EDITORIAL: Carol ‘Stassen’ Schwartz’s vanity candidacy for D.C. mayor

OPINION:

The campaign slogan for Carol Schwartz’s quixotic quest to be mayor of the District of Columbia could well be “The fifth time’s the charm.” The onetime at-large D.C. Council member is halfway to being the Harold Stassen of D.C. politics, channeling the Republican governor of Minnesota who ran for president 10 times beginning in 1940. (He never won even once.)

Mrs. Schwartz, 70, who served four terms on the council as a Republican but who has been out of office since 2009, kicked off her campaign last week at an event in Freedom Plaza downtown that could be described charitably as sparsely attended. She’s running this time as an independent, a recognition of reality in a city where the chances of running into a registered D.C. Republican on the street is only slightly higher than the odds of finding a winning Lotto ticket in the gutter.

Mrs. Schwartz’s four previous runs for mayor drew an average of 35 percent of the vote. Her presence in the race makes it more difficult for another Republican-turned-independent, David A. Catania, to have a clear shot at defeating Muriel Bowser, the Ward 4 council member whose “I’m not corrupt like Vincent Gray” campaign is coasting on the notion that the (D) after her name on the ballot all but ensures victory. She has the odds on her side.

By contrast, Mr. Catania, a 17-year at-large member of the D.C. Council, is nothing if not a legislative wonk. He was set to demonstrate that Monday by issuing a 126-page platform, “A Vision to Secure Our City’s Future,” aimed at demonstrating that his campaign has more heft and substance than Miss Bowser’s. Heft, anyway.

Mr. Catania opposes the right to bear arms and is a fan of the District’s $400 million trolley folly and paid parental leave, funded by another job-killing payroll tax. Dumbest of all, he wants “a new and more expansive strategy” to turn the city, which has yet to master cityhood, into a state. His platform is far more comprehensive — bigger, anyway — than anything Miss Bowser has offered.

Few D.C. voters are likely to read Mr. Catania’s platform (some people may be waiting for the movie), but at least he has one. Its release was timed in connection with the candidates’ first of four joint appearances, set for Thursday at American University.

Miss Bowser’s campaign has been long on platitudes and unlikely promises. Taking her cue from Barack Obama, she says she will have a “middle-class tax cut.” If that’s anything like the middle-class tax cut Mr. Obama enacted, hold on to your wallet.

For Mr. Catania to prevail in November, he will have to throw the book at her at these joint appearances, and as it turns out, he has a start on one. In what’s expected to be a very low turnout election, Mrs. Schwartz’s vanity candidacy — good only to get her name in the papers again — only stands in the way.