WASHINGTON — As D.C.’s Primary Day approaches, three candidates are making the rounds to try to earn Ward 8‘s vote.
Campaign signs line the streets, sporting the likenesses of incumbent Trayon White and his challengers, Salim Adofo and Rahman Branch. Each one takes every opportunity to shake a constituent’s hand and talk about policy priorities.
White believes his experience speaks for itself.
“I don't know any other person in politics that works as hard as Trayon White,” White said. “I'm on the ground in the trenches. If you walk down the street with me right now, people will stop their cars, pull over, because they want to talk to me, because I'm a face that they know — each and every day in the trenches, working.”
Meeting outside his Anacostia office, White reflected on the heartache and losses he said he’s experienced, not only during his time in office, but also growing up in D.C.
“I've been doing a lot of hard work, buried over 442 people in this community … But I feel like God has called me to this work. It’s not something that I want to do, it's something I have to do. And it's something that people push me to do,” he said.
Still, his two challengers say it’s time to take Ward 8 in a new direction.
Rahman Branch is a former Ballou High School principal, who has also served in Mayor Muriel Bowser's cabinet as D.C.’s first Executive Director of African American Affairs.
He said his passion is helping young people achieve, and that — coupled with a bullet flying through his kitchen window at 6 a.m. — inspired him to run.
“I made a promise to a lot of young people about what D.C. would look like, smell like, and feel like by the time they were young adults, and we prepared them for that world. And that world has come. But in a lot of ways, it stopped just short of the bridge. And I recognize that the young people I serve, they had no say in why it didn't come across the bridge,” Branch said.
“A lot of missed opportunity has come, and a lot of challenges come. And I feel like it's fulfilling a promise to a bunch of young people who've done it the right way. But we haven't done right by them.”
He said that world is evident in the shiny new buildings lining the walkway to Nationals Park in Navy Yard, where he saw multiple people he’s grown to know in Ward 8.
The ward now includes the Navy Yard after a redistricting effort a few years back.
His other opponent, Salim Adofo, is a familiar face, particularly in Congress Heights. He has represented the neighborhood as their Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner since 2018 – and currently serves as the chair of ANC 8C.
The Army veteran said he decided to run to gain real power to make change.
“Unfortunately, the best that you can do [as a commissioner] is make a recommendation. And seeing many of the things that we wanted to see advanced in the community not coming to fruition, whether it be transportation issues, public safety issues, I knew it was time to step up and take responsibility for pushing the community forward,” Adofo said.
White said that is exactly what he has been doing.
“I've made some tremendous strides trying to bring economic inclusion, equity to the ward, around some key significant issues like health care, resources to fight against violence in our community, introduced legislation to drill down on real affordable housing,” White said. “I just feel like we're not where we used to be, but we have a long way to go. So we coined this campaign as ‘unfinished business.’”
Policy Priorities
Each candidate was asked what their top priorities would be if they were elected. Here are their responses.
Trayon White
“We have to focus on opening more businesses owned or operated by people from the community. It affects the economic circulation of the dollar. And our community, we are a community that’s over 80% African American, [and] we spend a lot of money a lot of time outside of the community that never comes back. And so I helped, working with Red Brick, to open up 20 new Black-owned businesses right here in our community at Sycamore Oak. And we looking to expand that in the next three years. And so that's leadership. I talked about the DREAM grant that I created. That's in DSLBD right now that we've helped them bring hundreds of 1000s of dollars to minority businesses east of the Anacostia River… I think that we have to scale up and be intentional about real education. Like I met with some construction partners, and I met with the schools to try to integrate wraparound services and teach young boys and girls how to get involved in trades where they can use their hands because not everyone's going to college. I support college, I went to college, college is great. But as you know, everyone doesn't go to college. And so we have to figure out a way to look at the industries as working in D.C. and create a pipeline into those industries, so we have higher earning potential.”
Rahman Branch
“Right now in D.C., we have a real epidemic around education. And we're not setting our children up for success that they really deserve. So if elected, I'm the most experienced the most skilled the most credentialed person around education. We make a lot of investment in steel and glass buildings. We're missing the investment it takes to raise the next great Washingtonians. [Also,] living wage jobs. If we want to really address a lot of public safety challenges that we have in our ward, we're not going to do it by you know, by putting band-aids on. We have to make sure we're identifying what the real culprit is -- and that's the poverty that so many people experience. We have a ton of residents that are ready to work, that want to work. But we also know $17 an hour isn't a living wage. So a living wage job, especially if we’re putting more cranes in the sky, trained labor. So we can have skilled trained labor under those cranes to a Ward 8 resident. That's what it makes sure we're making the kind of dollars that allow us to stay in the ward that allow us to buy in the ward and become the sixth, seventh, eighth generation Washingtonians, which we know people take a lot of pride in.”
