The candidates largely agree on many major issues, meaning the race will probably hinge on what sort of message voters want to send to a council and mayor dealing with recent scandals and a looming budget debate that could pit the city’s wealthiest residents against some of its poorest.
“The voters are going to tell us in this special election which direction they want the city to go,” said council member David A. Catania (I-At Large). “In some ways, I’m personally viewing this election as a referendum on the city, more so than on the individual characters in the race.”
The candidates with the best chance to win appear to be former council member Vincent B. Orange and council member Sekou Biddle, both Democrats, and Patrick Mara, the school board representative from Ward 1 who, if elected, would be the only Republican on the panel.
But with only a fraction of the city’s 459,000 registered voters expected to show up at the polls, the election represents the best chance in years for new blocs of voters or those affiliated with minor parties to make an impact.
For example, the election will be a test of whether a new generation of politically active bloggers and environmental and progressive activists can mobilize enough support for their preferred candidate, Democrat Bryan Weaver of Adams Morgan.
The election also will determine whether the young Democratic activists who backed ex-mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) last year have a new leader in Joshua Lopez (D). Lopez was at the helm of the write-in campaign for Fenty in the fall’s general election after the then-mayor lost to Vincent C. Gray in the Democratic primary.
Also running as Democrats for the at-large seat are education activist Tom Brown, a political newcomer who has impressed observers at forums, and Ward 7 school board member Dorothy Douglas. D.C. Statehood Green Party candidate Alan Page and lawyer Arkan Haile, an independent, also will be on the ballot.
Depending on the winner, the election could create either a majority-white or -black council. It could give the council its first Hispanic member, should Lopez take the seat. The election also could determine whether embattled Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) will have six allies on the 13-member council.
The most dramatic result would be if Mara is victorious in a city where three out of four voters are registered Democrats.
“I am saying I am the one member who would not only be the fiscal but the ethical watchdog of the D.C. Council,” said Mara, a consultant and former lobbyist who bills himself as a “socially progressive, fiscally conservative Republican.”
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