Jul 18, 2008  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Adam Clampitt, who has aggressively courted the gay vote in his race this year for the D.C. Council seat held by Republican Carol Schwartz, suspended his candidacy Monday and endorsed local businessman and longtime Democratic Party activist Michael Brown.

Clampitt said he decided to back Brown after determining that the only way to elect an “independent voice” to the at-large Council seat was to unite behind a single candidate capable of beating Schwartz.

Schwartz has been a strong supporter of gay rights and AIDS programs in the nearly 16 years she has served on the Council. Similar to Brown, Schwartz in the past has declined to support legalizing same-sex marriage, saying she favored civil unions for same-sex couples. Earlier this year, Schwartz announced she supports same-sex marriage in principle and would not oppose a same-sex marriage bill if it were to come before the Council. Brown, who said he preferred civil unions over same-sex marriage when he was a candidate for mayor in 2006, said his views have also evolved on the issue.
 
In a statement issued Monday, during a news conference where Clampitt endorsed him, Brown said, “I too believe that every human being and every citizen should have the legal right to marry whomever they choose, which is why I, like Adam, like Marion Barry and so many others support full marriage equality for gays and lesbians in the District of Columbia.”

Like Clampitt, Brown dropped his Democratic Party registration to enable him to run for the at-large Council seat in the November general election as an independent. Under the D.C. City Charter, which Congress wrote in the early 1970s, two of the City Council’s 13 seats, including the one held by Schwartz, must be held by someone who is not a member of the city’s “majority party.” Since Democrats have always been the majority party in D.C., the charter effectively prohibits the two, set-aside Council seats from going to a Democrat.

Traditionally, city Democrats have switched their party affiliation to that of an independent to run for the “non-Democratic” seats. Gay D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At-Large) won election to the other non-Democratic seat as a Republican and later became an independent.

Democrat-turned-independent Ward 1 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Dee Hunter is also running for the seat held by Schwartz. However, political pundits have speculated that Hunter may not have sufficient support to obtain the 2,000 petition signatures needed by late August to be placed on the ballot.