US: Washington DC's mayor, Mr Anthony Williams, had been a shoo-in for re-election in November. Until his own staff tripped him up - now the popular mayor doesn't know if he can get on to the ballot paper.
The DC Board of Ethics and Elections has ruled Mr Williams's nomination is invalid because his staff botched the normally simple task of collecting the 2,000 signatures that are required to place a name on the ballot paper. An examination of the 10,000 signatures allegedly collected from the citizenry in his name had shown that many, such as that of Mr Tony Blair, were unlikely supporters or not DC residents.
Many of the genuine signatures were affixed to pages that had not been properly witnessed by election workers. On Friday, the board decided to rule them all invalid because the staff, under threat of legal sanctions, failed to turn up at the hearing to explain themselves.
Mr Williams, who is widely acknowledged not to have known about the antics of his underlings, faces the choice of a legal battle to restore his name to the ballot for the Democratic primary, or a campaign to have it included as a write-in addition. Should he fail, he says he is considering running in the main election as an independent, a high-risk strategy in a city that is 77 per cent Democrat.
A former chief financial officer of the capital, the quiet-spoken Mr Williams has restored a degree of respectability to the city's local government, which had been tarnished by the drug-taking antics of a predecessor, Mr Marion Barry.
Although widely seen as a favourite and expected to have little problem at the primary, Mr Williams has alienated some of his poorer black base through his conservative policies and enjoys much stronger support now in the white neighbourhoods of northwest Washington.
