A group of activists submitted a petition Monday to force a recall election of D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), the city’s longest-serving lawmaker and the target of investigations into alleged influence peddling.
The city must hold a recall election if the petition has the support of 10 percent of voters registered in Ward 2, or about 5,000 people.
“In the ward, they want him to go,” said Eidinger, who is best known for leading a successful 2014 ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana. “Even friends of Jack say that they are not going to sign, but they’ll take care of this at the voting booth.”
Evans, who first took office in 1991, is under scrutiny for his private business dealings.
Federal authorities have issued a host of subpoenas for documents related to Evans and searched his Georgetown home over the summer. He has not been charged with a crime.
Law firms hired by the D.C. Council and Metro, where Evans spent several years representing the District as the board chair, found he violated ethics rules by using his public offices to help companies that privately paid him consulting fees.
Evans and his attorney did not immediately return calls for comment about the recall effort.
No council member or mayor has ever been subjected to a recall vote.
The D.C. Board of Elections has 30 days to verify that the signatures are from voters registered in Ward 2, which includes downtown and western neighborhoods including Georgetown, West End, and Dupont and Logan circles.
The signatures will also be made public and can be challenged by Evans or other D.C. residents.
Evans will be up for reelection in 2020 but has not indicated whether he will run and has not filed paperwork for a candidacy. In the overwhelmingly Democratic city, the chief contest for council and mayor occurs in the Democratic primary. In 2016, Evans was unopposed and got 95 percent of the vote for his ward seat.
If Evans does run again, he could face six challengers.
If the petition has sufficient support, the elections board has 114 days to hold a recall election, which would probably happen several months before the Democratic primary in June 2020.
Some of Evans’s critics have declined to assist the recall effort because it would fall close to his reelection campaign.
Eidinger said that a recall still provides an important opportunity for voters to hold Evans accountable and that Evans could win reelection in a crowded field if he is not booted from office.
“We would be ridding Ward 2 of Jack Evans, setting up a clean slate for a new council member. We don’t want Jack to be in office until 2021,” said Eidinger. “We want him out now.”
If Evans is recalled, the city elections board would have up to 174 days to hold a special election to fill the vacancy. That could coincide with the June primary election.
A majority of the D.C. Council has called on Evans to resign, but the veteran lawmaker has said he will not voluntarily step down.
The council is scheduled Tuesday to question investigators from the law firm that found Evans repeatedly used his office on behalf of companies that paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The rest of the 13-member council will ultimately decide whether to discipline Evans, including the possibility of expelling him from the legislative body.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), who counts on Evans as an ally, has declined to weigh in on whether he should face discipline.