Vince Gray
Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray appears at a 2024 event at the D.C. Jail. Credit: Darrow Montgomery

This is not the way Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray’s storied political career was supposed to end. 

It was a given that Gray’s various health challenges would deprive him of the sort of graceful ride into the sunset that might otherwise have been afforded to someone with his three-decade-long career. Gray announced Thursday through a spokesperson that he’s experiencing “early-stage, age-related dementia” and he will step back from Council duties until his term concludes at the end of the year, a sad but perhaps inevitable development for the former mayor after he endured strokes and other health problems. The details below the headlines are another matter entirely. 

The councilmember’s children have been trying to wrest control of Gray’s health care and finances away from his wife, Dawn Kum, according to documents filed in D.C. Superior Court. They argue that she has concealed the extent of his health troubles and exploited his illness for her own monetary gain, liquidating Gray’s assets to pay for “luxury apparel” and “extravagant vacations.” Most troublingly, Gray’s kids claim he’s had at least four strokes since November 2021—two more than his office has disclosed—and that he’s “nearly fully paralyzed” and “extremely fragile.” A Superior Court judge ultimately agreed to appoint a guardian and conservator to manage the 81-year-old’s affairs, after Jonice and Carlos Gray claim Kum has repeatedly worked to block their access to their father, including blocking their numbers in his phone and threatening to call police if they attempted to visit him at his home.

The revelations in conservatorship filings, many of which were not included in the Washington Post‘s story first disclosing the proceedings, has transformed this story from a melancholy tale about the difficulties of aging into something quite different. There’s every reason to regard claims made in court amid an ugly familial dispute skeptically—Kum and Gray only married in 2019—but they will prompt some serious whispering, nonetheless. 

Gray’s caustic, controversial spokesperson, Chuck Thies, has spent months insisting that although the councilmember may be unable to effectively communicate, he has still been fully engaged with his work as a lawmaker. Wilson Building observers have long doubted these assertions—and Council Chair Phil Mendelson greatly reduced Gray’s committee duties last year in response to these worries. But councilmembers generally have been unwilling to challenge them publicly out of deference to Gray and his long record of service. If Gray’s health truly has been as bad as his children describe, it raises real questions about the extent to which his office has been covering up his deficiencies.

As far back as mid-December 2021, Gray could not “count backwards from 20 and recite the months of the year backwards” during a neurological exam, according to the court documents. Thies told the Post that he only learned about Gray’s dementia within the past “week to 10 days,” but many people who have watched the councilmember appear confused or repeat himself in his rare public appearances over the past few years raised doubts to Loose Lips long before then.

Kum’s attorney did not respond to LL’s request for comment. And Thies writes in an email that the claims in these court filings “represent and advocate for the interests of one side of a complicated legal matter.”

“The petition and related proceedings are a private family matter, not Council business,“ Thies says via email. He subsequently called LL to vigorously deny many of the allegations outlined in the filings.

“Before I’m an employee, a consultant, and advisor to Vince Gray, I am his friend,” Thies says. “If I went to his home or to any hospital or medical facility where he was housed, and I believed he was receiving substandard care, I would find out how to intervene, because he’s my friend.”

Gray’s children claim that Kum “injected herself into a leadership role” in his Council office. They allege she “makes substantive decisions related to government office matters, influences personnel decisions that impact the hiring and firing of staff members, and manipulates the hours of government employees, demanding that they work outside of regulated hours, all to personally benefit [Kum.]” This includes forcing the office to hire Kum’s daughter’s boyfriend to effectively work as a home health aide for Gray, even though the boyfriend was not qualified to do so, Gray’s children claim. They also mention some sort of “government investigation” that was initiated into the boyfriend’s hiring, but court filings do not provide more details.

Thies claims he has no knowledge of any investigation into this matter, and he cast doubt on how Gray’s kids would know whether one exists. He also says that the employee mentioned in the filing was hired as Gray’s scheduler and performed his job “flawlessly,” denying that Kum exercised any influence in the process of hiring him. (Specifically, the filings allege that Kum directed that her daughter’s boyfriend be hired as scheduler after this unidentified investigation began into the matter.)

The rest of the brief filed by Gray’s children is scathing. They allege that Kum “uses [Gray’s] money to buy him the lowest end, least technologically advanced medical equipment.” Gray’s kids also note that a $1 million federal tax lien was filed against Kum in July 2021, and they say Kum attempted to transfer the title of Gray’s house to herself. When she failed, and a deed confirming Gray’s sole ownership was recorded, Gray’s kids say Kum “caused [Gray], who was weak following his November 2021 stroke, to sign documents allowing her to take $475,000 of the home’s equity through a cash-out refinance.”

They also claim Kum asked Gray for a $90,000 loan in June 2020, and that, in an Oct. 2020 transaction where he took out a $77,500 cash-out refinance on his home, Kum added herself as an owner without Gray’s knowledge. When Gray’s kids notified Gray that Kum had been added to the title of his house, they say he was “upset” and “had no knowledge of the transfer of title to [Kum’s] name.” She later transferred title back to Gray, according to the court filing.

On several occasions, Gray’s kids claim in their filing, they had to call the police to ask for a “wellness check” on their father because they could not contact him; they allege in the documents that Kum blocked their numbers on Gray’s phone and screened their texts and emails.

Thies says these incidents were overblown, with police routinely leaving without taking any action. “Don’t you think if they went to a former mayor and current councilmember’s house and they saw something that was dangerous or unhealthy or just yucky, they would have done something?” he asks.

There are serious political implications to all this to consider as well. Gray’s endorsement of Wendell Felder in the contentious Ward 7 Council primary immediately drew accusations that Thies and Kum masterminded this very consequential bit of politicking. Felder was long seen among politicos as a top contender to receive Gray’s blessing, but the fact that the councilmember could not so much as go on camera to pass the baton and cap his political career aroused plenty of griping and suspicion. Thies has long waved away any such insinuations, but recent assertions in court filings about Gray’s declining health have reignited those questions. For the record, Thies says he consistently advised Gray to remain neutral in the primary (despite entreaties from other candidates to urge his boss to weigh in) and he calls any suggestion otherwise a “conspiracy theory” advanced by other Ward 7 candidates.

“You will find no one in this city, no one in the past decade who has been a more fervent defender of Vince Gray,” Thies says. “I have never, never once betrayed him or taken actions without his consent and I never would.”

By now, Ward 7 residents have endured a serious lack of representation for years, with Gray barely speaking during Council meetings (if he attended them at all). Two more months of missed votes probably won’t be all that detrimental—Gray said in a statement that his “mind is at ease regarding all matters slated to come before the Council between now and the New Year,” which LL is sure will be of great comfort to his constituents. 

But these developments will almost certainly count as a black mark against the people around Gray who allowed things to get so messy. And perhaps it will serve as a helpful example to other long-in-the-tooth politicians in D.C.: There is absolutely no shame in walking away too early rather than waiting until things are too late.

This story has been updated with additional comment from Chuck Thies.