jonetta rose barras: Will cries for new political leadership in DC’s Ward 8 be answered?

A recent straw poll by the DC Ward 8 Democrats received so much attention on social media, a casual reader may have thought it was a full-on endorsement of candidates running in the June 4 Democratic primary. However, the results meant little, given that fewer than 100 people participated in the Saturday afternoon event.

President Joe Biden won 63 votes to Marianne Williamson’s 10 and Armando Perez-Serrato’s four. In the at-large DC Council contest, Robert White received 52 votes while Rodney “Red” Grant pulled in 41.

Folks appeared more interested in the outcome for the Ward 8 council race, in which incumbent Trayon White is being challenged by Rahman Branch, a former principal of Frank W. Ballou High School and former director of the Mayor’s Office of African American Affairs, and Salim Adofo, a tenant organizer and advisory neighborhood commissioner. White received 57 votes while Branch won 29 and Adofo 11.

Mail-in voting for the primary election is well underway, but a sizable portion of Ward 8 voters typically wait until election day to cast their ballots at vote centers. That means the straw poll could have some impact in shaping views of the race.

Political observers and others with whom I spoke assert that there is an important unknown factor in what seems to be a highly competitive race: This is the first Ward 8 election for 6,000 people living in Ward 6’s Navy Yard neighborhood who were moved into Ward 8 as a result of the redistricting that occurred after the 2020 census. 

David Meadows, a longtime political operative, lives in the redistricted area. He recalled a recent crime walk in which White participated. “There were only 10 people on the walk in the Navy Yard,” Meadows told me during an interview, although crime is considered the No. 1 issue for DC residents citywide.

“I don’t know where my neighborhood goes,” said Meadows, expressing uncertainty about who his neighbors’ choice of candidates might be while speculating that perhaps only 1,200 votes will be in play.

Over the past few election cycles, Ward 8 council races have been won with diminutive voting totals. Consider, for example, that White was first elected with only 688 votes between himself and LaRuby May — then the sitting ward representative. In that 2016 primary, White won 4,272 votes, according to the DC Board of Elections (BOE) certified results. May won 3,584 votes. There were just over 8,000 ballots cast in that race.

Four years later, in 2020, White may have done better, raising his total to 5,063 — 791 more votes than his previous run. However, according to the BOE, as of May 31, 2020, there were 47,988 registered Democrats in Ward 8.

At last count, April 30, 2024, there were 41,173 registered Democrats in Ward 8 — a marked decline after the BOE’s recent efforts to remove inactive voters from the rolls. Nonetheless, the numbers — with so many registered voters who have stayed on the sidelines in past elections — still suggest an opportunity for victory over the incumbent. 

White’s two opponents and their allies hope a mood for change will sweep through the ward. Many people have voiced concern about the current state of their various communities and question whether White is the right leader for the next four years. 

“There’s a lot of frustration; people are fed up that things are stagnant or maybe have taken a step back. We see other parts of the city progressing and becoming vibrant,” said one resident who lives in Anacostia and requested anonymity.

“Trayon seems like he is still in over his head after seven and a half years,” said Sandra Seegars, a former ANC commissioner who is active in the First Friday Committee that focuses on public safety issues, among other things in Ward 8. She is supporting Branch and put out a robocall on his behalf. 

“It’s time for us to step up and have new leadership,” Adofo said during a candidates forum sponsored by the DC chapter of the AARP and held at the Congress Heights Senior Wellness Center. In the District, senior citizens are seen as a reliable voting population.

Adofo has advocated for enhanced safety, better roads and upgraded public infrastructure. He also called for improved schools, more economic development, affordable housing and a push for greater Black homeownership. 

Branch has cited his experience in turning around a troubled school as an example of the skills he could bring to vastly improve the current trajectory of Ward 8. “One young man was shot in the cafeteria. There could be 10 gang fights on a daily basis,” he said of the environment he stepped into at the start of his tenure.

He said that he and the school’s staff were able to change the environment by working with parents and community partners that provided wraparound services. “If elected, some of the things I did [there] I will do for the ward.”

Branch has called for vocational education programs for youth and young adults ages 14 to 25 and for living wage jobs for Ward 8 residents; he also stresses that long-term residents must reap the benefits of all future progress.

White — who chairs the council’s Committee on Recreation, Libraries and Youth Affairs — has defended his tenure, citing improved recreation centers and programs, new senior centers, and the construction of more affordable housing. He said “13 new Black businesses opened up” because of his leadership, including a Ward 8 location of DCity Smokehouse; he also cited the arrival of minority-owned Busboys and Poets in historic Anacostia.

“I’m not just talking the talk,” he said during the AARP forum. “I am delivering on my promises.”

White warned that the ward could lose political influence without a committee chairmanship if he is not re-elected. By practice, Council Chair Phil Mendelson has waited two years before assigning any new member a committee chairmanship, a position that comes with greater sway over legislative and budget issues. 

