With less than two months until the Ward 7 Council primary wraps up, Wendell Felder has been hit with more than his fair share of slings and arrows. But he doesn’t mind.
“As the front-runner, with all this momentum, more attacks are starting to come my way,” he tells Loose Lips. That might sound bold, but Felder probably has reason for optimism.
He won the closely watched straw poll run by the Ward 7 Democrats, the organization he used to chair, and the group promptly followed up with a formal endorsement. He picked up some key labor support via the influential 32BJ chapter of the Service Employees International Union. And he’s still raising money at a fast clip, pulling in nearly $4,200 from D.C. residents last month, per reports filed April 10. He’s narrowly leading the field in that category, a strong measure of local support. Felder even earned the first spot on the ballot via a random drawing, which doesn’t hurt in a 10-candidate field.
So perhaps it isn’t surprising that other candidates running to replace Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray are starting to train their fire on Felder, accusing him of everything from undermining the statehood movement with some of his recent public positions to benefitting from a process designed by his supporters by winning the Dems’ endorsement vote. But, of course, no one is willing to concede that Felder is doing as well as he says. “Delusional” is the word that Ebony Payne, a Kingman Park advisory neighborhood commissioner who’s also in the running, came up with to describe Felder’s comments.
“I think that there are much deeper underlying weaknesses with Felder’s campaign,” Payne says. “I would not say that he is the front-runner in any way.”
So who is really leading this race? Without any local polling and with so many candidates in the mix, it’s impossible to know for sure. But LL’s survey of politicos in the ward and several months’ worth of fundraising reports suggests that a top four has emerged: Felder, Payne, State Board of Education Rep. Eboni-Rose Thompson, and attorney Veda Rasheed. Each one has their strengths and weaknesses, but time is running short for anyone else to truly make a splash.
The biggest X-factor is Gray, who has suggested he could endorse a candidate as his preferred successor and whose word still carries quite a bit of weight in the ward, despite his recent retreat from public life amid health challenges. LL hears from people in his orbit that Felder or Thompson are the most likely contenders to earn the former mayor’s support. Rasheed, who ran against him four years ago, probably doesn’t have a chance, nor does fellow 2020 challenger Kelvin Brown. But Gray could always choose to stay neutral, leaving the race just as open as ever.
“With all these candidates still in and no one dropping out, whoever wins will be lucky to get 20 or 25 percent of the vote,” says Lisa Rice, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Dupont Park. “That’s unfortunate for us, but it’s true.”
The Dems’ endorsement of Felder could be decisive in such an environment, considering the group’s influence with likely primary voters. But some in the ward believe it could backfire as the controversy over the process behind the endorsement deepens. “It’s like a $3 bill to me,” says Jimmie Williams, former chair of the Ward 7 Dems and a Democratic state committee member for the ward.
Williams is among the most vocal critics of the endorsement, which he explains in a strongly worded letter to his fellow members of the group’s executive committee claiming that the decision “compromised the integrity of the Ward 7 Democrats.” Others, including Keith Hasan-Towery and Dexter Williams, have issued similarly critical public statements, arguing that Felder’s supporters manipulated the process in his favor.
The final vote to approve the endorsement was a close one at 7-6, with the deciding vote cast by Felder’s pick to lead the organization after he stepped back temporarily to run for office, Delia Houseal. Some committee members took issue with her decision to press forward with an endorsement even though Felder failed to win more than 50 percent of the vote in the group’s straw poll. He secured roughly 36 percent of the 347 votes, with Thompson coming in second. With the group so clearly divided, Jimmie Williams felt it was inappropriate for the Dems to issue such a glowing endorsement of his candidacy. And others agree.
“I felt like it would look biased if we were to endorse someone who was our chair and hasn’t fully stepped down,” says Chioma Iwuoha, a Democratic state committee member who voted against the endorsement. “A lot of people on the Ward 7 Dems are supporting Wendell. So I’m really concerned what that looks like to folks who are in Ward 7 and want us to take a fair and balanced position on things.”
Houseal argues that the “dissatisfaction mainly comes from supporters of candidates who did not win” the group’s endorsement (though both Jimmie Williams and Iwuoha tell LL that they have not decided who they’re backing). Both Felder and Houseal insist that they took careful steps to isolate him from the process, bringing in members of the D.C. Democratic State Committee to run the straw poll and keep it impartial. The organization also asked straw poll voters if they thought the Dems should endorse the winner of the poll—the question passed with just over 52 percent of the vote, so Houseal felt the group’s next move was clear. And even then, she chose to bring the question to the executive committee, just to quell additional concerns.
“With two votes like that, how do you then come behind it and say, ‘This process was not fair?’” wonders Matthew Shannon, another former chair of the Ward 7 Dems who is supporting Felder. “Unless you’re an election denier or you believe your vote should count more than others’.”
