D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty compared his campaign strategies to those of presidential candidate and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at a speech at GW Law School Wednesday.
“Simple issues of jobs, housing and education are important to focus on because then we have a general connection to the average voter,” Fenty said.
He said a new style of politics that focuses on broad concerns that transcend political affiliations can be seen in both his and Obama’s styles of politics in a speech called “Next Generation Leadership.” Obama’s campaign is entitled “Countdown to Change.”
Earlier this fall, Fenty announced he would support Obama in the 2008 presidential election.
“There is something new, energetic and private-sector minded in American politics, where candidates are saying that they want to get results and focus on the entire country,” Fenty said.
Fenty said America is at a “watershed moment” where a leader can set a new bar for the government as well as the country.
There is a rising generation of executive leaders that want to get results out of government, Fenty said. These leaders include himself, Martin O’Malley, the governor of Maryland, and Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York.
About 70 people attended the event that was sponsored by Law Students for Barack Obama. The mayor was the keynote speaker at a panel discussion on next generation leadership with Robert Raben, former assistant attorney general, GW Law School Professor Spencer Overton and Michael Strautmanis, general counsel to Sen. Barack Obama.
The panelists spoke of the necessity for change in the way politics are conducted.
“We’re reaching a certain style of politics in this country where problems just get worse,” Strautmanis said.
Josh Teitelbaum, the national director of LSFO, said the speech was not meant as a campaign event for Obama but as an educational forum to discuss “next generational leadership.”
“The analogy (between Fenty and Obama) holds because both have a willingness to reach out to people who might disagree with them,” Teitelbaum said. “I think it comes from a youthful perspective, from our generation that has a particular willingness to bridge the divide between politics and the average individual.”
He added, “You just can’t dissolve old problems with the thinking that got you into them. That’s what Mayor Fenty was getting across and that is what Obama is doing.”
City council member and GW professor Mary Cheh said Fenty’s election landslide shows the popularity of his political visions.
“He took the reigns in a city hungry for change,” Cheh said.
Similar to Obama, Fenty is a young star in politics. When elected in 2006 at age 35, Fenty became the youngest mayor of a major American city.
“Politics is the art of being able to help people,” Fenty said.
“I was impressed with Mayor Fenty’s emphasis on objective measures of government performance, his investigation of the proven strategies in major cities,” said Cameron Hollingshed, a student in the law school. “Both he and Obama seem to focus on a calculation of developing and administering effective policy which I feel is preferable to the usual political calculus.”
