jonetta rose barras: Two surprise DC Council wins

The special election scheduled for next week in Ward 2 may be pro forma. After all, several of the candidates already have decided not to compete. As reason for pulling out, they have cited the victory of Brooke Pinto in the June 2 Democratic primary. A political newcomer with no local voting record or any significant history of political activism in the city, she received 2,967 votes (or 28.36%), according to preliminary primary results released last Friday by the DC Board of Elections.

Most candidates had decided to run in the special election even before the date was scheduled. The vacancy was created when Jack Evans resigned from his seat earlier this year to avoid being expelled from the legislature. An independent investigation that examined the intersection of his council service and his private employment concluded that Evans, who had served nearly 30 years on the council, had violated the legislature’s rules and codes of conduct at least 11 times. Evans’ term would have expired in December. 

The special election is to pick someone to serve those final few months. The November general election is to choose someone to represent the ward for the next four years, beginning January 2021. Pinto is expected to face presumptive Republican nominee Katherine Venice and any independents who qualify for the ballot.

Despite his resignation, Evans jumped into the Ward 2 primary race, hoping to reclaim his seat in 2021; he received only 3.29% of the votes, however. He had opted not to run in the special, which has spared him a second defeat.

Six of the seven other candidates in the Democratic primary may have seen the special election as an opportunity to start the job immediately. Well, what’s that adage about the best-laid plans?

Patrick Kennedy came in second in the primary with 2,620 or 25.04% of the votes in the current tally, with special ballots and some absentee ballots still to be counted; he conceded last week to Pinto. Ditto for Jordan Grossman, who received 21.66% (2,266) of the vote. John Fanning, who won only 6.37% of the vote, also threw his support behind her.

Is it too late to cancel the special election? 

During an interview over the weekend, Pinto told me that initially many people thought she couldn’t win. That was before she received endorsements from her former boss, DC Attorney General Karl Racine, the editorial page of The Washington Post, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy. The latter two may have been attention-grabbing but the former probably persuaded Ward 2 residents to give her a second look.

Pinto said her late start forced her to forego participation in the Fair Elections program, which provides matching funds for candidates who agree to contribution limits. She raised money the old-fashioned way — although she said she swore off contributions from corporations and political action committees. “The other candidates had money. I just had to outwork them,” she added. 

Campaigning in the time of COVID-19 wasn’t easy for anyone. Retail politics — door-knocking, living room meet-and-greets and candidates forums — was largely sidelined by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s stay-at-home order. Candidates had to take to video or teleconferencing. 

“I made an amazing 30,000 [telephone] calls. I spoke with voters one-on-one about my experience,” said Pinto, who at 27 years old would join the council as its youngest member. 

Some folks have cited the absence of ranked-choice voting as partially responsible for Pinto’s win as well as that of Janeese Lewis George — another political newcomer, who toppled Ward 4 incumbent Brandon Todd in the Democratic primary. She garnered 10,143 (54.97%) to his 7,914 (42.89%); a third candidate, Marlena Edwards, received only 372 votes.

“It would have made a big difference in Ward 2 and could have made a change in 4 if [Renée] Bowser had stayed in,” said one political observer. Bowser (no relation to Mayor Muriel Bowser) had run multiple times for the Ward 4 seat; this time she seemed better positioned for a win. George consumed all the air and money, however. Bowser eventually dropped out; weeks later she endorsed George.

In his concession statement, Kennedy mentioned ranked choice, noting that he intended to advocate for a “thorough review of what went wrong in this election” and for reforms “including ranked choice voting and more streamlined mail balloting.”

Last year, at-large Council member David Grosso and four of his colleagues introduced the Ranked Choice Voting Act of 2019, an updated version of a bill he first proposed in 2015. The full legislature has yet to vote on the measure. If approved, it would provide voters the option of marking first, second and third choices on their ballot. 

“Too often in the District of Columbia, we see victors emerge from a crowded field with far less than a majority of the vote,” Grosso said when he introduced the bill last October. “It is extremely troubling that candidates can be elected to public office with as little as 30% of the vote or less.”

The Ward 2 primary is an example of what Grosso complained about. A combined 70% of the Ward 2 votes in the Democratic primary went to the other seven candidates — not Pinto. 

