jonetta rose barras: Rewriting history hoping to prevent a recall

Last week, I received a copy of an invitation that was sent to several civic leaders in Ward 1, requesting their presence at a fundraiser organized by several developers and lobbyists — Warren Williams, Warner Session, John Clyburn, Christina Betancourt Johnson, Merrick Malone and Bruce Bereano — on behalf of Ward 1 DC Councilmember Brianne Nadeau. An expanding group of constituents — calling themselves Save Ward 1 — have coalesced to recall her.

Williams, who is the lead organizer of the March 14 event and at whose home it was slated to be held, did not return my telephone calls to his company, the Warrenton Group.

“Instead of raising money from lobbyists looking to cash in a favor in Chevy Chase, Brianne should be in Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, U Street, Mt. Pleasant, and other Ward-1 neighborhoods working around the clock to make our community safer,” Diana Alvarez, chair of the recall committee, wrote in a prepared statement. The owner of Lit City Smoke Shop in Columbia Heights, she and other recall organizers blame DC’s crime crisis on Nadeau and her council colleagues, asserting on the campaign’s website that “conditions in the Ward have become untenable.”

Notwithstanding the protestations of Nadeau and her supporters, that view has been gaining traction in Ward 1 and throughout the city for the past three years. Consider that in 2022, a Washington Post poll revealed that 36% of respondents cited crime and violence as their top concern. While many residents suggested that using outreach workers like violence interrupters could help, 59% of those surveyed said that increasing the number of police patrolling neighborhoods was needed.

By the time that poll was taken, however, the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, led by Ward 6’s Charles Allen, seemed to be on a tear. Following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in 2020, a call to “defund the police” was heard around the country, including in DC.

During fiscal year 2021 budget deliberations, Allen persuaded the council to make significant cuts in Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed funding for the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and to reject her request to increase the cadet program. Legislators also approved a plan to reduce the number of police officers in local public schools.

During discussions with his colleagues, Allen confessed at the time that “the overarching goal is how to be responsive and responsible” to demands made by residents and others, including Black Lives Matter, to “defund the police.” 

Along the way, Allen warned then-MPD Chief Peter Newsham that he intended to force him to undergo another confirmation hearing before his contract could be renewed; Newsham eventually retired from the agency. His successor, Robert Contee — challenged by declining resources, including the number of officers on the department’s roster — resigned after only two years on the job. 

Unsurprisingly, some residents in Ward 6 have accused Allen of fertilizing the crime crisis. Since 2022, Capitol Hill communities have seemed like ground zero, experiencing dramatic increases in carjackings, shootings and homicides that have scared the bejesus out of them. A well-organized group of young, politically astute professionals has raised more than $100,000 in their effort to oust Allen.

Allen has pushed back aggressively, forming his own campaign committee, which is chaired by former Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells. “I think the bar is too high” for the organizers to force a recall election, Wells told me earlier this week, referring to the number of signatures of registered voters that would have to be obtained on petitions and certified as valid by the Board of Elections. 

Wells said collecting signatures is made more difficult when it’s focused not on allowing someone to participate in the democratic process but rather on “removing someone from office.”

The slogan for Allen’s campaign, “decline to sign,” is predicated on that belief. Wells said that it has been gratifying that so many people have rallied around Allen, noting that the ward’s voters just reelected him in 2022 and that “it would be an act almost of political violence” to remove him when it is “clear he represents the whole ward.”

Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who does not support either recall effort, said he also doesn’t expect them to succeed. He agreed that people are unhappy with crime in the city but said “that doesn’t translate into throwing Charles Allen out of office.” He shared Wells’ sentiment that securing the necessary signatures would be extremely difficult, even with the sizable amount of money proposers have raised.

There may be some truth in that assessment. Recall attempts are not new in DC. In 2005, Mary Williams filed a petition to remove then-Ward 6 Councilmember Sharon Ambrose. That petered out. 

In 2004, Barbara Lett Simmons, a key leader on the DC Democratic State Committee, joined Ward 8 civic activist Sandra Seegars and Statehood Green Party members Debby Hanrahan and Adam Eidinger in an effort to recall Mayor Anthony Williams. They couldn’t gather the required 35,400 signatures.

Despite that history, I am not ready to underestimate the energy and passion of District residents. Besides, I am old enough to remember that in 2016, a bunch of folks predicted a certain whack-job could never become president. 

