Who can create a new path for DC’s congressional delegate?

When DC for Democracy, a far-left-leaning local political advocacy group, held a virtual forum earlier this year, candidates for DC delegate repeatedly used the words “fight” and “statehood.” Were they simply tapping into a key policy pillar of the sponsoring organization whose endorsement they hoped to win? Or were they channeling incumbent Eleanor Holmes Norton, who has been called the “warrior on the Hill” and has announced plans to retire at the end of her term this year?

Norton helped lead two unprecedented winning votes for DC statehood in the House of Representatives when it was under Democratic Party leadership: 232-180 in 2020, and 216-208 in 2021. The Senate has never approved any DC statehood bill. Since those votes, there has been no measurable progress toward full representation and political independence for the District — and substantial reversals and setbacks under GOP control.

The quest to be the 51st state has often been comparable to hunting the rainbow-colored unicorn or being aboard Odysseus’ forever voyage home. It unfortunately also has fueled a misperception that the primary role of the delegate is achieving statehood.

The job is “more than statehood,” explained Julius Hobson Jr., who has been a key observer and player in DC politics, beginning as a child when his father co-founded the Statehood Party, later as an elected member of the DC Board of Education, and later still as a senior member of Mayor Marion Barry’s administration.

Can this year’s election shape a new path for the DC delegate?

To date, nearly two dozen candidates have filed paperwork with either the DC Board of Elections or the Federal Election Commission to fill Norton’s seat. Democrats seeking the office are Ward 2 DC Councilmember Brooke Pinto, at-large DC Councilmember Robert White, Kinney Zalesne, Kelly Mikel Williams, Vince Morris, Deirdre Brown, Trent Holbrook, Greg Maye, Anthony Rios, Gordon Chaffin, Brian Ready, Samuel Greenfield, Robert Matthews, Mike Smith, Greg Jaczko, Sandi Stevens and Jacque Patterson, according to listings on the agencies’ websites. (Patterson has dropped out and is running instead for an at-large DC Council seat; several others listed on the FEC website never obtained nominating petitions from the BOE to run in the June 16 primary.) Also vying for the seat are Republicans Nelson Rimensnyder, Denise Rosado and Sylvia Randolph; Statehood Green Party members Graciela A. Da Cruz and Kymone Freeman; and independent Artemus Eden. 

After listening to a couple of forums and reading candidate questionnaires, I sent emails requesting one-on-one interviews with seven individuals. Six of them — Williams, Pinto, White, Zalesne, Brown and Morris — agreed to speak with me; Holbrook, who was formerly Norton’s senior legislative counsel prior to launching his campaign, never replied.

We discussed their planned approaches to the job, policy priorities, and the potential benefits or risks of rewriting the home rule charter and revisiting the call for a commuter tax.

Three of the candidates seemed to be struggling to bring attention to themselves and their message. 

“You sometimes get overlooked even though you have valuable and diligent experience to actually present yourself in the capacity for which you’re seeking. … If a name is not recognized, a name isn’t known, then it’s kind of dismissed unfortunately,” said Williams, who is seeking the seat for a third time, having twice run against Norton. This year, his campaign had raised $3,094 as of Dec. 31, with $1,444 cash in the bank, according to his most recent FEC report.

Can he get on the ballot this time?

I pondered that same question after my interview with Brown, a third-generation Washingtonian, mother, business owner, lawyer and chair of the Ward 3 Democratic Committee. “I’ve been part of this community all my life, fighting for and advocating for people. I’m a pragmatic person. 

“I’m not a person who’s going to overpromise and underdeliver. I’m probably going to overdeliver and underpromise because that’s just how I run,” she told me. 

Notwithstanding her civic and professional credentials and previously running for a DC Council seat, Brown filed a disclosure waiver with the FEC because she had not met the fundraising threshold of $5,000.

Morris — who has worked in journalism, in public relations (including serving as spokesperson for Mayor Anthony Williams), and on Capitol Hill — found himself similarly situated. He acknowledged during our interview that he was having a difficult time pushing through the crowd because of the small number of forums and the lack of media attention to the race. 

Last week, with the March 18 deadline for submitting qualifying petitions fast approaching, Morris ended his campaign. There will be others who won’t make the cut. 

Political campaigns are brutal enterprises.

Only two people have ever claimed the title of DC delegate: The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, who was involved with the Civil Rights Movement, was the first to be elected. Norton succeeded him in 1991.

There were times she had the privilege of voting in the Committee of the Whole on the floor of the House, before being stripped of it. Since 2011, Norton and representatives of U.S. territories have been denied the ability to do so.

Nevertheless, the delegate has many of the same benefits and obligations as other House members, Hobson told me during an extensive interview earlier this month. “You get the same pay as other members of Congress; the same [number] of staff; and an office on the Hill,” he explained. “You operate a district office somewhere in the city that deals with constituents’ issues just like any other member — whether it’s Social Security or something else,” added Hobson.

The delegate is also assigned to committees and subcommittees. That provides opportunities for involvement in a variety of critical issues like the federal budget, health care, education, housing and transportation, among others. 

That broader reality and assessment of the job have often been overshadowed. Instead, statehood is cast as the elixir for political and other challenges facing the city. The failure to achieve it has adversely affected the perceived value of the seat and, in my view, lowered residents’ expectations for the office.