White first arrived on the DC political scene in 2011 when he won the nonpartisan race to become the Ward 8 member of the DC State Board of Education; the job paid $15,000. Three years later, he decided to take a position with the Department of Parks and Recreation’s Roving Leaders program. However, District rules prohibit elected officials from working for government agencies. They call that double dipping.

He decided to resign his post on the education board. 

In 2015, after Marion Barry’s death, White and a bunch of other people set their sights on completing the remainder of Barry’s term.

White came in second to May in that special election. He requested a recount and then stopped it mid-process. The rematch between May and him came one year later in 2016.

“A lot of people don’t realize how caring and intelligent Trayon White is,” said Meadows, who predicts that the incumbent will win because his two challengers are dividing the opposition.

Another Ward 8 political observer I spoke to has reached the same conclusion. “He’s from Ward 8. His family is here; he has strong community connections.

“The other candidates have good ideas, but they haven’t been able to rally enough people to be able to move the needle,” added the observer.

For some people, it’s hard to fathom that White is even running for reelection, given that the DC Office of Campaign Finance (OCF) concluded he violated laws and rules not once but twice — when he ran for the council in 2020 and when he ran for mayor in 2022. OCF officials levied fines and fees of $80,000; that included a request that his mayoral campaign committee reimburse the city $58,906.29 for funds received under the Fair Elections Program, which authorizes matching payments of public funds for political campaigns to eligible candidates. White has said his treasurer was responsible for failing to provide information necessary to respond to OCF questions, but the agency declared he could no longer participate in the Fair Elections Program.

“If you owe any money to any [government] agency, you should not be running for office,” said Seegars.

That history and conditions in the ward are reasons that some residents have turned away from White. “I voted for change; I’ll leave it like that,” the Rev. Wendy Hamilton told me. While she had already turned in her ballot, she declined to specify for whom she cast her vote.

Hamilton — a resident of Bellevue, a working- and middle-class community that often has a high voter turnout — complained that many people, including the incumbent, evaluate the ward and its needs through a narrow lens. “Everybody in Ward 8 isn’t broke or broken.” 

She’s right. However, the demographics do paint a portrait of a community in trouble, despite decades of investments, raising legitimate questions about vision and leadership. 

Ward 8 has a population of slightly more than 87,000 people, 61% of whom are between the ages of 18 and 64. In terms of race and ethnicity, 82% are Black while 9% are white and 4% are Hispanic, according to a 2022 report by the U.S. Census Bureau.

A slim majority (51%) of the residents earn under $50,000; 23% have incomes between $50,000 and $100,000, while 18% make between $100,000 and $200,000 and only 8% bring in over $200,000. The median household income of $48,609 is about half the citywide figure.

Unsurprisingly, 27.7% of Ward 8 residents — including 36% of the children under 18 years of age and 29% of seniors 65 and older — live at or below the federal poverty level.

As much as 76% of the housing stock is renter-occupied. The remainder is owner-occupied; 44% of those homes are valued at between $300,000 and $500,000. However, 24% are between $500,000 and $1 million and 2% are over $1 million.

In other words, Ward 8 is a complex community. Meeting the needs of a rising middle-class community like Bellevue, where Hamilton lives, while also battling seemingly intractable urban issues like stalled economic development, unemployment and crime is critical to the community’s growth and stability. The public safety concerns, in particular, have complicated the ability to make any substantial progress on the other issues; they also have instigated some outmigration of middle- and working-class residents.

“There is less of everything — less CVS, Walgreens. The Secrets of Nature left at the end of April. The Giant [supermarket] is trying not to close. Because of the theft, the management has removed the national brands from the shelves,” one resident lamented. “I thought we were building.”

Everything seems to come back to crime: “Crime is the first topic. Crime can affect everybody,” said Seegars.

“The conversation around public safety should not start with punishment,” Adolfo said at the AARP forum. “One of the first things we need is to make sure our children are in school. … We have to shift the culture of how we see school, how we see learning. As the leader in our community, you need to set that tone.”

He offered that since the Secure DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2024 has passed, “We need to make sure the funds are there for all components.”

Interestingly, White voted “present” on the first and second passage of the permanent legislation. He had raised objections to several sections including the return of drug-free zones. 

At forums, he has defended his work on the issue, arguing that the executive branch has no public safety plan. “Every other month there is some new initiative. We have to have a plan.” He praised himself for requiring such a mandate as part of the Secure DC law.

In a recent campaign mailer, Branch wrote that when youth “harm our community, they should be housed in a detention facility that is properly staffed and funded. Anything less contributes to the high rate of recidivism that Black youth in the community experience.”

Branch also has challenged White’s budget and legislative decisions, arguing that they failed to address the true needs of Ward 8 residents. “We cannot, in good conscience or faith, experience a third term of ineffective, unprofessional and unserious leadership,” he added in the mailer.

That is the choice in the eyes of many Ward 8 residents: change versus the popular and familiar?

---

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