Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty Defeated by Council Chief Vincent Gray

The result didn't come as a shock to official Washington -- pre-election polls had showed Fenty losing to Gray. But the incumbent's decisive defeat was a sobering reminder that being nice counts for something in politics, even when one has numerous accomplishments to boast about.

Fenty's prickly personality and stand-offishness turned off black voters -- and cost him even though he achieved much of what he set out to do in 2006 as the youngest mayor in four decades of home rule in the nation's capital.

Gray, 67, who if elected in the fall will be the oldest elected D.C. mayor, made nice and captured 56 percent of the vote with a campaign promising to bring the city together. "Despite our differences, I know well that Adrian Fenty shares our commitment to this city," he said in a conciliatory gesture early Wednesday, according to the Washington Post.

During his tenure, Fenty hired a popular female police chief -- and crime went down. He and Rhee can also take credit for improving one of the worst public school systems in the nation. But the 39-year-old mayor constantly squabbled with the city council, even quarreling over the distribution of baseball tickets.

After storms that paralyzed the city last winter, Fenty gave a local TV anchor a famously "let-them-eat-cake" answer to the question of just when the mountains of snow might be removed. When "the temperature gets warm enough that it can melt," he said -- and at that precise moment, may have frozen the public impression that such concerns were beneath him.