The brouhaha over Felder’s recent answer to a candidate questionnaire from the ACLU’s D.C. chapter was a bit less arcane, but no less heated.
The group asked candidates: “If a bill you opposed were to be passed by the D.C. Council, would you advocate for Congress to overturn it?” The other contenders either didn’t answer or said no; only Felder said he would do so if the bill “diminishes the quality of life experienced by residents or poses an undue burden or threat.” After criminal code revision opponents successfully appealed to Congress using many of these same arguments just last year, several statehood advocates began howling on social media.
“I was deeply offended by that, as someone who has been arrested on the Hill in defense of statehood,” says Travis Ballie, a Ward 7 resident who works with the left-leaning activist group DC Action for his day job but has watched the race in his capacity as a community activist. He wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that Felder “would be a dance partner w/ Congress in trampling on the self-determination of District residents.”
Felder’s own account began replying to anyone criticizing his response with a lengthy statement clarifying his position, arguing he would only approach Congress if he’d exhausted all other options locally and if he found it “necessary” to protect his constituents, but the damage was done. Ballie says Felder called him to try and smooth things over, and he says he “deeply respects the integrity” required to make such a call. But Ballie still chose another candidate instead: He’s endorsing Thompson.
Perhaps this episode touched such a nerve among Felder’s critics because it feeds into the biggest line of attack against his campaign: That he would be too closely aligned with Mayor Muriel Bowser if he won a seat on the Council. Bowser herself was not particularly shy about courting congressional intervention in the criminal code debate; that Felder would praise such an approach has not quieted whispers that he’s the Green Team’s preferred candidate.
“A lot of people see him as a Brandon Todd type,” says Jimmie Williams, alluding to Bowser’s handpicked successor as Ward 4 councilmember. He’s also recently heard that Bowser has begun making calls on Felder’s behalf personally, urging people to support him and host events for him.
Bowser is unlikely to weigh in publicly, however, since her brand isn’t exactly the strongest in the ward these days. Williams predicts a formal endorsement would be a “death knell” for any candidate.
“We need someone who is strong and can stand on their own,” Rice says. “They don’t need to be beholden to a mayor who hasn’t demonstrated much care and respect for Ward 7.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Felder has forcefully rejected any such insinuation, telling LL repeatedly that he views these concerns as overblown. But it’s hard not to notice his connections to Bowser. He spent years working for her, after all, first as her Ward 7 community relations specialist, then in the city administrator’s office and with the deputy mayor for planning and economic development. He was a vocal backer of her 2022 reelection bid, and many of the mayor’s top deputies have contributed to his campaign, such as Chief of Staff Lindsey Parker, Deputy Chief of Staff Steve Walker, Department of Employment Services Director Unique Morris-Hughes, and top spokesperson turned agency director LaToya Foster. In all, LL counts at least 92 D.C. government employees among Felder’s contributors, roughly double those contributing to Thompson, the next closest candidate.
Others in the Green Team orbit have also kicked in: There’s Bowser’s brother, Marvin; her mother, Joan; another favorite former councilmember, LaRuby May; and a host of lobbyists with close ties to the administration, including ex-city administrator Rashad Young, ex-DMPED Courtney Snowden, and Vinoda Basnayake.
It has not helped this perception that Felder’s positions have closely aligned with Bowser’s on many issues. He sounds amenable to a new stadium at RFK, and he supports efforts to hire more police officers via incentives to help cops live in the city, for instance. But, in all fairness, Felder has broken with the mayor on some criminal justice issues and earned support elsewhere. For instance, he also told the ACLU that he supports taking police out of schools and ending solitary confinement in the D.C. Jail.
“Wendell is an independent thinker,” says Louis Sawyer, a Ward 7 resident who has clashed frequently with Bowser in his work advocating for returning citizens. “If nothing else, he is his own man. He is for the residents of Ward 7, no matter how you slice it.”
LL has heard similar whispers about Rasheed’s Green Team ties. On the one hand, she once worked for former Attorney General Karl Racine, about as staunch a Bowser critic as you’ll find in D.C. But there are rumors that some in Bowser’s orbit backed her 2020 bid and could do so again: particularly, favored developer Phinis Jones and political mischief-maker Josh Lopez. Rasheed has also been touting a meet and greet event with Cora Masters Barry, widow of the mayor-for-life and a reliable Bowser ally these past few years.
“I am not the mayor’s candidate,” Rasheed insists, saying she’s “shocked” to even hear LL bring up any such association.
Iwuoha, however, concedes that she has also heard such suggestions, but she is more willing to believe in Rasheed’s independence than Felder’s.
“She’s an independent thinker and a straight shooter,” Iwuoha says. “A lot of us run in the same circles, but we can still disagree.”