“In an instant runoff, I think I would have won,” she asserted.

Maybe. Maybe not. 

In Ward 4, the chance to draw a clear example of the value of ranked-choice voting was eliminated when Renée Bowser withdrew from the race, leaving George, Todd and Edwards, who was a minor player. Todd did not respond to a request for comment. George was not available. 

Zach Teutsch, the George campaign’s chair, said Bowser would have “brought some people to the polls” but ultimately “it would have helped Janeese” by taking votes away from Todd.

Tom Lindenfeld, a political operative who has worked in local campaigns for more than 20 years, said that Pinto likely would have been the second choice for either Grossman’s or Kennedy’s voters — which could have given her the largest number of votes. “Toward the end she was gaining momentum,” he said.

“Instant runoff would have made no difference in Ward 4,” continued Lindenfeld. “The people who voted for Janeese were more of the millennial whites.” He seemed to suggest that those voters would not have gone for Todd or Edwards in any race and thus would have essentially engaged in bullet voting. 

Lindenfeld confided that he had been asked to work in Todd’s campaign. “But I told him I didn’t think he could win.

“He’s a guy that would never have been elected if he wasn’t anointed by Muriel. He won [previously] as a legacy candidate,” said Lindenfeld. It also helped that in earlier contests in 2015 and 2016, there was a crowded field. This time around, it was mostly a one-on-one with George.

In the opening weeks of the campaign, many believed the race was Todd’s to lose. Further, some of George’s policies, like divesting in the police department and decriminalizing sex work, seemed alien to longtime Ward 4 residents, many of whom are African Americans and worried about people they describe as “gentrifiers.” 

What happened? Hustle and timing.

Not unlike Pinto, George played hard, relentlessly working social media where her base lives; she used videoconferencing and the standard campaign mailer to reach a wider swath of voters. “I was getting so much stuff from her on a daily basis, I almost decided to vote for her,” one Ward 4 resident and Todd supporter told me.

“The campaign was very active on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter,” said Teutsch. “[However], we had to be careful we didn’t get caught in a Twitter bubble.”

A self-described democratic socialist, George won more than two dozen endorsements, including from Racine, at-large Council member Elissa Silverman, labor organizations and Black Lives Matter DC. And yet, at one point, the message to supporters seemed to suggest she was uncertain about the outcome of the primary, casting the campaign as a movement that even if they missed the bar this time around they would continue.

Then, a monumental shift occurred: An unarmed black man, George Floyd, was murdered by Minneapolis police officers. Suddenly, tens of thousands of people were chanting “defund the police.” Janeese Lewis George’s controversial policy proposal of divesting from the police and using funds for other public safety strategies like violence interrupters seemed prescient. 

“Most people don’t know that DC has about two-and-a-half more police officers per capita than San Francisco and many other major cities,” said Teutsch. 

“Janeese won 16 out of 20 precincts. The precincts she won by the most margins were the ones with the most violence,” he continued, adding that “criminal justice reform” is one of George’s mandates.

Teutsch, a former advisory neighborhood commissioner in Petworth, said that the “big takeaway” from the campaign is that “a lot of politicians try real hard not to offend anybody — Janeese isn’t like that.”

That sounds a lot like former Ward 4 council member and mayor, Adrian M. Fenty. His political career was marked by controversy. If George wins the November general election, does that mean her tenure will be déjà vu all over again?

Residents in Ward 2 may be asking a similar question, although as a former deputy attorney general, Pinto likely won’t be getting caught in ethics controversies as did her predecessor. More moderate than her Ward 4 counterpart, Pinto nonetheless has embraced most of the police reforms approved this week by the council. 

Calling herself a “strong Democrat,” she said she likes to consider “all the facts and data” when making public policy decisions. Pinto said she would like to serve on the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, the Committee on Government Operations — and, “if the Committee on Tax and Revenue is reconstituted, I would be interested in serving on that and helping with business and economic development.”

Is it just me or does that sound awfully familiar?

This post has been updated to eliminate a reference to Republican Katherine Venice running in the June 16 special election; she has withdrawn from that race.

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jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.