At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie announced this week that he’s stepping down from the D.C. Council after 13 years in office (his last day will be January 5). Given his open musings about running for mayor, McDuffie’s resignation didn’t come as a surprise in the halls of the Wilson Building. But it is setting off an unprecedented chain of events.
In most cases, sitting councilmembers don’t have to resign in order to run for higher office. However, McDuffie occupies one of the two at-large seats that, by law, have to be filled by a non-Democrat. Since he wants to run in June’s Democratic primary, he’ll have to change his current independent affiliation – and would thus be ineligible to remain on the council.
(Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who announced her mayoral candidacy earlier this month, is already a registered Democrat and will keep her seat if she loses the race – the same is true of At-large Councilmember Robert White and Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who are running for Congress.)
It gets more complicated, though. Unlike the city’s ward-based council seats, at-large seats have to be filled by an interim councilmember until a special election can be held, which in this case will coincide with the June 16 primary. For seats held by Democrats, the interim appointment would be made by the Democratic Party, but for the others, it’s left to the full council to find a temporary lawmaker.
This has never happened in the city’s 50 years of home rule, and McDuffie’s departure is setting off a scramble amongst council hopefuls. Chairman Phil Mendelson told me this week that he’s already been fielding calls from potential suitors, and that he’d like to see someone who’s familiar with the council.
“I would like, ideally, someone who has enough of a sense of the government and the District that they aren’t completely lost when they’re appointed. We’re going into budget [season]. It’s very hard to find someone who would be knowledgeable about the District’s budget unless we look at a former councilmember,” he said. “But I don’t know that we’re going to do that.”
Sources tell us that former two-term councilmember Elissa Silverman has expressed interest in the interim appointment to Mendelson and other members. Silverman certainly knows her way around the budget, and should she get the appointment, she would be reclaiming the seat she lost to McDuffie in 2022. Per two other sources, other people who have expressed interest include former councilmembers Jack Evans and Vincent Orange, former Ward 4 ANC Zach Israel, Ward 7 member of the State Board of Education Eboni Rose-Thompson, and former Ward 7 ANC and ranked-choice voting proponent Lisa Rice. (Silverman and Rice are registered independents; the other hopefuls would have to change their affiliation from Democrat to independent to qualify.)
Megan Browder, an attorney at Legal Aid D.C. who also served stints in the office of D.C.’s attorney general, has said she's interested, but only for the short-term. A source close to her says she would be “ready to serve on day one with zero learning curve,” but would only do so on a “purely temporary basis” and not seek to run for the seat.
That could be a strong selling point for councilmembers who don’t want someone using the appointment to build their political bona fides ahead of the special or general election. But lawmakers may also want continuity in the seat for the rest of the year.
The jockeying is likely to intensify in the weeks to come, and Mendelson is a central player in deciding who gets put to the full council for consideration. He told me that he’d like lawmakers to vote on an interim appointment in mid-January.
But the political drama will continue. Whoever wins June’s special election will only hold McDuffie’s seat until the end of his term, so they would also have to run again in November’s general election for the full four-year term.
All of this is happening at the same time that ranked-choice voting is being introduced and amid a raft of other significant changes to the political landscape. In addition to Mayor Muriel Bowser deciding not to seek reelection, Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau and At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds have both said they’re not running again. If Pinto or White win the D.C. delegate seat, unseating 18-term D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, there would be a special election for their seat in mid-2027. And the same goes for Lewis George, should she be elected mayor.
We’re exhausted already.
Ranked-choice voting is definitely a go
Speaking of ranked-choice voting, it seems to have cleared its last political hurdle ahead of the 2026 election cycle.
This week, Bonds and Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder made a failed last-ditch attempt at delaying the rollout of ranked-choice voting, arguing that the D.C. Board of Elections isn’t ready to do the outreach needed to teach voters about the new way of casting ballots.
The pair’s proposal to shift RCV’s implementation back by a year got support from Mayor Muriel Bowser, who wrote in a letter to the council that she is concerned about whether the elections board could “implement a glitch-free election” with ranked-choice voting.
