While most District residents are undoubtedly familiar with Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s longtime delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives, fewer may be aware of the city’s shadow elected officials on Capitol Hill. Since 1990, DC has deployed a delegation of one statehood representative and two statehood senators, who lobby on behalf of DC citizens for congressional voting rights and full statehood.
In this year’s general election, Eleanor Ory of the DC Statehood Green Party is looking to unseat Democratic incumbent shadow Sen. Michael Brown, who is seeking his third six-year term. In the House race, Shadow Rep. Franklin Garcia, a Democrat, is running to retain his seat against write-in candidate Erik Metzroth, an independent.
Here are more details on the candidates:
Michael Brown
After a 30-year career as a political consultant, Michael Brown decided to run for the shadow senator position in 2006. “I helped get so many other people elected, I thought it was time I should do it for myself,” Brown said in an interview.
As with all of the shadow officeholders, Brown’s top priority in office has been to push for DC representation in Congress as well as statehood. He explained that a lack of representation means DC loses millions in tax revenue due to a ban on taxing income at its source and doesn’t maintain control over its own budget or judicial system.
“It violates every principle of democracy for DC not to have representation in each house. We are the only country in the world that does this,” Brown said.
Brown said that, in addition to helping secure 203 Democratic co-sponsors for DC statehood legislation, he has met with Republican senators who have previously expressed support for Puerto Rico’s statehood effort, attempting to convince them of the importance of DC’s cause as well.
Furthermore, Brown has worked to raise national awareness on the issue, as he said polls indicate that 80 percent of Americans are not even aware of the DC statehood campaign. As part of this effort, he hosts an internet radio show, named Shadow Politics, and helps run teachdemocracy.net, which pushes to have DC statehood discussed in social studies classrooms across the U.S. and encourages students to participate in this civil rights struggle.
Brown said that a Democratic victory in the House elections next week would represent a significant first milestone en route to passing statehood legislation.
“If the Democrats take the House now, that’s the first step. If they also take over the Senate in 2020, then, at that point, we could possibly get statehood done,” Brown said.
Eleanor Ory
Eleanor Ory of the DC Statehood Green Party (DCSGP) is the lone challenger aiming to unseat incumbent Michael Brown.
For her campaign platform, she has embraced a three-pronged approach. First, she wants to convince the DC Council to increase funding for grants that help organizations working on DC statehood. Second, she plans to do more lobbying of Republicans; she mentioned that she has already spoken with a few GOP senators’ offices. Finally, she would want to do more as shadow senator to push the issue of DC statehood into the public consciousness, as she did earlier this year when the Senate voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice.
“I think it is important to symbolically protest more against the lack of DC statehood,” Ory said. “For example, after the Supreme Court vote, I stood in front of the Capitol for five hours with the DC flag, which helped raise a lot of awareness.”
Asked why she decided to run as the DC Statehood Green candidate, Ory replied that she has been unhappy with many of the choices made by local Democrats recently, such as supporting large tax breaks to developers. She also sees DCSGP as much more progressive, and argues that it’s never desirable for a single party to operate unopposed.
“I think one of the weakest things about DC democracy is the one-party status quo, where Democrats are never really challenged,” Ory said. She said that unlike the Democratic Party, the DCSGP gives average citizens like her more of a “voice at the table” when it comes to important decisions.
Ory boasts a unique background: She received an undergraduate degree in engineering from Smith College and a doctorate in biophysics from the University of Maryland, and she has worked in recent years both as a circus performer and as a cancer researcher.
Franklin Garcia
Franklin Garcia was first elected shadow representative in 2014, and is currently seeking his third two-year term in office.
Garcia said he has supported the effort for DC statehood in a number of ways, engaging in community outreach efforts, speaking publicly, and lobbying members of Congress to become co-sponsors of H.R. 317, the bill that would grant DC statehood. He also hosts the television show D.C. Statehood Today, which airs on DCTV.
Garcia said that his biggest challenge in office has been increasing wide-scale public awareness and passion for the statehood cause. He said he wants to see DC residents “wild about DC statehood. … We need to do a better job at getting people to understand, ‘How does not being in a state affect you? What are you losing out on?’”
Garcia founded the DC Latino Caucus, which is an affiliate of the DC Democratic State Committee, and also serves as the president of the DC Latino Leadership Council. In the past, Garcia worked on campaigns for Hillary Clinton, former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, and former Dominican President Fernández, as well as for numerous news outlets as a writer and reporter.
Erik Metzroth
Garcia’s opponent, write-in candidate Erik Metzroth, said he decided to run in June of this year, when he saw that incumbents Franklin Garcia and Michael Brown were both seeking a third term — despite the fact that, in his view, they had done little to advance the issue of DC statehood.
“I have become increasingly annoyed that the folks elected to DC government to lobby on our behalf have failed to make any meaningful progress on the issue,” Metzroth said.
Metzroth proposed that unlike the current officeholders, he would push for statehood by embracing a more incremental approach. He said the lack of progress on the issue can be attributed to an “all or nothing” attitude of those at the forefront of the statehood campaign; in his belief, compromise is necessary in order to achieve big goals in today’s partisan world.
Metzroth said that he has been disappointed with the lack of media coverage his candidacy has received — he believes news outlets need to make more of an effort to educate residents about their options for this race, rather than a “near-total blackout” when it comes to an office that is on every DC ballot.
“You would think a self-funded, true independent with a single-term platform that helps everyone would be a story people would want to hear about in the most toxic midterm ever,” Metzroth said.
Metzroth works as a marketing project manager and has lived in DC since 1999.
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