Salim Adofo
“We have to make sure that people have quality housing, dealing with issues in the DC Housing Authority, we have a lot of residential properties that needs to be fixed up. We look at places like Wingate or Marbury Plaza or Cascade, many of those properties are, you know, going through some, some great changes right now. And you know, we need to make sure that people have quality housing in those spaces. Of course, making sure that we can have a variety of housing as it pertains to affordable housing…making sure that residents that want to live here can stay here. The next priority for me would be education. Education is the foundation for us to build a strong future for our community. So making sure we can address the issues of chronic absenteeism and truancy would be a big issue.”
Public Safety
Adofo said he believes education and affordable, quality housing are what make a community safe.
“Oftentimes, we have the conversation around public safety, and we're looking at punishment, but punishment isn't public safety, it's the consequence of not being safe and people causing harms,” Adofo said. “The issues we have around housing issues, we have around environmental justice, you know, in the community, health care, food access, I think all of those things are the things that are going to help keep the community safe, not just relying solely on law enforcement to either be a deterrent or to punish people.”
Branch said with so many years in education, he is uniquely qualified to understand why young people become involved in violence – and how to re-route that path.
“We haven't done nearly enough front-end work on the realities of violence. And if you think about the challenges that youth are having right now, it goes right back to the education conversation, because here we are missing the mark on what our young people are interested in, what resonates with them, and pathways for them to earn stackable credentials, certifications that can get them paid,” he said.
White said the only way to address the problem is to bring together multiple partners like the community, government, and non-profits to address poverty along with crime.
“I think we have to get to some of the core causes of violence,” he said. “I mean, the data reflects that individuals who have been incarcerated for violent crime, have a low reading level, come from single-parent households, health deficient in a lot of ways, and lack mentorship, early on. And so we've begun to do a lot of their work through credible messengers through our violence interruption programs.”
In a move to address crime, the DC Council passed Secure DC in March.
White was the only council member to vote “Present” as opposed to “Yes” on the legislation– a move which his opponents have both criticized.
“Him voting present, you know, basically, abstaining from the vote is something that I was very confused about,” Adofo said. “We put people in these positions to make a decision…I would have voted yes.”
Branch said, he, too, would have voted yes.
“I think you have to take a position. And I think taking the position lets people know where you stand. Because, you know, we're not going to make everybody happy.”
Answering why he voted “present,” White said, “I think that we have to mirror that with a holistic wraparound approach to dealing with violence. There are some people who are bad actors in the community and need to be detained point blank period. And there are some people who need to get services early on dealing with the mental health, distress, depression, and a real education. That's why I amended the bill to force the mayor to come up with a real violence prevention plan. There is no plan…And so until we dive back the layers and deal with that, we’ll be here over and over again. And a piece of legislation won't solve that.”
All three candidates agree that it all comes back to investing in the community as they ask you to invest in them.
“I have always thought about it as a job that we serve the residents. So I think more about how do I make sure my message connects the residents,” Branch said. “We've touched over 24,000 doors, direct hand-to-hand engagement with the residents, so that they know a couple things…that they have someone who's going to not only hear the issues, but be reflective and responsive to not just the need, but the outcome. And it really makes sure that people are not only heard but they're served.”
“One of the things I think that we need in the community is someone who can set the standard for, you know, what we need in leadership,” Adofo said. “We have some young people that need some guidance as well. But being able to connect the dots with many of the other leaders who we have that are great leaders in the city, being able to connect people to the resources that they need. I also think that we need to have more legislation introduced into the ward. We need to help develop more businesses, you know, in the community. And I think I'm someone who can, you know, bridge the gap between all of these different entities.”
“I say the proof is in the pudding. I have a track record that that works. If you look at the videos when I ran and things I talked about, I'm delivering on those promises I talked about, we lost 11 recreation centers in Ward 8 in the course of 17 years. Right now, one is under construction in Anacostia, we have Douglas, Congress Heights, we have a couple other recs getting built right now…It’s not talking the talk, but walking the walk, and the people have to decide,” White said. “I have the most experience. There's no other candidate that has walked across the aisles with other legislative council members and also the executive branch to get things done in our ward outside of Trayon White.”