"I know folks are anxious about implementing RCV for the first time... [but] no matter when we start, whether it's now or 20 years from now, there's going to be hurdles and hiccups," said At-Large Councilmember Robert White.
Nadeau argued that “to delay is to interfere,” given that many candidates have already started campaigning under the expectation that ranked-choice voting will be used. That’s the case in Ward 1 itself, where five of the six current candidates released a statement urging lawmakers to let ranked-choice voting move ahead as planned.
Their side got an assist from Gary Thompson, the chair of the elections board, who told The 51st in an email before the vote that his staff is more than ready to roll out ranked-choice voting.
"Our agency has implemented major voting changes in the last five years, including how we vote (mailed ballots), where we vote (at any vote center instead of precinct-based polling places), who votes (including non-citizens in local elections), and other novel changes," he wrote. "Naysaying is, ironically, itself a challenge to successful implementation of RCV. We need our public officials to assist us by providing administrative and funding support, by hosting voter outreach meetings, and by talking to voters in every corner of the city.”
Along with Bonds and Felder, McDuffie, Mendelson, and Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White also voted to delay ranked-choice voting by a year.
Elections officials say they will kick off formal education and outreach on ranked-choice voting in January.
A push to restrict MPD’s cooperation with immigration enforcement
Ward 4 Councilmember (and mayoral contender) Janeese Lewis George took a step in that direction this week, introducing a bill that would place new restrictions on D.C. agencies and officials. Absent a judicial warrant, the bill would bar them from transporting federal agents involved in immigration enforcement or conducting surveillance on their behalf. It would also ban the city from assisting in immigration enforcement in “safe community places,” such as schools, hospitals, libraries and shelters.
“They say collaboration isn’t happening, and my community and I say, ‘Well actually, we see them using cars for transport, we see you doing these things,’,” Lewis George told The 51st. “So we wanted to be really prescriptive about what collaboration does look like and try to stop that as a means of upholding our sanctuary values.”
The bill – which was co-introduced by Nadeau, White, Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker, and Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen – would build on the city’s existing sanctuary city law, which prevents agencies from holding someone in custody longer so they can be picked up by federal immigration officials. (Bowser unsuccessfully tried to repeal the law earlier this year.)
Lewis George’s bill faces uncertain prospects; even if it clears the council, the Republican-led Congress could overturn it. But she said she is considering introducing an emergency version that would take immediate effect for 90 days if approved by a super-majority of the council.
In the meantime, Bowser’s pick for a new MPD chief – 23-year department veteran Jefferey Carroll – tried to reassure the city’s immigrant community. "We’re here to build trust in the work we do. We don’t want anyone to feel scared or fearful of contacting police,” he said at a press conference this week.
At the same time, Carroll declined to answer whether he would rescind an order put in place by departing Police Chief Pamela Smith that facilitated cooperation between MPD, ICE and other federal agencies.
Doing so will be among the recommendations contained in a forthcoming report from Nadeau, who held a public roundtable where more than 60 residents spoke of immigration enforcement they had witnessed in D.C. in recent months.
“There was a loss of trust in MPD and District government because of their collaboration with federal immigration and there will be a lot of work to overcome that,” said David Connerty-Marin, a spokesman for Nadeau. “The mayor has simply not been honest about the collaboration, which has been evident to everyone.”
The National Guard is probably staying put
D.C. scored a brief win last month when a federal judge ruled that President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to help fight crime was unlawful. But on Wednesday an appellate court not only stayed the ruling, but also suggested that Trump’s position would ultimately prove victorious.
While the initial November ruling declared that Trump had exceeded his authority in deploying more than 2,000 Guardsmen to D.C. in mid-August, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. disagreed, citing the city’s lack of statehood as reason enough for the president to wield powers he might not otherwise be able to use anywhere else.
“Because the District of Columbia is a federal district created by Congress, rather than a constitutionally sovereign entity like the fifty States, the [Trump administration appears] on this early record likely to prevail on the merits of their argument that the President possesses a unique power within the District – the seat of the federal government – to mobilize the Guard,” wrote the trio.
The office of D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who initially sued to stop Trump’s deployment of the Guard, said the ruling was merely “preliminary” and that it would continue to press its case in federal court.
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