jonetta rose barras: Elissa Silverman returns to the DC Council
It could be, as some people have suggested, that Elissa Silverman’s arrival back to the John A. Wilson Building as an at-large councilmember is karma’s work.
She might claim otherwise, saying that hard work and determination are what made it possible for her to be sworn in today to fill the unexpired term of former at-large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, who resigned to run for the Democratic Party’s mayoral nomination. He lost that bid to Janeese Lewis George.
In the June 16 special election, Silverman won a total of 73,246 votes or 55.36%. She beat out interim at-large Councilmember Doni Crawford, who received 34,080 votes, and State Board of Education President Jacque Patterson, who came in third with 23,487 votes, according to results released by the DC Board of Elections. The board is scheduled to certify the election this morning, enabling Silverman’s swearing-in ceremony later in the day.
While Silverman won all eight wards, her victory was less decisive in wards 5, 7 and 8, where the combined votes for her opponents were greater than those cast for her.
Despite the gaps in performance in those three wards, it’s hard for me, a woman from New Orleans who can traverse the world of unknown energies and spirits like many of my home folks, to think something like karma or redemption wasn’t at play in her decisive win.
Think about where Silverman was four years ago. She was high, and then suddenly she was low after suffering an electoral defeat. Who would have thought she’d be taking any oath of office as an elected leader in DC?
In 2022, Silverman was an incumbent independent at-large councilmember. By force of personality, intellect, determination and organizing skills, she helped push the council decidedly left. She was widely seen as the far-left wing’s informal leader, catching and bringing fire. She seemed to be poised to be reelected.
McDuffie, then the Ward 5 representative, was running for attorney general in the Democratic primary; one of his opponents filed a complaint with the Elections Board, which subsequently agreed that McDuffie did not meet the statutory qualifications to run for AG. He pivoted and turned his attention to the general election for at-large councilmember as a registered independent.
While she had other opponents before McDuffie stepped into the race, he became the alternative to Silverman for many voters, including some Black residents who had accused her of discriminating against them. Others found her style too confrontational; as political consultant Chuck Thies put it in a recent interview with me, she “rubbed people the wrong way” and was “acerbic.” Still others reacted to a controversy surrounding the Silverman campaign’s use of public funds for a poll of the Ward 3 council race — although she was not a candidate in that contest. A complaint was subsequently filed; the DC Office of Campaign Finance upheld the allegations in that complaint. Later, after the November 2022 general election, the Elections Board approved Silverman’s appeal of that decision. By then, all the damage had been done.
Silverman lost her 2022 reelection bid, garnering 63,471 votes to McDuffie’s 71,924. She eventually found a state government job in Maryland, although she noted earlier this year that that “was not where I belonged.”
Now, she is being sworn back into the same at-large seat she lost. The person who defeated her back in 2022 is trying to figure out his future.
Those certainly seem like karmic forces doing their thing.
“I am excited to represent District working families and small businesses to make sure that they get the return on investment for tax dollars they’re paying,” Silverman told me during an interview via Zoom earlier this month that covered a range of topics, including how she pulled off the win; her intentions as a new/old pol in the legislature; and whether she expects to play nice in the sandbox this time around. (I also asked how she, as someone who is not a Democratic socialist or a Democrat, might aid Lewis George, who has been one of her allies; Silverman said she hadn’t talked to her about the subject as of yet.)
Providing, at my request, a partial deconstruction of her winning campaign, she said what resonated with voters was her message that they “deserve efficient, effective and reliable government services.” She noted that voters told her they missed her voice on the council.
However, Thies called the at-large special election “forgettable.” He may be right. In the Democratic primary, the contest was buried at the end of a multipage ballot, coming after the mayoral and council races as well as a long list of party offices.
The heated mayoral campaign unquestionably overshadowed all of the others. In building her winning coalition, Lewis George encapsulated herself in the popularity and glow of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. As a result, she won decisively, performing far better than most, including myself, thought she would. She may have produced a ripple effect for every progressive, down-ballot candidate, leading to an indisputable rout.
Silverman had something Lewis George, currently in her second term as Ward 4 councilmember, had to work hard to earn: name recognition. That, said Thies, was a crucial element of Silverman’s victory.
“I am excited about Elissa winning,” said longtime Ward 7 activist John Capozzi. “She has all this experience; she has a lot to contribute. I want her to focus on accountability of government agencies.”
Silverman told me that she expects to focus on the cost of living by pushing for effective affordable housing strategies and accessible childcare. She emphasized the need for equitable aftercare programming across different schools, ensuring that what’s available east of the Anacostia River matches the diversity and quality of what’s available in Ward 3. She wants to make aftercare a standard part of the school day. She also highlighted the importance of improving school attendance and working with DC Public Schools as well as charter schools to address chronic absenteeism among high school students.
She may be returning to the John A. Wilson Building through the end of 2026, but Silverman still has to secure a full four-year term. That requires winning the November general election; she and eight others, all identifying themselves as political independents, have picked up petitions from the Elections Board, hoping to qualify for a place on the ballot. Patterson is among them, setting the stage for a possible rematch.
Can he — or any of them, for that matter — outperform Silverman?
In the general election, voters can choose two candidates for the two available seats. Typically, the Democratic nominee secures the largest number of votes. The independent in the race is often a distant second. The Statehood Green Party’s nominee, Darryl Moch, will also be in the mix on this year’s ballot, as will Republican nominee Darrell Green.
