Images from the candidates' campaigns. Image used with permission.

Voters will choose an at-large member of the DC Council in November to replace David Grosso, who is not running for re-election. It’s a crowded field, with 25 people on the ballot. We previously published candidates’ responses to our questionnaire on topics like housing, transportation, land use and DC’s budget.

The Greater Greater Washington Elections Committee recommends voters choose Ed Lazere and Democratic nominee Robert White, and we also think very highly of Christina Henderson.

First, we continue to support White for the reasons in our primary endorsement. White has shown, both through his questionnaire responses and time in office, that he is a strong supporter and capable advocate for more equitable transportation and affordable, abundant housing. The remainder of this article covers the choice of who to choose for the second seat in the at-large election.

What didn’t determine our choice

Before getting into the details, one important note about the committee’s work. Many voters, including many members of our community, will be casting their ballots this year based on their views on budget issues like the level of taxes or how much to spend on social programs. These are very important issues, but ones where the GGWash community is not all of one mind, and not where GGWash primarily focuses.

The Elections Committee explicitly avoided making its decision on that basis. We considered candidates’ views on affordable and market-rate housing; transit service and pedestrian and bicycle safety; overall ability to be effective as a legislator; and our lenses of equity and sustainability. We considered candidates’ responses to our questionnaire and other organizations’ public questionnaires.

Lazere, in particular, has made a career of advocating on budget issues at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, and if elected, he will certainly bring his views on these matters to the council. Many people in our community will be voting for him because of that, more than because of transit or housing. Others in our community oppose him for this very reason despite his strength on our issues. We realize GGWash’s primary focus issues are not the only basis for people’s votes.

Nevertheless, on GGWash issues we think Lazere makes the strongest case among independent candidates in this race, with Henderson a close second.

What we like about Lazere

Ed Lazere supports Mayor Muriel Bowser’s goal to create 36,000 new homes, including 12,000 affordable homes, by 2025. So did most candidates, but Lazere’s answers demonstrated a stronger understanding of why more housing is so important.

He wrote, “Adding to our housing stock, providing more funding for affordable housing, and preserving existing lower-cost housing are critical steps to being a welcoming city for a growing population, without leading to displacement. More housing supply will reduce upward pressure on prices; It will create housing opportunities for people at a range of incomes.” And, notably: “Increasing the housing supply throughout the city, including affordable housing, is a matter of racial equity.”

On transportation, Lazere wrote, “We must rebuild our transportation network to reflect the kinds of mobility we want to encourage — biking, walking and transit. We need to make those modes reliable and easy, and that requires us to stop thinking of roads as predominantly for cars, whether moving or parked.” And for buses, he thinks DC should help them “deliver high-quality service by dedicating travel lanes and giving them priority at traffic signals to improve their reliability and frequency.”

What candidates say to us, in our questionnaire when they (likely) know what we’re looking for, is one thing. Another is whether candidates will stand up to groups with opposing views. Lazere demonstrated this in his answers to the Committee of 100, a group that often opposes new housing. It asked candidates to defend the tools by which residents of the District’s most affluent and exclusive areas maintain that exclusivity, such as strict zoning limits, historic preservation, and more.

Of the leading candidates, Lazere gave an answer contrary to what the Committee of 100 was looking for the most often (three of five questions). He told them he is open to changing the District’s federal height limit and supports some homebuyer subsidies for housing at 80% of Area Median Income (and greater subsidies for even more deeply affordable housing).

What’s more, to the Committee of 100’s request that candidates provide a yes or no answer about whether historic preservation is “in the interest of the people of DC,” Lazere said no, writing, “I love the living history in DC reflected in its layout and its buildings. … We also need to recognize that cities change and that we cannot preserve every historic structure, especially if there are many other structures that match it. We need a responsible balance between preserving history and allowing DC to change and grow.”

In 2018, when Lazere ran for DC Council chairman against the incumbent Phil Mendelson, the GGWash Elections Committee endorsed neither candidate. The committee wrote that while Lazere’s understanding of the budget, homelessness, and such issues was not in doubt, he lacked a real understanding of the kinds of tradeoffs inherent in land use and transportation. There was a concern, from his responses, “that he would give neighbors too much of a veto on facilities like bus or bike lanes.” It seems clear he has sharpened his views here in the intervening two years, and now deserves voters’ support.