And Iwuoha is quick to point out that Rasheed has also built a grassroots base on her own over the years, and she can tout credentials as a single mother with deep family ties in the ward. She should have strong name recognition after finishing second to Gray in the primary four years ago, and she’s kept pace with the other top contenders in the race for campaign cash.
“I ran against a strong incumbent last time,” Rasheed says. “I have that experience, and that matters.”
Thompson is making a similar argument in favor of her candidacy, but with an added bonus: “I know what it looks like to win a Ward 7 seat, because I actually have a Ward 7 seat,” she tells LL.
She ousted a longtime incumbent, the late Karen Williams, by a convincing margin in the state board race four years ago, so she has the distinction of being the only candidate in the field to win a ward-wide race. And Thompson won three terms as an ANC before that. “I’ve never lost an election,” she says. “For anything.”
And she doesn’t intend to start now. When LL asked if she’d consider running for SBOE again this fall should she lose the primary, she wouldn’t even consider the question. “I’m gonna win,” she says.
Plenty of people in the ward think she’s right. Thompson has earned a reputation for going to every community meeting and doing all the reading beforehand. It’s probably not a surprise to see politicos such as At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson and Ward 3 Councilmember Matt Frumin donating to her campaign, as her style certainly mirrors their own focus on policy nerdery and nuance.
Thompson is also probably running the furthest to the left of any candidate in the field. For instance, she favors substantial changes to the current system of mayoral control of schools, though not its outright abolition, and she supports some more progressive criminal justice policies. “It’s really easy to say, ‘OK, we’ve got to police our way out of this now,’ and then now becomes forever,” she notes.
This progressivism could be a liability in a ward where voters have traditionally trended a bit older and more moderate. But Thompson is hardly running as a socialist, and most observers believe she has strong enough bona fides in the community to avoid charges of political extremism. “There’s no radical leftist in this race,” Iwuoha says.
“My support for her is less ideological and more about how much energy she will put into the race,” Ballie says of Thompson. “And she is someone that has already been hitting the pavement as an education advocate for years.”
If Thompson, Felder, and Rasheed are pitching their experience in ward politics as part of their bids, Payne is trying the complete opposite approach.
She made waves during the Ward 7 Dems’ forum last month by slamming her opponents as “mediocre politicians” delivering “mediocre results,” and she has generally tried to elbow her way into contention with more of an outsider’s campaign.
Payne doesn’t have the same long history in civic life as the other contenders, but she’s raised a boatload of money to get her name out there instead. She both raised and spent more money than anyone else in the field as of April 10 (though Rasheed’s report still wasn’t filed as of press time), and much of it has come from outside D.C.
Her nearly $37,000 in donations from non-District residents is several times larger than the combined out-of-state totals of the other top contenders. That money isn’t matched through the city’s public financing program, but it certainly still counts: Payne’s been able to flood mailboxes and even hit the cable airwaves to get her name out there.
Most ward whisperers chalk this up to the influence of her fiance, national political consultant Chuck Rocha, who has also helped her secure a bunch of endorsements from members of Congress with no ties to local politics. Naturally, this has earned her no small amount of suspicion from her opponents.
“From my experience, you cannot run a national campaign in a local election,” Felder says. “These things just don’t mix.”
For their differences, Payne has a similar explanation for the negativity as Felder does for his own controversies. “They’re attacking me because we’re winning,” Payne says. “They can’t attack my ideas, so they’re just attacking who I am and where I come from.”
Indeed, it’s notable that Payne is the only candidate running from a home base west of the Anacostia River. The money has helped her raise her profile, to be sure, but so has her vocal opposition to a stadium at RFK, winning her plenty of fans among her similarly skeptical Kingman Park neighbors.
Ward 7 only added some of these westerly neighborhoods recently, and it’s still difficult to predict how engaged these residents will be in this election. But many of these wealthier areas do have histories of registering robust turnout in local races. If Payne can inundate these homes with mail and seize on an issue that matters to them, why couldn’t she win in this divided field?
“I think her visibility is there,” Jimmie Williams says, noting that Payne is also running for delegate to the Democratic National Convention this weekend to get her name out there. “The question is whether the only thing people know about her is that they don’t like her.”
And that’s a distinct possibility. Williams says Payne’s comments during the Ward 7 Dems’ forum insinuating that many D.C. government workers are lazy have “circulated like hot fire,” considering that many of those employees live in the ward.
Plainly, the race is getting heated. Houseal admits to some level of exasperation with all the “backbiting and the hatred” with several weeks of campaigning still left to go. But she hopes that this all proves that voters are engaged enough to head to the polls, and boost the ward’s historically low turnout numbers when June 4 rolls around. Maybe that could be one silver lining to all the ugliness.
“With the voter turnout rates that we have right now, we’re kind of the voiceless,” Houseal says. “I’m hoping that that is the one thing we walk away with, then activate and engage a base that can demand the things that we need.”