Ranked choice voting was a factor in the Democratic primary for the at-large nominee: Oye Owolewa, a pharmacist by trade and currently the shadow representative for DC, won the nomination with a 34.58% plurality in the initial count but a 50.93% majority in the completed RCV tabulation. But the process was of no consequence in the special election, with Silverman having a majority of the votes in the first round. It could be a factor in November, however.
During our conversation, Silverman seemed more fixated on collecting the mandated 3,000 qualifying signatures, which are due by Aug. 5. She apparently has set a goal of 3,500 signatures.
“It’s really hard,” she told me, “especially when the temperature is 100 degrees.”
Is it any harder than getting signatures when the temperature is below freezing and icy boulders block roads and sidewalks as they did earlier this year when she and others were circulating petitions to run in the special election?
Silverman is not new to the task of collecting signatures. She acknowledged she has done it at least five times and has never been kicked out of the race for failing to meet that criterion.
I dismissed the anxiety-speak, and focused on what issues she might advance. I also wondered whether there will be conflict between herself and Council Chair Phil Mendelson, as there clearly was at times during her earlier tenure. Or to ask the question Patterson posed during the special election: What did she learn from the sting of voter rejection in 2022?
Capozzi recalled that at a “meet and greet” held for Silverman during the special election campaign, she admitted she had been “too confrontational. I think she really wants to change that.”
In debates, she noted other errors in her approach; she also disclosed changes in some of her public policy positions, now supporting the idea of some subsidies to downtown residential housing developers. In our conversation she said she intends to push for reductions in the cost borne by businesses to finance universal paid leave in the city.
Truthfully, there isn’t all that much she can do between now and December. The council is on summer recess. It won’t return until well after Labor Day. Still, she will have a chance to weigh in on some consequential issues. For instance, Mendelson has pledged to hold a roundtable examining possible ways to raise revenue, including taxes on certain businesses and certain DC residents — a dicey enterprise in a city where the economy seems to have flatlined.
During her previous council tenure, Silverman and a few of her colleagues were eager to gain control of the Committee on Finance and Revenue from Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans, its longtime chair. He became ensnared in a controversy that ended up costing him his committee; the subsequent effort to expel him was aborted with his resignation.
Mendelson thwarted the ambitions of Evans’ foes by dissolving the Finance and Revenue Committee and distributing many of the agencies under its control to McDuffie. If Silverman is still salivating for that piece of territory, she has done an effective job concealing her desires.
She told me that Mendelson informed her she would sit on the same committees as interim at-large Councilmember Crawford did: Executive Administration and Labor; Youth Affairs; Transportation and the Environment; and Judiciary and Public Safety.
When I raised questions about whether those assignments suited her, she said that she is “here to serve District residents in whatever capacity the chairman determines.”
When I specifically asked about resurrecting a committee on education and a committee on finance and revenue, Silverman said she still supports those being “free-standing committees on the council like they are in many state legislatures.”
Having repeatedly described DC’s truancy problem as a “house on fire,” Silverman is taking on an issue that Mendelson — who has oversight of education issues in the Committee of the Whole — frequently discusses as well. I expect a clash or two — although, unlike others I interviewed for this column, I am persuaded that Silverman may have turned that proverbial new leaf and wants a more collaborative relationship with her peers.
Capozzi is not so sure, at least in terms of her willingness to take on Mendelson in some arenas. “Elissa will be Phil Mendelson’s worst nightmare and he deserves it,” he said, criticizing the chair for his selection of council staffer Crawford to fill McDuffie’s seat until the special election.
When the at-large position became vacant, Silverman openly sought the council’s interim appointment. Long before that, like most people closely observing Silverman’s activities ahead of the 2024 presidential election, when she organized groups of DC residents to campaign in Pennsylvania and parts of the metro region, I already believed she was carving a path for a return to DC politics.
Thies said if Mendelson didn’t want a Silverman comeback, he should have gone all in for Crawford, helping her to raise more money or actually campaigning for her. Instead, he offered only a late endorsement.
None of this may matter for now. However, if Silverman wins the general election, the tension between the former adversaries is likely to arise when a reorganization plan comes before the council on Jan. 2.
During his tenure as chair, Mendelson has applied a two-year waiting period before giving new members leadership of any committee.
He didn’t follow that practice when Vincent Gray returned to the council as Ward 7 councilmember two years after losing his bid for a second term as mayor; it may also be difficult to use that rule with Silverman, who previously served eight years on the council. Even though Gray and Silverman may differ in the extent of their experience, if Mendelson were to try to do so, would he be seen as undermining the will of voters who have returned a veteran lawmaker to office? What’s more, noted Thies, Mendelson is likely to be outnumbered by the “lefties” in the next council term.
If she prevails in November, “Silverman is going to play the seniority card,” predicted Thies. “She may [also] try to establish herself as a leader of the left-wing caucus.”
Just to be clear, chairing a committee is an important tool. But it’s not the only one available to a councilmember: Not holding a leadership post doesn’t hinder a legislator from introducing public policy proposals or amassing influence in the community among voters. Silverman knows how to create a presence. She is an artful organizer.
“She does not come to a fight unprepared,” said Thies. “She can be formidable.”
Let’s hope any fight is not about political advantage but about improving the future of DC residents.
jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.