The Race for Nonmember
Shadow Candidates for Congress Find They Must Explain the Office

By Joe Holley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 3, 2006

Hang out for a while with Mike Panetta or James S. Bubar, candidates in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary for shadow U.S. representative, and it's easy to conclude that only the Shadow knows what a shadow representative is. And the shadow himself -- incumbent Ray Browne (D) -- is not running for reelection.

Many D.C. voters don't know about the peculiar system of electing shadow senators and representatives as unpaid lobbyists for D.C. statehood. These local officials have been elected since 1990, although they've had relatively little to do since 1993, when the House decisively slapped down a statehood bill.

On a sweltering Sunday morning at the Dupont Circle farmers market, Panetta, 35, dressed in khaki shorts and a yellow polo shirt, usually had to patiently explain, first, what the position is and, second, that no, he's not running against Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's longtime delegate to Congress.

"I had no idea there was a shadow representative office," said Heather D'Agnes, a U.S. Agency for International Development employee, as she sat on a curb by the Metro escalator and scanned a bright yellow campaign flier Panetta had given her. She wasn't the only one befuddled.

"I had to do a lot of educating out there when I was getting my 2,000 signatures," said Panetta, an assistant vice president for the advocacy group Grassroots Enterprise. "And when I told them it was an unpaid position and that I supported Eleanor Holmes Norton, usually they'd listen."

The paramount issue in what is now a two-person race -- John J. Forster dropped out last week -- is what form of representation, statehood or otherwise, is feasible for the District.

Statehood is also the issue in the race for shadow senator, where longtime Ward 8 activist Philip Pannell and Michael D. Brown -- known as "the other Michael Brown" in candidate forums that include Democratic mayoral candidate Michael A. Brown -- are running for the seat held since 1990 by Florence H. Pendleton (D). The incumbent is running as a write-in candidate after failing to gather enough valid signatures to be on the ballot. The other shadow senator, Paul Strauss, whose term ends in 2008, is running to be the Democratic Ward 3 council candidate.

Bubar touts his record of community involvement and experience in local politics. "He [Panetta] seems to be a nice guy, but he hasn't been around as long as I have," he said.

A California native and a Washington resident for 28 years, Bubar, 53, has been co-chairman of the District of Columbia Affairs Section of the D.C. Bar for three terms. He was an alternate member of the Democratic National Committee and a John F. Kerry delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He volunteers much of his time as commissioner of Babe Ruth Baseball in the District.

Bubar supports taxing nonresident income earned in the District. He supports legislation co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) that would give the District a voting member in the House of Representatives.

"I believe strongly in D.C. autonomy," he said.

Panetta said statehood is the way to accomplish that, someday. For now, he's supporting the Davis bill.

"I've worked in politics long enough to know you have to take what you can get and keep fighting," he said.

Panetta said creative grass-roots campaigns are his specialty. This year, he started the D.C. Olympic Committee and named himself captain of its curling team. Last year, he led a campaign to purchase naming rights for the Washington Nationals' future baseball stadium; he wanted to call it "Taxation Without Representation Field."

"You've got to use your creativity to do whatever you can do in the position," Panetta said.

Senate Candidates

Shadow senatorial candidate Michael D. Brown was on Capitol Hill one morning recently. He wasn't testifying, wasn't lobbying; he was signing -- as in schlepping a kitchen stepladder from one Pennsylvania Avenue utility pole to the next and stapling signs that read "Michael Brown, the last shadow Senate candidate you'll ever need."

It takes a minute for his T-shirt and poster slogan to sink in -- that Brown would be so effective in his shadow role that the District would soon have real rather than shadow representation -- but that pause gives the 53-year-old direct-mail entrepreneur an opportunity to talk to voters about the office.

"Lots of people ask me what it is," he said. "You explain it to them, and they still have a puzzled look on their face."

Brown, a Newark native who spent his teenage years in Montgomery County, has been in politics most of his adult life. He's president of the Western Avenue Citizens Association and makes a living running direct-mail campaigns for political and nonprofit groups. He's worked for the Democratic National Committee and Democratic presidential campaigns over the years.

"Self-determination. That is the only issue," Brown said. "And that's why I like this job. I'm really passionate about the issue."

Brown calls himself the only shadow candidate who opposes the Davis proposal. For him, it's statehood or nothing.

His first line of attack, Brown said, would be to lobby the D.C. Council for money to fund a nationwide campaign. "If we can pay $611 million for a baseball stadium without a parking lot," he said, "we ought to be able to put a couple of bucks behind this most important effort to become a state."

Brown is running against the one shadow candidate whose name recognition among D.C. voters approaches that of Norton's. Pannell, a longtime activist for gay rights, civil rights and District statehood, is nothing if not outspoken. He's been arrested on numerous occasions during demonstrations for gay rights and once during a statehood demonstration, in 1997.

"I don't like closets, and I certainly don't like shadows," Pannell said. "My passion for the position and for statehood is very much in keeping with what I've done in other areas."

Pannell, 55, began thinking about running for the shadow Senate seat while in Boston as a Howard Dean delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Neither Dean nor Jesse L. Jackson, Washington's first shadow senator, was willing to raise the issue. The Kerry-Edwards ticket also ignored it. "That was really quite demoralizing to me," he said.

Pannell said he's been involved in statehood issues since 1979, when he was president of the District of Columbia Young Democrats. He supports the Davis bill "as a first step toward full representation in the House and Senate." He also would like to see a citywide forum that would raise what he calls "the decibel level" on the statehood issue.

Pannell, president of the Ward 8 Democrats and a member of the D.C. Democratic State Committee, jumped into the race after challenging Pendleton on the number of valid signatures she had collected to qualify for running in the Sept. 12 primary. She needed 2,000, but only 1,559 turned out to be valid.

"When she only turned in about 2,500 signatures, I knew she had to be vulnerable," he said, "so I took the time to comb through her petitions."

Pannell said he was concerned about how it would look to be challenging the candidacy of an octogenarian African American woman, but friends and consultants told him he had no choice. He concluded that running against a well-known incumbent and a candidate voters might confuse with Brown the mayoral candidate put him at a potentially disastrous disadvantage.

"The only way I have any chance is to make it a two-man race," he said. "That's why I challenged her."