Sometimes conditions are ripe for an unprecedented thing to happen in politics. Is this that moment in DC? 

A lot of people who had been silent about city affairs have begun to raise their voices and demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the government, especially around crime.

Interestingly, a sizable portion of anti-recallers may not be DC residents. Most of Nadeau’s money gatherers who organized this week’s fundraiser do not live in Ward 1; they are residents of Maryland or Virginia. 

“They’re special-interest outsiders,” explained Terry Lynch, a longtime Ward 1 resident who has been active in local political affairs for years and who in the 2022 Democratic primary supported Sabel Harris against Nadeau. 

In that three-way race, the incumbent councilmember received 48.46% of the vote. That means more than 50% voted against her.

One of several political observers and operatives with whom I spoke over the past week about Nadeau and the recall she’s facing noted hypocrisy: “Brianne and her supporters would point to [fundraisers] as a rogue’s gallery of people who corrupt politics in DC.

When I asked Nadeau via email about the recall and the fundraiser — including whether she requested help from the group or any of its members, planned to attend the party, and intended to accept their financial donations — she dodged the questions while engaging in her infamous game of who-can-rewrite-history-the-fastest.

She claimed that, “Public safety remains my top priority,” which suggests that she was focused before the uproar from residents. In fact, Nadeau was among the councilmembers who rode shotgun with Allen’s push to defund MPD. She supported spending as much as $7 million one year for violence interrupters, a program that had not been fully evaluated at the time. She also supported removing police from schools. 

Nadeau wants residents to forget that history. She wants them to pick up two years later, in fiscal year 2023, when she and other council members began to shift their positions. It’s the kind of rewriting of history for which she is notorious. “I’ve introduced legislation to bolster police cadet recruitment and provide additional tools to MPD to help them close more homicide cases. Each year, I invest millions of dollars in public safety initiatives in Ward 1,” Nadeau insisted in her statement after the Save Ward 1 recall effort was announced. 

Truth be told, Nadeau and most of the councilmembers have shifted their behaviors, asserted one political observer. “These recall campaigns are already having a positive effect. Look at what has happened in the last 90 days.

“Would the council have passed the Secure DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2024?” asked the observer. “That wouldn’t have happened a year ago. That to me proves the value of the recall.”

Mendelson wouldn’t ascribe the passage of Secure DC to the recall drives. But he admitted that those efforts have “prompted some sobriety among some of my colleagues.”

It certainly has changed Nadeau’s song, although she won’t admit it. And she didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of the complaint that her funders are people who are not directly affected by the crime in Ward 1 but instead seem to exemplify the kind of well-connected political types that Nadeau and her allies have challenged in the past.

“You may be confusing me with someone else: Warren Williams and Warner Session — the primary hosts of the event — have supported me since my first election and have deep ties to DC and Ward 1,” Nadeau wrote in her email. “As you can see from the Ward 1 Residents for Brianne website, as well as the first financial report, I have wide support in Ward 1 and in the District.” 

The address listed for Ward 1 Residents for Brianne appears to be Nadeau’s personal residence.

Williams’ name appears as a developer on the Park Morton public housing renovation. Is he raising money to better position himself for other development projects expected in the ward, like Bruce Monroe Park? 

That question is amplified when looking at the financial report for the Ward 1 Residents for Brianne group: It’s clear he already gave $500, reaching the contribution limit. Now he’s hustling his friends, which appears to be a violation in spirit, at least, of the anti-bundling legislation that Nadeau once championed. The campaign finance reform measure introduced by Allen and approved by the council also prohibits contractors from making campaign contributions if they hold government contracts. Williams is helping to develop projects that involve DC government funds.

A significant number of Nadeau’s donors don’t live in the city, let alone her ward. However, the report screams out for an audit. Many donations were made on the same date, as if there were some huge fundraising event that covered the entire city and parts of the Midwest. 

Further, it appears that some people who may be considered Ward 1 residents may not actually live in the ward. Karl Racine, former DC attorney general, contributed $500 on March 2. His address is listed at 1309 T St. NW, according to the report filed with the DC Office of Campaign Finance. Notably, the Office of the Attorney General is listed as his employer.

Wait, wait. Didn’t Racine leave public office in January 2023, and move to Palisades in Ward 3 several years ago?

---

jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.