current head of cable trade organization NCTA. He is also the son of the highly-respected former general and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
At any rate, a writer for the Washington Post said that at least two of his readers informed him that they were party to a detailed poll on possible mayoral candidates, and Powell’s name was prominently included.
One of the key facts the pollsters wanted to establish was the willingness within the city to vote for a Republican. That is an important fact, since in heavily Democratic Washington the Democratic primary is the real election and the general election that follows is generally a mere formality.
So Powell’s standing as a Republican is strike one. Strike two is that is expressing zero interest in running, and strike three is that he lives on the other side of the Potomac River in Virginia.
RBR-TVBR observation: You can tell when the political class abandons Washington during the summer. They go on vacation, but a lot of journalists are still on the job. They have the same amount of time and/or space to fill, but all the raw material to fill it has high-tailed it beyond the Beltway – and stories like this piece of speculative cotton candy start to show up.
Anyway, we don’t think there’s much chance of Michael Powell adding Mayor of Washington DC to his resume in anything other than a parallel universe, if you believe in that sort of thing.
