jonetta rose barras: Will stability win out over any push for change in the DC Council chair race?

One of the more fascinating races in the June 16 Democratic primary may be the contest for DC Council chair. Incumbent Phil Mendelson is pitted against his former colleague and friend, Jack Evans, who represented Ward 2 for nearly three decades and continues to be recognized as a master of the city’s finances. Calvin Gurley, who has run multiple times for a seat on the city’s legislature, is also vying for the position; he is not seen as a viable force.

Late last month, I interviewed Mendelson and Evans via Zoom, discussing their reasons for running, their assessment of the state of the legislature, and how they would approach key issues shaping the city’s future. I also spoke with civic leaders, political consultants and observers about their evaluation of the race.

Despite two high-profile candidates, the race had drawn little attention until this week, amid reports that Mendelson used his council office to print out materials for a challenge to Evans’ nominating petitions — prompting Evans, himself the focus of previous ethical charges, to ask officials to reject the challenge and investigate the matter.

Folks may be hyperventilating over the mayor’s race, but the chair of the legislative branch is “as critical … but not as consequential,” said Ambrose Lane Jr., chair of the community-based Health Alliance Network, noting the contest takes on added importance because the city “is going through a crisis in several different areas.”

He’s right on all points — except that choosing the leader of a co-equal branch of government is pretty consequential, in my book. 

Consider that in DC the legislature establishes all public policies and laws; to a large extent, if the mayor wants to implement a new policy, that proposal must be submitted to and approved by that 13-member body. 

Through the budget, the council sets spending priorities for the entire government; the District’s 2026 budget is $22 billion. The legislature, via its internal committee structure, conducts oversight of all agencies within the executive branch, including the office of the mayor. 

Who among the candidates understands the importance of the legislature — its influence and its control? Who will handle those most effectively? Who will take the city to the next level in this second quarter of the 21st century, ensuring significant socioeconomic expansion, improving government operations and fiscal management, and enhancing the quality-of-life results for 700,000 residents?

“There’s a lot of unfinished business, plus there’s going to be a lot of change, and it’s important to have some stability,” said Mendelson, who was first elected to the DC Council as an at-large member in 1998. After a series of scandals ensnared several legislators, he was selected in June 2012 by his colleagues to serve as interim chair. He won the position outright later that year in a special election. He’s been reelected three times since.

During the past three years — even before President Donald Trump returned, bringing his own locust plague — DC has experienced a measurable deterioration of its political independence as congressional Republicans have repealed various local laws.

Still, Mendelson claimed “some experience dealing with the current White House and Congress. We’ve actually gotten better at pushing back. We need to hold onto that skill for the next two years.” 

Last year, the council hired Capitol Counsel LLC — a bipartisan, “full-service government relations group” — to help with its federal strategy. During our conversation, Mendelson told me he was about to leave to “go up to the Hill to meet with some members of Congress.” He has been “trying to meet as often as I can” with them. 

“Unfortunately, it’s easier to get meetings with Democrats than it is with Republicans. I spent a year trying to get a meeting with Rand Paul with no success,” Mendelson confessed.

I was surprised that Mendelson had conducted the interview about his campaign from his office in the John A. Wilson Building and that he apparently had engaged two of his staffers to assist with the arrangements. Those seemed to be violations of local laws that prohibit such activity.

After our interview, I wrote Mendelson with a few follow-up questions about Capitol Counsel; he told me this was “old news” but referred me to Nyasha Howard, the secretary of the council. 

In an email she said three councilmembers selected the firm because it offered the lowest rate and its “partners were very familiar with local District issues. We are on a month-to-month deescalated contract, now at a rate of $15K per month.”

She indicated the group had been paid $25,000 for one month’s work in 2025. The overall annual budget is now $180,000. 

I requested the names of the selecting councilmembers, but she did not provide them. I asked whether the full council had voted to approve the hiring of the company; she did not answer that question.

When I asked for a copy of the contract or letter of agreement so I might report on the scope of the company’s work, Howard told me I would have to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act for that document and any other information I wanted. (As I’ve written before, transparency at the council has been declining in the last two years.)

In the mix: stability, experience, ethics

The incumbent has been selling stability. Some people are prepared to accept that argument, yet again, as a reason to reelect him.