Within the context of the current delegate race, there has been no rigorous exploration of candidates’ skills and mastery of public policy design and development, legislative crafting, and political and collaborative relationship-building. The primary litmus test appears to be fidelity to the statehood mission.

“Anyone who’s running for this seat and their No. 1 obligation and responsibility isn’t statehood or strengthening home rule shouldn’t be in the race, period. … I don’t care if they’re on a council. I don’t care if they’re in Congress. I don’t care where they are,” said Williams.

He has announced health care, housing and home rule as the key elements of his platform. In our interview he discussed job training and development proposals for communities east of the Anacostia River. He also mentioned starting a new credit union to stimulate investment that could help small businesses. Is he running for federal or local office? The lines seemed blurred.

When Williams ran in the 2024 primary, he received 17,540 votes; Norton won with 72,979 votes.

That was only two years ago. Norton had already long passed her peak as a political firebrand. Those election results suggest that the majority of voters made no significant performance demands. 

“Statehood is extremely important,” Pinto told me during a recent interview. Noting that she had just been born around the time Norton took office, Pinto echoed many others in the race and around the city in praising Norton’s civil rights work along with her contributions to the city — Norton’s hometown.

“My sense, in speaking with people from across the country, is we are at a very different state right now in 2026 in the Democratic Party and with Americans’ understanding — and some for the first time — why DC statehood is really an American issue and needs to be the first priority of the Democratic Party,” continued Pinto.

“With that said, it is not and cannot be the only focus of the person in this position. We would be leaving so much progress on the table if the person thought that was their only job,” added Pinto, who is in her second term on the council and has gained a reputation for building citywide coalitions to push big, and sometimes controversial, legislative proposals across the finish line. That approach is what she said she hopes to bring to the position.

As an example of her potential success, she discussed actions she took when Congress was threatening to change DC’s reimbursement ratio for Medicaid from 70-30 to 50-50, “which would not just blow a hole through our health care system, but it could have bankrupted our hospitals.” She met with certain congressional representatives and “ultimately [the proposals] did not proceed. That’s what defense looks like.”

“Congress is not a monolith. There are all different characters and caucuses and different priorities,” she said, making the case that she understands how to “move the ball” to achieve the “best outcome” for the District.

White worked in Norton’s office from 2008 to 2013. Many people with whom I spoke, including Hobson, believe he knows the intricacies of the job. But not unlike others, White has a statehood state of mind.

“For most people, [DC statehood] does seem really far-fetched right now. But if you’re paying attention nationally to the fact that everybody in the country is focused on redistricting, whether or not it’s happening in their state, the reason is because these are fights about power, the control of Congress,” White told me. 

“It is important that the next delegate be able to explain to people across the nation that if you’re really serious about control of Congress, then you need to be serious about DC statehood. Because [adding] those two Democratic senators is a shift unlike any five or eight House seats,” he continued.

White had been expected to make a second run for mayor. In the 2022 primary, he ran against Mayor Muriel Bowser. He received 51,557 votes; she won with 62,391 votes. When rumors arose that she was leaning against seeking a fourth term, everyone thought he would seize the moment. 

What happened? White said the longtime pastor of his church talked one Sunday about his initial resistance to taking on the position. Thirty-five years later, the pastor confessed it had been the best move in his spiritual life. 

White said he kept pondering that message, wondering what it had to do with him. Later that day, his wife suggested he run for delegate. The next day a friend visited him and made the same suggestion.

“If you pray for clarity, and you get clarity, you gotta go with full confidence,” he told me during our interview. “I’m running for Congress because that really is where the fight is.”

There is no disputing that fact. Congress has already impacted health, social services, taxes, education and a host of other issues of major importance to DC’s 700,000 residents. And yet, the contest for delegate has received mostly lukewarm attention.

Chuck Thies, a longtime political consultant, told me that the delegate race is “the undercard” in this election. Blame the heated mayor’s race. “It has sucked out all the air. It will continue to do so.”

Let’s hope he’s wrong on that count.

Zalesne, who arrived in DC in 1995 to work in President Bill Clinton’s administration, shares Pinto’s and White’s views about Congress being ground zero. She admitted that some DC voters may not know her, although she has lived in the city for over 30 years — getting married, having children, volunteering in local schools. “As a friend of mine likes to say, you may not know me by name, but you know my work.”

She said she worked in the White House program that “brought internet funding,” ensuring schools and libraries, including in Anacostia, were wired with the then-emerging technology. At the Department of Justice, she was counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno and “fought for the COPS program — community-oriented policing system. Then there is the PEER Forward program, a nonprofit where I personally helped move the budget from half a million dollars to $20 million over the course of four years.” She has also raised funds for the Democratic National Committee.

“It’s true that I haven’t spent my whole career running for office in DC. But in the time I wasn’t doing that, I was doing things that are actually critical and needed for the delegate job,” said Zalesne, noting that when she began campaigning, she told people she wanted to redefine the job. “From what?” they would ask.

“If [people] have any view at all of what the delegate job is, it’s an outdated view and it’s a limited view. I don’t blame them for that,” she said, offering that Norton has held the job for 34 years. 

“[This] is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reawaken, reimagine, redefine what this job could be,” continued Zalesne. “I think it’s a huge job, but only if it’s got the right person in it.”

Who is the right person?

Part 2 of this series will further explore that question and whether there actually is a generational shift underway.