Image from the candidate's campaign.

Christina Henderson was a close runner-up

The GGWash elections committee was impressed with Christina Henderson’s responses to our questionnaire. Henderson is a former staffer for outgoing Councilmember David Grosso, who has endorsed her.

When asked if she would support removing on-street parking for dedicated multimodal infrastructure, Henderson did not equivocate in her commitment to creating more space for buses and bikes. She cited a specific example, 7th Street in Shaw, that could greatly benefit from a dedicated bus lane, and recounted a personal story that motivates her advocacy for bike infrastructure. She also favors raising parking permit fees to lower transit fares, a politically courageous proposal.

On housing, Henderson showed a strong commitment to the core principles of equitable growth and financial support for those with unstable housing. She supports Bowser’s housing targets, even if that means ruffling NIMBY feathers to build more affordable housing in affluent neighborhoods. She also expressed support for increasing funding for the Department of Housing and Community Development’s COVID-19 housing assistance program and permanent housing vouchers to aid DC’s most vulnerable renters.

She supports reforming the Planned Unit Development (PUDs) discretionary review process by prioritizing anti-displacement measures and limiting the appeals process to engaged stakeholders. As GGWash has written about in the past, legal challenges to PUDs have, at one time or another, delayed thousands of units of much-needed housing throughout the city. The subjectivity of PUDs often cancels out the possibility of delivering more affordable housing units through increased density.

To the Committee of 100, Henderson directly disagreed with them on only one question, but she also had an excellent comment on zoning:

In some ways, our zoning laws have essentially allowed modern-day redlining to occur when it comes to affordable housing. For example, all of the neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park are zoned nearly entirely for single-family homes and therefore do not allow duplexes, fourplexes, or any type of density by default. As a result, in 2018, only 1% of DC’s affordable housing stock was west of Rock Creek Park. Meanwhile, 50% of our affordable housing stock was in Wards 7 and 8. That’s not equitable. If we are to reach our housing and equity goals as a city, I do believe we will need to make changes to zoning where it is appropriate and reasonable.

Who we don’t want

Among the 23 other candidates is former at-large councilmember Vincent Orange. GGWash Executive Director David Alpert laid out many problems with Orange’s tenure in a 2015 article, including significant ethics concerns. He worried at the time that vote-splitting among two challengers would help Orange win re-election. In the end, GGWash and many other organizations coalesced behind Robert White, who won the race.

This year, Orange may secure a significant number of votes based on his name recognition from 13 years in office across two stints. Since DC has no ranked choice voting, the winner might well only secure less than 20% or even 10% of the vote, making strategic voting a necessary factor in any decision.

While an Orange win would give the council the most-ever members with colors for names, it would not make it the best on policy or the most ethical. Of the candidates we liked (besides Robert White), Lazere is strongest in allied organizations’ endorsements, fundraising, and polling we have seen (though those polls preceded the Washington Post editorial board’s endorsement of Henderson and Marcus Goodwin).

How this election will work

Among DC’s four at-large council seats, two come up for election every even year. Voters therefore choose two candidates on the ballot this fall, either in person on November 3, through early voting, or mail-in voting.

DC’s Home Rule Act, the congressional law which set up the council, only allows a party to nominate one person for each pair of seats. The Democratic nominee (this year, incumbent Robert White) has always been elected in overwhelmingly Democratic DC.

For most of the last decade, the non-Democrat seat has been held by people who agree with Democratic principles but registered as independents to run for the seat, like Grosso and Elissa Silverman, the other independent councilmember. Both have been considered among the council’s most liberal members.

The Board of Elections will send a mail-in ballot to every registered voter. DC also has same-day registration at the early or Election Day polling places for anyone who isn’t registered. Many Election Day polling places are not the same as in non-pandemic years past. Voters can check or update their registration status, find out more about voting and their polling places, or find designated mail-in ballot drop box locations, at the BOE website.

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.