Our 2020 Advisory Neighborhood Commission endorsements in wards 1 and 2

Registered DC voters have received ballots in the mail. Down below president, below delegate, below DC Council, there are hyper-local races that have a big impact on neighborhoods, on whether residents can have affordable places to live and get around safely, and much more.

These are Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. There are 40 commissions, which are basically elected neighborhood councils, across DC. Within each commission are a set of “Single-Member Districts (SMDs),” 299 in total, each spanning about 2,000 or so people. ANCs advise the District government on issues, especially development and historic preservation, liquor licensing, and use of public space including transportation; the law requires DC agencies to give their views “great weight.”

If you live in DC, you can find out your ward, ANC, and SMD at ancfinder.org.

The GGWash Elections Committee circulated questionnaires to all candidates in all of the SMDs across the city. We received 192 responses. In contested races, we are making an endorsement when the differences between candidates was clear enough (or when a good or good-enough candidate replied and competitors did not). We’ve also sometimes given candidates we didn’t endorse a “star” for having good answers. Where only one person is on the ballot, we didn’t endorse as a general policy, but candidates with good responses (and there are some great ones!) got that star.

In past years, we had extensive descriptions of the reasons for each decision. Unfortunately, with the ballots already in voters’ hands this year, we’ve sped up the process and just published our endorsements, as well as the full text of candidates’ responses, which you can use to form your own opinion.

Here are the full responses for Ward 1 and Ward 2, and tables showing our recommendations below. The tables list every candidate who replied to our questionnaire.

Ward 1

Ward 2

Stay tuned for the other wards in the coming days!

This is the official endorsement of Greater Greater Washington. All endorsements are decided by our volunteer Elections Committee.