Two ex-campaign workers say a former (and perhaps future) Council candidate stiffed them

With deep roots in Ward 4, Candace Tiana Nelson is one of the people most frequently floated as a potential candidate in the race to replace Councilmember Janeese Lewis George. Yet she’s facing a big problem if she chooses to run: Two of her former campaign workers claim Nelson stiffed them out of tens of thousands of dollars. 

Nelson, who has a long history in local government, recently lost the primary for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council. Now, Ward 7 activist Villareal “VJ” Johnson is suing her in D.C. Superior Court to recover the $10,000 he says he’s due for running her field program. And Ward 2 activist Trupti Patel believes she’s owed around $30,000 after helping launch the campaign, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter, while Nelson has only offered to pay a fraction of that amount. Nelson has denied the allegations.

Post-election disputes over campaign finances are relatively common in D.C. politics — particularly when unsuccessful candidates are involved — but this instance is noteworthy because Nelson is already gauging support for a run in Ward 4 next year, according to several Democrats in the ward.

The seat is all-but-certain to be open, with Lewis George expected to cruise to victory in November’s mayoral race. Nelson — who chaired the ward’s Democratic party for eight years, briefly served as Lewis George’s chief of staff, led Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s transition team, and has otherwise had a long career in D.C. government — would be a viable candidate.

But a spat with former employees (especially two activists well-known in local political circles) could complicate those ambitions, including scaring off prospective staffers before a campaign comes together.

“D.C. is small. You can’t do people wrong and not expect it to come out,” said Johnson, who has been active in D.C. politics for years and operates a consulting firm aimed at helping local candidates build out campaigns. “Stiffing people, it’s just unethical. If you’re doing that, you shouldn’t be in public service, you shouldn’t be in a higher elected office.”

For her part, Nelson says she's "honored that so many Ward 4 residents and community leaders throughout the city encouraged me" to consider the Council seat, but she’s not running for anything right now. She says she is focused instead on the new job she just started at a prominent local lobbying firm, Bose Public Affairs Group.

Nelson said that she “denies all of Mr. Johnson’s claims,” but otherwise declined to comment on his allegations.

In his lawsuit, Johnson claims Nelson hired him in early April and tasked him with “building and managing the field program, volunteer coordination, recruitment, and training, canvassing operations, and voter outreach for the campaign.” He says he signed a contract with Nelson guaranteeing him $10,000 for those services, with half due as a deposit up front. 

But Johnson says he had issues securing payment right away — it took Nelson more than a week after his hiring to pay that first deposit. He claims he received mixed signals from its leadership, including Nelson, and says he provided the campaign services “far beyond the initial scope of the original contract,” including helping with strategy and organization.

Campaign finance reports show Nelson paid Johnson’s firm roughly $6,400 in the weeks after his hiring, but he says that only covered the extra work he performed, not any of the work he did hiring canvassers and coordinating the field operation as outlined in the original contract.

“It just became too much for me: I didn’t sign up to do all that,” Johnson said. “First-time candidates, they don’t know what they don’t know. And I’ve been a candidate before, so I get it.”

When he submitted an invoice on May 5 for the remaining $5,000 he was owed under the original contract, he says she fired him the next day and never paid him. 

Nelson was never the race’s most prolific fundraiser, a distinction belonging to eventual winner Oye Owolewa, but Johnson believes she still had the money to pay her workers. She pulled in more than $220,000 over the life of the campaign, including $182,000 in public funds via the city’s Fair Elections program. As of Aug. 10, Nelson still had nearly $10,000 in the bank, according to campaign finance records. 

Though Nelson declined to discuss details, she points out she filed a counterclaim against Johnson shortly after he filed his suit, denying she is “indebted to plaintiff in any amount or any theory” and alleging he never provided the campaign with a “complete accounting” of the work he did.

But Johnson notes he heard similar complaints from other people who worked for the campaign, including Patel. He sees it as a “pattern of using people and not paying [them].”

Patel, a Ward 2 advisory neighborhood commissioner and longtime progressive advocate for tipped workers, played a key role in getting Nelson’s Council bid off the ground last year, according to people familiar with the campaign. She billed the campaign close to $30,000 for work she did lining up staffers, organizing events, and running initial media outreach for Nelson, those sources say.

But Patel has yet to be paid for that work, even after lowering her ask to roughly $18,000. Nelson instead offered about $1,500, which Patel rejected out of hand, former campaign staffers say. 

Patel acknowledged the dispute in an interview with The 51st, but otherwise declined to comment on an “ongoing legal situation.” (As of yet, D.C. court records don’t show any lawsuits pending between the two parties.)

Nelson says she "strongly denies" any suggestion that she owes Patel such a large sum. She says the campaign "made a good-faith effort to resolve the disagreement," but Patel never responded to her outreach. One former campaign staffer, who requested anonymity to protect professional relationships, believes Patel inflated the work she performed for the campaign, seeking to bill Nelson for her time attending unrelated social events, and never filled out some required paperwork to establish herself as a campaign employee.

"Trupti and I had a personal relationship that predated the campaign, and I am disappointed that a disagreement regarding her involvement with the campaign has reached this point," Nelson said. "Because the matter remains unresolved, however, I do not intend to discuss the details publicly."

All this back-and-forth could have serious bearing on Nelson’s potential entry into the Ward 4 special election.

The field would surely be large — it’s likely to draw in candidates aligned with both Lewis George and Mayor Muriel Bowser, who also lives in the ward — but Nelson has the sort of resume that would theoretically make her a strong candidate. (Other potential candidates include Erin Palmer, a former Takoma ANC who ran a surprisingly close race against Council Chair Phil Mendelson in 2022; longtime labor leader Renee Bowser, who ran for the Ward 4 seat in 2020; and Karim Marshall, who ran for an at-large seat in 2022 and recently relocated to the ward.)

Nelson served for years as an ANC in the ward and has won broad respect among many local activists for her eight years leading the Ward 4 Democrats. She also served for a few years on the D.C. Democratic State Committee representing all eight ward party chairs, successfully navigating the complexities of intraparty politics. And while Nelson didn’t do very well in the at-large race — finishing fifth both citywide and in Ward 4 — the months of campaigning certainly helped her build name recognition. 

Still, there’s daylight between her political positions and Lewis George’s — and several people close to the presumptive mayor have said that Nelson’s tenure leading the Council office was rocky. Add in these disputes with former campaign staff and Nelson may start off too deep in a hole to manage a win.

“D.C is a very forgiving place,” Johnson said. “It elected a guy who got caught smoking crack on TV. But issues with money, the public takes a different perception of things.”