Voters will elect two at-large D.C. Council members on Nov. 4, and 15 candidates are vying for the two spots. These are their stories, edited for length and clarity.
Family: married; 25-year-old son and 19-year-old daughter
Occupation: former accountant/auditor, Federal Emergency Management Agency
Notable endorsements: “Sure, my wife.” And the Takoma Civic Association.
Total funds raised: $2,087
So who are you? I’m a Washingtonian who grew up during the Civil Rights struggle — not only in this country, but in the city. I was raised and inspired by Mr. Catfish Mayfield. He took me underneath his wing when I was younger. I’m a John Wilson Democrat. A no-nonsense people person who came up in the Civil Rights movement. Like your John Wilsons, your Frank Smiths. Even Dave Clarke. He was the blackest white man you’d ever want to know. That’s my core.
What’s the one personal or professional experience that has best prepared you to be a D.C. Council member? Working in the community and also working on the mayor’s blue-ribbon commission on public housing during the Barry administration. I was the president of Fairlawn Civic Association; also was the vice president of the first orange hat patrol in Anacostia. We’d go to other neighborhoods and show them how to do a neighborhood patrol. It prepared me for the council in that I was listening to the concerns of the people, hearing the problems they’re having, and trying to resolve them. Sometimes city would listen, sometimes they wouldn’t.
What’s the one thing the council should be doing on affordable housing? I have shifted from affordable housing to affordable rent. The District has to get back in the business of creating and maintaining public housing. Public housing isn’t a dirty word. There are a lot of properties, a lot of land that the District government has that could be used to build housing. You have to make it a priority, but the only way I can do that, the people really have to push. I will be their voice on the council, but they really have to push for that. There are market forces out here and those farces are fighting against public housing.
And on education? I was not in agreement for the mayor to have full control of the school system. The mayor has too much stuff on his plate right now. A mayor is not an educator. We need someone who has the experience of being a superintendent — not a chancellor, but a superintendent. I wish we could pull one of those from Fairfax or Montgomery County to come here. I think that’s the first thing we need. And I like the representation of having an elected school board representing different parts of the city. Get back to the basics. We need to get back to logical rational reasoning and not just testing. Learning how to think and not just responding to a standardized test.
Where’s a third area you want to be impactful? Jobs. First we have to get Congress out of the human resources office. Congress is dictating our HR policy. Seventy percent of D.C. employees live outside of the city, and Congress is responsible for that. Especially our first responders. That’s because of Steny Hoyer, Barbara Mikulski, Donna Edwards. No. 2 is this: We’re not being compensated for statehood. We should get something for not having statehood. I would push the federal government to compensate us each year with a package of 500 federal government jobs for our D.C. residents.
What is the first bill you plan to introduce? The first bill I’ll try to push is to try to establish a committee on housing and job development. That’s one committee we don’t have on the council that’s badly needed.
You ran for the Ward 4 council seat in 2008. You tried running for mayor in 2010 before being kicked off the Democratic primary ballot. You ran for D.C. Council chairman in 2012 and again this year as a Democrat, and now as an independent for at-large. Do you ever think that all that time you’ve spent gathering petition signatures might have been better spent otherwise? No, because getting petition signatures serves three or four functions. You have to go to the people, and when you ask for something, you have to listen. And when you listen, you hear the things they’re going through, the hell they’re catching. You don’t just go out to get a signature. There’s more about it than that. I’ve learned the city well. Being persistent is not a bad thing. I’m going to run until the voters get it right.