“I would probably think Mendelson would produce a little more in the way of stability,” said Lane, while admitting that there is a “flip side to stability — stagnancy.”

“Jack won’t shift that paradigm. Jack has to fight his past demons even as he tries to create stability the council ultimately needs,” added Lane. 

“Hasn’t the city had enough stability?” asked A. Scott Bolden, former chair of the DC Democratic State Committee. “Isn’t it time for some bold ideas? Isn’t it time to take risks?

“Stability doesn’t move you forward,” argued Bolden.

Quite notably, Evans didn’t push stability during our interview: “I’m coming in with institutional knowledge and experience that exceeds anyone, including the current chair,” he told me, offering an introduction of himself as if he were speaking with someone unfamiliar with the details that he shared about his time in office: first getting elected in 1991 to the Ward 2 seat left vacant when John Wilson became chair; marrying Noel Soderberg, a real estate agent; having three children — triplets; grieving his wife’s death from cancer; struggling as a single father; working with various elected mayors to strengthen the city’s finances while trying to establish DC as one of the country’s municipal leaders.

“The last six years, since I left the council in 2020, have not been good to the city; our finances have unfortunately taken a turn for the worse. I especially put the blame on the council because it looks like the mayor did try; the council continued to spend money and really did not pay attention to what was happening,” said Evans.

His accomplishments may include helping achieve high-profile development projects like Capital One Arena and the surrounding Gallery Place area; the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, which helped spur a revitalization of Shaw and adjacent communities; Nationals Park; and Audi Field, home to DC United and the Washington Spirit. All of that has been buried, however, under multiple reports that found Evans violated the council’s Code of Conduct. Facing likely expulsion from his seat, he resigned in January 2020. 

He has publicly apologized for his “mistakes” and asked for forgiveness. A series of mea culpas may have served Marion Barry well — Evans not so much. He ran for his former seat in the 2020 primary but trailed well behind the other contenders.

Lane acknowledged that Evans once tried to help establish a business improvement district for Ward 7, “listening to what the community wanted” and acting with “sincerity.” 

“Jack is more open-minded than Mendelson,” continued Lane. Still, he said the ethics violations “disqualify” Evans from “ever holding elected office again.”

Chuck Thies, a longtime political consultant, echoed that sentiment: “There comes a time you have to understand that ship has sailed.”

Besides, continued Thies, Evans “has never received double digits in a citywide” election — except in the 1998 mayoral primary race, when he won 10% of the vote. In his 2014 bid he received 5% of the vote. 

Mendelson has consistently been the second- or third-highest vote-getter on the ballot in elections where he has been running for chair. Has voters’ enthusiasm waned? These days, Thies offered, “Phil may be vulnerable — just not to Jack.

“Phil is going to crush Jack,” predicted Thies, arguing in part that Mendelson has stronger support in the African American community, which he “worked very hard to build and retain” — although he may have bruised it during a spat with former first lady Cora Masters Barry and Natalie Hopkinson, a university professor and cultural advocate, over their reappointments to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. 

Thies compared this race to the one in 2018, when Mendelson was challenged by advocate Ed Lazere. “You had one boring white guy running against another boring white guy. People voted for the boring white guy they knew.”

Bolden said, “Jack’s ethical lapses don’t bother me as much as the current leadership.” However, “both have to explain themselves. Voters have to pick the best leadership for this time.”

Institutional vs. individual leadership

Throughout most of my interview, Mendelson seemed reluctant to accept the mantle of the legislative branch’s “institutional leader.” He focused on his work as chair of the Committee of the Whole.

“I have direct oversight of education. The government has made small improvements, but I’m going to continue to press that they improve teacher retention, reduce absenteeism. … It’s not acceptable — which I think if left to their own devices, the chancellor and the mayor would say it is acceptable — that we’re improving test scores by 3 percentage points a year. At that rate, it’s probably about 50 years before everybody is proficient, which makes no sense,” said Mendelson.

“I have oversight over the Department of Buildings, and we’re seeing some improvements there, but I want to continue to push, especially since I was the author of the legislation that created the Department of Buildings,” he continued, also citing his efforts to rally the council and restore public trust after the 2024 arrest of Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White on federal bribery charges. (White was expelled, then reelected and sworn in as a councilmember. He continues to participate in the activities of the legislature, with his criminal trial not scheduled until September.)

