Our endorsement for DC Council in Ward 2: Patrick Kennedy

For as long as most of us can remember, politics in DC’s Ward 2 have revolved around former councilmember Jack Evans. Until resigning in January, Evans held his seat for nearly 30 years, and has historically faced little competition for it. While he was in office, he was not a champion for urbanism in many ways, especially on transportation matters.

Just 10 days after he stepped down, Evans has announced he’s running in both the June 2 Democratic primary and the June 16 special election immediately afterward to fill the remainder of his term. Evans’ campaign is a disgrace: It’s disrespectful to his colleagues, who voted to expel him from his seat, and to voters, who deserve better representation than a corrupt self-dealer.

Urbanism matters citywide, but Ward 2—which encompasses the majority of downtown, Foggy Bottom, West End, Dupont Circle, Georgetown, and Logan Circle—is the District’s physical core. The Ward 2 councilmember needs to serve their constituents, but by geographic happenstance, also has a pivotal role in whether DC overall becomes a better place to walk, bike, take transit, and becomes a more affordable place to live.

So, Evans aside, we’ve enjoyed watching the Ward 2 race develop, in part because all six candidates—John Fanning, Jordan Grossman, Daniel Hernandez, Patrick Kennedy, Kishan Putta, and Yilin Zhang—have spoken directly to GGWash’s interests: pedestrian, bicycle, and transit infrastructure; affordable and abundant housing; and sustainable and equitable development.

You can see the candidates’ responses to our questionnaires; read a recap of a candidate forum we cohosted with many of DC’s progressive groups; and watch our candidate forum, where GGWash, alongside the Center for Washington Area Studies, asked Grossman, Kennedy, Putta, and Zhang for their views on the pressing issues facing DC.

Our volunteer elections committee has thoroughly considered the candidates’ positions on issues we cover, and is endorsing Patrick Kennedy for the Ward 2 council seat in both the June 2 primary and the June 16 special election.

Why we’re endorsing Kennedy

Kennedy stands out for his deep and comprehensive knowledge of GGWash’s issues. And he understands how the District’s governance structure can be wielded and worked to advance an urbanist agenda.

In his questionnaire responses and public statements, Kennedy has consistently demonstrated an innate grasp of meaningful, realistic, and achievable housing, transportation, and land-use policies and reforms to make DC less reliant on automobile transportation and add the housing needed to deal with DC’s affordability crisis.

Those include increasing allowable density to meet Mayor Muriel Bowser’s housing targets; legalizing multifamily housing citywide; finding the funding needed to meet the scale of the problems of both subsidized affordable-housing production and the DC Housing Authority’s repair backlog; decongestion pricing; reevaluating DC’s historic preservation practices; and increasing the amount of street space dedicated to people on foot, on bike, and on transit.

Kennedy has been extensively involved in local housing and transportation issues since his election to Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2A in 2012. In his role as commissioner, he has supported a West End affordable housing project, increased bus service, new bus lanes, and electrifying the DC Circulator. He’s demonstrated his fluency and interest in these issues in his writing, mostly about transportation and governance issues, as a GGWash volunteer contributor since 2014.

In a recent dispute over a proposed protected bikeway in Dupont Circle, Kennedy worked with supporters and opponents across two ANCs to conceptualize and suggest an alternative to the controversial 21st Street proposal, on 20th Street. This isn’t a perfect solution. But it’s demonstrative of the kind of tradeoffs that elected officials must navigate, and it’s clear that Kennedy understands how to both thread and move needles.

Through his work on ANC 2A, Kennedy has developed the skills that a councilmember needs to work effectively with both their constituents and within the District government. This experience, coupled with progressive campaign stances on housing, transportation, and land use, means he can both lead Ward 2 and manage its constituents’ concerns, while being a reliable ally on the DC Council.

There are many great candidates in the race

We were thrilled to see every candidate commit to policies that would give DC residents a better quality of life. All expressed support for increasing funding for affordable housing and broadening access to multimodal transportation options in the ward and citywide.

Putta has distinguished himself with years of advocacy for better bus service in DC and bus-only lanes on 16th Street NW. Fanning, himself a longtime ANC commissioner, has considerable experience navigating community concerns relating to small-business growth and historic preservation, though he seems only partially aligned with our views on transportation or housing. Political newcomers Yilin Zhang and Daniel Hernandez also offered support for urbanist goals.

Jordan Grossman is clearly committed to GGWash’s priorities. While he is newer to local DC local issues than some of his competitors, having come from the Obama administration and Congress, he has quickly gained an understanding of the ward. His support for our issues, his commitment to equity, and his forward-looking and enthusiastic campaign made him a strong second choice for our committee. Ward 2 is lucky to have such good candidates (excepting, of course, Evans).

The differences between the best few candidates on policy is sometimes splitting hairs—as we’ve explained here, several bring some urbanist bona fides to their campaigns. Ultimately, we feel that voters should choose a candidate based on who will most effectively work with the other twelve councilmembers, and ward residents, to get things done for Ward 2.

Among them, Kennedy is most aligned with our mission: discussing, organizing, and advocating for an inclusive, diverse, growing Washington, DC region where all people can choose to live in walkable urban communities.

Kennedy’s longtime engagement in issues within Ward 2 is evidenced by his many endorsements from ANC commissioners there, as well as the distribution of his donors, which are more greatly concentrated in the ward he’s running to represent than any other candidate. We believe that this, in addition to his familiarity with what the DC government can do, makes him most capable of effectively serving in a ward seat.

How we made our endorsement

Greater Greater Washington has an Elections Committee made up of volunteers from our community of readers, supporters, advocates, and others. This grounds our political decisions in our community’s priorities.

Aside from publicly available information on the candidates, the Elections Committee relied on candidate questionnaires on housing, transportation, and land use and two debates, one we co-hosted with DC for Democracy and Jews United for Justice in September and another we hosted in December.

Throughout this process, we’ve been impressed that all six candidates, in one way or another, spoke competently on and directly to issues of housing affordability and greater access to frequent, reliable transportation. This kind of debate is needed, and new, in Ward 2.

We’re proud to endorse Patrick Kennedy, who will stand up for housing affordability, multimodal transportation, and the land-use policies that make them possible, both in Ward 2 and throughout DC. We’re confident in his commitment to both progressive politics and Ward 2 residents. Greater Greater Washington recommends voting for him in both the June 2 Democratic primary and June 16 special election.

This is the official endorsement of Greater Greater Washington. All endorsements are decided by our volunteer Elections Committee with input from our staff, board, and other volunteer committees.