DC election ballots started arriving in mailboxes earlier this week. As noted in this post, residents have a number of ways to vote. Most ballot drop boxes placed around the city will open on Monday October 5. The most convenient ballot drop boxes to Riggs Park are at UDC-CC Backus (5171 South Dakota Avenue NE) and Lamond Recreation Center (20 Tuckerman Street NE). For all voting information, including ballot drop box and voting center locations, visit the DC Board of Elections website at https://www.dcboe.org.

Candidate Information Resources

Check out the nonpartisan DC League of Women Voters for candidate questionnaires at https://www.vote411.org/ballot. Type in your address and you will see candidate questionnaires for races that appear on your ballot, including the ANC race.

Also, as required by law, the DC Office of Campaign Finance held a debate of the At-Large DC Council candidates and the At-Large DC State Board of Education candidates. View the debates at http://2020dcdebates.com.

Update 10/6/2020: DCist has published a voter guide for the At-Large Council race, which includes a link to candidate questionnaires.

Update 10/12/2020: The Washington Post published a voter guide for the State Board of Education race and a voter guide for the At-Large Council race.

Update 10/15/2020: Washington City Paper published a voter guide for the At-Large Council race.

ANC Races

For the Riggs Park neighborhood, there are competitive races for ANC single member district (SMD) 5A08 and 4B09. For ANC 5A08, I recommend that residents support the incumbent commissioner Gordon Fletcher, who is running for reelection. His competitor Nestride Yumga’s main claim to fame is inviting Breitbart News to an event she organized at MPD’s Second District headquarters this past summer. At the event, Yumga, a Black woman, stated about Black individuals, “We have the most violent race in America.” I know sometimes people do not pay attention to ANC races, but we really do not need to have people who say ridiculous, racist things like this representing DC residents.

For ANC 4B09, I recommend that residents support Tischa Cockrell. Ms. Cockrell is running against the incumbent commissioner LaRoya Huff. Both Ms. Cockrell and Ms. Huff serve on the board of the neighborhood civic association Lamond-Riggs Citizens Association (LRCA), Ms. Cockrell as 1st Vice President and Ms. Huff as 2nd Vice President. Ms. Cockrell is the only person keeping the organization from devolving into complete chaos under the leadership of LRCA president, Rodney Foxworth. Ms. Huff ran on Mr. Foxworth’s slate and was elected along with almost the entirety of his slate for the LRCA board in May 2019. I have not been posting about LRCA matters much because it is just unfortunate how much of a spectacle it has become under Mr. Foxworth’s leadership and those who supported him.

At any rate, as most know, Ms. Huff is also the deputy director of constituent services for Ward 4 Councilmember Brandon Todd. Councilmember Todd lost the Democratic primary earlier this year and will relinquish his council seat in January 2021. I have always found it curious that DC Council staffers can run for ANC, but they can. Ms. Huff is not the first and she will not be the last to do so, but there is a serious question of what can be attributed to Ms. Huff’s wearing her council staffer hat versus her ANC hat. And I am going to go ahead and say that much of what Ms. Huff has done in the neighborhood is the result of being a Ward 4 council staffer, so I question how much will be done once she is no longer in that role. The fact that for a time this year, residents were reaching out to me about issues in ANC 4B09 (and I live in Ward 5) because they were not receiving responses to messages sent to Ms. Huff’s ANC email address partially leads me to this conclusion.

That aside, I worked with Ms. Cockrell on neighborhood issues when I served as LRCA president from June 2017 to June 2019 and also prior to that when we were both pretty involved in neighborhood civic life. Barbara Rogers, Ms. Cockrell, and I planned the Riggs Park Day celebration in May 2018. Residents talked about having this celebration for at least nine years that I know of, wishing that a community day was held like it was in the past well before I moved into the neighborhood. The three of us decided we were going to plan it and we did it. It was a lot of work and took a lot of time, resources, and sheer willpower, and it ended up being a really wonderful community day.

Ms. Cockrell also recently started the Friends of Riggs-LaSalle Recreation Center to support the neighborhood rec. Again, this is something that neighborhood residents talked about for a long long time and Ms. Cockrell took the initiative to actually get it started. So I recommend that residents in ANC 4B09 vote for someone who regularly checks email, takes inititative, stays informed about projects in the SMD, and informs residents about what is happening in the SMD by voting for Tischa Cockrell.

Ward 4 Council

Democratic candidate Janeese Lewis George and Statehood Green Party candidate Perry Redd are on the ballot for the Ward 4 Council seat.

Ward 4 State Board of Education

Incumbent Frazier O’Leary does not have a competitor for the Ward 4 SBOE seat.

At-Large State Board of Education

The At-Large State Board of Election race has six candidates on the ballot. View the OCF debate at http://2020dcdebates.com.

One of the candidates, Jacque Patterson, has a slight connection to Riggs Park. Mr. Patterson, who previously attempted to run for this seat but failed to get on the ballot in 2016, is tangentially responsible for Rocketship Charter School coming to the neighborhood. Mr. Patterson was the DC regional director for Rocketship Schools when Rocketship was supposed to open a Ward 5 campus in Brookland back in 2018. That effort failed, leaving families stranded after the school enrollment deadline. It was quite the debacle. Rocketship replaced Mr. Patterson with the current DC regional director Joyanna Smith. Ms. Smith is a familiar face at ANC 5A meetings because Rocketship ended up leasing space at Art Place at Fort Totten in Riggs Park for its Ward 5 campus.

At-Large Council

The At-Large DC Council race has 24 candidates on the ballot for two seats. Rick Murphee withdrew after the ballot printing deadline, so his name still appears on the ballot. To get a handle on the large number of candidates, check out the OCF debates. In addition, the Southwest Neighborhood Assembly held a well-moderated, two-part debate in September. View part one here and part two here.

Initiative 81

Initiative 81 seeks to make entheogens (think magic mushrooms and the like) the lowest of local law enforcement priorities. Who knows how much enforcement there actually is in DC, but nevertheless the issue is on the ballot. Find out more about the initative at https://decrimnaturedc.org/initiative-81. An organizer for the Initiative 81 campaign presented at ANC 4B’s September meeting. View that meeting here (at the 20:22 minute mark).

Happy Voting!