If one of Mendelson’s missions is to rebuild the public’s trust in the legislature, he may have sabotaged that effort just as this election was ramping up. By his own admission, he used government resources to file a challenge to the nominating petitions that Evans needs to qualify for the ballot.

Evans swiftly filed complaints with the city’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability and the DC Office of Campaign Finance, and asked the Board of Elections to toss out Mendelson’s challenge to his signatures. He has also asked the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to examine whether there were any violations of local criminal laws. (Even if the Elections Board throws out Mendelson’s challenge, Evans faces two others.)

It is indeed ironic, since one of the charges against Evans was that he misused government resources for his own personal gain.

Mendelson may think his work on education is his chief achievement, but Evans criticized him for disbanding the separate Committee on Education. “We need a [separate] committee. We need a chairman of that committee who focuses on education. He has it in the Committee of the Whole, and frankly, hasn’t done a very good job in doing the oversight that’s necessary.

“I would have an Education Committee, and every member of the council, no matter if they’re brand-new or been there forever, will chair a committee,” said Evans, adding that if a member had trouble fulfilling their role, he would help that person “learn how to chair a committee and how to do vigorous oversight.”

“It’s a fundamental difference. … We will have a very strong, functioning council,” continued Evans. “We need leadership in this town; we don’t have it. We have people just fumbling and bumbling.”

When I asked about their past friendship, Evans told me that even when they were on the council together, they “didn’t agree on a lot.” He cited as examples the baseball stadium and property taxes: Evans said he wanted “to cap them at 3%,” while Mendelson “wanted to keep them at 10%. We had differences on how we should be spending our money and how we should be managing our money.”

Mendelson asserted that Evans has been “seizing on any argument that he thinks he can make, which is what a political opponent often will do.”

“I know that folks will say that the chairman of the council is responsible for what other members do or don’t do, but the reality is that none of the councilmembers work for me,” argued Mendelson.

“In the history of home rule, no chairman has been able to dictate to other committees how they should have more oversight. I have looked for ways to try to strengthen oversight by other committees,” he said.

“I beefed up the budget office, so we have more resources there. I’ve beefed up our general counsel’s office, so we have more resources there. And I have made available to members training on oversight, with training by the Levin Center, named after the former senator from Michigan, which was never done before. 

“So, I have looked for ways to try to help members be more rigorous in their oversight, but they don’t work for me. They don’t take orders from me,” added Mendelson.

Nevertheless, he offered that he has sought to “protect and strengthen the council … as well as to protect and enhance the reputation of the council in the community. I’ve demonstrated some skill in that regard, which is another reason why I’m running for reelection.”

Mendelson also touted his ability “to pull the council together to be virtually unanimous” on its approval of the Commanders football stadium. Where budget deliberations and votes once extended to six or eight eight hours, “I’ve been able to hold members together better. That’s unique to the chairman’s position as opposed to just any member.”

In that last bit, he didn’t mention the multiple administrative meetings he conducts with members before votes occur on the dais.

Mendelson admitted that he has been “very concerned about where we are with the budget” — not because of actions by him and his colleagues, but rather because the mayor hasn’t “stewarded the budget very well. A lot of tough decisions about spending and efficiency have been kicked down the road, and we’re now at a point where they can’t keep getting kicked down the road.”

“Don’t blame the council for agency overspending. It’s the agencies that are guilty,” he said. “You will find that I have had far more hearings on overspending. I’ve had far more hearings on the budget. I’ve had far more hearings on education. 

“You will not find that, under my leadership, the Committee of the Whole has been lax on having hearings. And compare me to any other committee and compare me to any other past committee,” continued Mendelson, once again parsing his role as council chair. 

Other issues aside, the DC Council’s ability to rise to the occasion given the present challenges facing the District may be one of the most significant questions in this race.

“When times are good and things are running smoothly, Mendelson proves a steady hand. In a crisis he does not provide a way out,” said Lane, offering an assessment that many people have come to accept.

“Sometimes people get comfortable with the status quo. They forget what excellence and strong leadership look like,” said Bolden. “There has to be a push to excellence by these candidates.”

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