WASHINGTON — Editor's Note: This is one installment in a series of profiles of the candidates running in D.C.'s mayoral race leading up to the June 21 primary elections.
We are less than a week out from D.C.'s primary election on June 21. While some voters may have listened to the debates, WUSA9 wanted to give you an in-depth look at the four candidates running for D.C.'s Mayor.
There is a lot at stake in this election: crime is on the rise; the city and our school children are still trying to recover from the pandemic. WUSA9 is asking the tough questions on the issues that matter to you most.
WUSA9 met up with Robert White outside of the historic St. Augustine Catholic Church at 15th and V Streets, Northwest.
“I grew up in this church at the most difficult times in my life when I lost my mom, when I was in a near-fatal car accident,” he said.
White’s mother died of breast cancer when he was 8 years old. A few weeks later, a truck flipped over a median in the road and landed on top of the vehicle in which he was riding in.
Now a 40-year-old father of two, White was elected Councilmember At-large in 2016 after a failed bid in 2014. Prior to his first run, White worked in the Attorney General's office as a community outreach director. White said while the city's landscape has changed in that time, the cranes and construction have failed to build up families who are still facing problems of crime, education and housing.
“These issues are difficult, they are political liabilities but that means they require a leader who is willing to put their neck on the line, willing to go down trying,” said White, “There are a couple of things that got me to this place in my career: one - people believe I’m authentic. They believe that I believe the things that I’m saying, and two - they’ve seen in my work that I focus on the things that I say that I focus on.”
However, as the current chair of the Committee on Government Operations and Facilities, White's oversight of the Department of General Services has faced criticism. DGS is in charge of DC public school buildings. The agency promised that HVAC systems were upgraded for the return to in-person learning. But many systems failed or never received those updates.
Gonçalves: “What do you say to parents and teachers who say, ‘that's on your watch – you were there?”
White: “We’re always asking DGS are you prepared, what have you done, can we see what you’ve done, we go and inspect it for ourselves but at the end of the day the council doesn't run the agency. What I realized is we need someone running our city who will hold these agencies accountable,” he replied.
White said, if elected, he will hold not only DGS accountable but DCHA which oversees the city’s public housing complexes – some that are in such disrepair as our WUSA9 investigation into Potomac Gardens revealed, but he will ensure schools have the resources they need.
“One of the biggest reasons we need a new mayor right now is there’s no urgency in public education. Every young person in our city deserves an opportunity to do more or better than their parents no matter the neighborhood,” he said.
White would also end mayoral control of DCPS, work to make the State Superintendent of Education independent from the Mayor’s administration and empower the elected members of the State Board of Education who, right now, cannot create or enforce school policy.
"I do not support our control system of mayoral control because I'm looking at a school system where 60% of Black and brown students are behind grade level and I'm the father of two Black girls you cannot convince me that's good enough - it is not,” said White.
As more school-aged children become victims and perpetrators of crime, White is looking to increase after-school and vocational programs.
“I’ve been to funerals and I’ve seen not only young people in caskets, but I’ve seen other young people crying over those caskets and grieving and what I see is trauma in those young people that they don’t have the resources to deal with and that’s one of the things that perpetuates the cycle of violence,” he said.
For adults, White is calling for more housing, substance abuse services and jobs that will help deter crime. His green jobs plan aims to create 10,000 new environmental jobs at a cost of $1.5 Billion.
“We’re talking career tracking jobs. I’m so tired of seeing District residents of color pushed aside to lowest paying jobs that is not something I’m going to participate in,” he explained, “people deserve the dignity of good-paying jobs and people with good-paying jobs are not committing crimes.”
Here’s where the candidate stands on some of the other top issues:
Policing:
“We need to be hiring other people to take care of non-crime-related issues so we can solve cases, patrol, and respond to crime,” he said.
Gentrification:
“We can have the difficult conversations with developers saying, ‘look you can build in our city but if you're members of our community you have to be building the housing, we need not the housing that is best for your bottom line,” said White.
Homelessness:
“You can’t do that with an unrealistic timeline, and you can't do that when you go in with police and bulldozers and dump trucks. You must have empathy," he said.
“Empathy is not a leadership flaw, it’s a leadership strength; the empathy to understand first – these are people and second – this is going to take a bit of time," White said regarding building relationships to offer wrap-around services besides homes.
“This is a time in our city's history that we have more money than we've ever had. This is the time where we try new things; where we fix problems,” said White.