Class and economics are more likely to divide city residents than race, according to a second day of polling figures released by The Washington Post. Wealthy blacks are more inclined to share the views of wealthy whites than lower earning blacks. “Overall, the survey showed a complex racial divide on relations between blacks and whites, feelings of financial security and other long-standing city issues but more agreement among wealthy whites and blacks on personal safety and city services, such as the police department and public parks,” The Post reports.
People aboard a party bus shot at after leaving a Northeast strip club last week were earlier involved in a fight at the club — the latest in a series of incidents there that include a stripper being hit in the face with a champagne bottle during a tussle between a patron and the entourage of rapper Lil’ Wayne, according to police reports. Andrea Noble in The Washington Times reports that the incidents are among 19 emergency calls this year from the 2100 block of Queens Chapel Road — an industrial area where the 13,000-square-foot Stadium Club and neighboring nightclub DC Star are located.
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Former OCTO chief and Gray campaign fundraiser Suzanne Peck is working for D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray as a “pro bono senior advisor,” Jonetta Rose Barras discloses in her column in the Washington Examiner. “It’s all about Peck — not District residents. Even without cash, Peck could cash in. She would have enormous access and influence. And, if past is prologue, she wouldn’t hesitate to leverage that to advantage her friends, helping them secure contracts under the guise they are uniquely qualified.”
Virginia supporters of President Obama are gearing up for the re-election campaign, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The newspaper details a recent training session for about 50 volunteers. “They will spend the summer fanned across the state dusting off the campaign network that propelled Obama in 2008 to capture the state’s electoral votes for a Democrat for the first time in 44 years.”
Dirty tricks that prosecutors say the Ehrlich campaign employed on Election Day last year to keep blacks from voting could have the opposite effect — and for a long time to come, the Baltimore Sun reports. “Political observers said details of the case — such as an Ehrlich campaign memo that uses the words ‘voter suppression,’ according to court papers — will deepen distrust between black voters and Republicans. And it will give African-Americans more reason to vote.”
Opponents say they have not exhausted their options for fighting a proposal to build a Catholic hospital on the grounds of Montgomery College in Germantown, despite approval of the plan last week by the state Board of Public Works. The Washington Times reports that a planned hospital must still be approved by the county Planning Board — a process that will give opponents another chance to testify against the project, which was approved in January by the Maryland Health Care Commission after a more-than-two-year competition with another hospital proposal.
