The DC Council could look very different in the next term, with races playing out for five seats this election cycle.
In Ward 1, five Democratic candidates are working to convince voters they are the most qualified to replace Brianne Nadeau, who is not running for re-election after serving three terms.
The candidates in the Democratic primary election are, in the order listed on the ballot:
- Aparna Raj
- Rashida Brown
- Jackie Reyes Yanes
- Terry Lynch
- Miguel Trindade Deramo
For the Republican primary, Jett James Jasper is running uncontested, meaning he will advance to the November general election and square off against whomever comes out of the crowded Democratic field.
7News On Your Side spoke with each candidate, asking them all the same four questions about the ward's needs, affordability, the city's relationship with the federal government, and public safety.
Below, you will find the candidates' complete answers to each of these questions.
What is the most pressing issue in your ward?
Aparna Raj: "I think Ward 1 is really being crushed by a cost of living crisis and seeing the effects of the Trump administration. We have a big immigrant population and two-thirds of our residents are renters, and we also have a lot of young families dealing with childcare costs. So I think bringing down the cost of renting, childcare, utilities, and protecting immigrants and ending MPD cooperation with ICE are the biggest priorities for Ward 1."
Rashida Brown: "The issues that are most pressing for my ward, one, is the federal overreach and the affordability issue. We've got to make sure our immigrant residents are protected, and safe from federal agents and from ICE. When I go knocking on doors, a lot of our residents are concerned about these things, and it's very real in our communities, particularly in Ward 1 where you have the highest population of Latino and immigrant neighbors. We've got to close the Sanctuary Values Act loophole, make sure that our legal clinics are fully funded and that our social services are continuously being funded and well-connected to our immigrant community."
Jackie Reyes Yanes: "One of the things I have on is affordable housing, childcare, and constituent services and revival for small businesses. Every time I went to the door, people are like, 'That's good, but what are you going to do about the rats?' I came and did a comprehensive study on how to tackle the rats. So that's going to be my first 30-60-90 days, getting those rats out of Ward 1."
Terry Lynch: "Well the biggest issue, first and foremost, has got to be safety. I've got entrenched drug trafficking, unfortunately, in a number of places in Columbia Heights. We've got to stop it. You lose a sister, a brother, a mother, a son, nothing else means anything. So, we've got to deal with the drug trafficking where we're losing lives. After that, we've got blight up and down Georgia Avenue. We have vacant buildings, which cause more vacancies. And then on top of that, my small businesses, they're asking me for help. The small businesses are really struggling, they're closing, they're suffering, they're trying to stay open and they know I will be a champion for them. And then, of course, quality of life: the rats are winning. Basic services. We didn't have any pre-treatment of the streets for the snow storm. It's not rocket science. So, people see we have A-to-Z issues, and I take it safety is the most important. But then everything else counts: the vacancies, the affordable housing, the basic services. We're here to fix things. People know I fix things, and that's what I'm here to do."
Miguel Trindade Deramo: "Absolutely affordability. It's what comes up the most, and it's what all of the candidates are talking about and rightly so. Ward 1 households, the largest line items on their budgets, generally, are housing and childcare, so you'll hear a lot of conversations about that on the campaign trail. I'm proud to be the most pro-housing candidate in the race. I understand building more housing means an all-of-the-above approach. Adding more housing to an already somewhat-dense District requires some ingenuity and creativity, and a little bit of boldness, and that's what I'm here to bring."
Jett James Jasper: "So I've knocked thousands of doors in this beautiful ward, and I'll tell you this: it doesn't matter if you're on the right or on the left, public safety is the number one thing I hear. Right now, MPD is down 800 budgeted officers, and every single one of my opponents do not want to hire a single one back. I want to fully fund our budgeted MPD, because I believe that MPD goes hand-in-hand with safety."
Candidates for DC Council Ward 1 say what they believe are the biggest needs in their community. (7News)
What is your plan to make living in the District more affordable?
Rashida Brown: "In Ward 1, affordable housing is a super important issue. We have the highest number of buildings, particularly our apartment buildings. And in a one bedroom unit household, it can cost $2,500 on average, and that's pretty high. So my goal is to increase affordable housing. I did that as a 10-year advisory neighborhood commissioner in the Park View/Pleasant Plains community: 456 housing units, 60 % affordable. That is something that I championed for the Bruce Monroe and Park Morton redevelopment projects, and I will continue to do as DC councilmember. We've got to work with our affordable housing developers. We've got to identify public lands to build on and advocate for the max amount of affordable housing possible. That's something I will do as councilmember, continuously invest in the Housing Production Trust Fund, as well as ensuring we have home ownership opportunities for folks to be able to afford. I am a recipient of the HPAP program. It's the homeowners assistance to purchase program, and if it wasn't for HPAP, then I wouldn't be able to afford to live here. So affordable housing is very important. I know DC Council is passing its budget and there's a number of revisions happening, but we've got to make sure our budget is balanced not on the backs of the working and low-income class of individuals. We've got to make sure we stand true to our residents and keep those programs fully funded, like direct rental assistance and ERAP. Those are the things I will prioritize on DC Council."
Terry Lynch: "The situation in Ward 1 is interesting. We're different than some of the other wards. We have so many vacant buildings. You go out on Georgia Avenue, we have vacancies up and down Georgia Avenue, as well as in other neighborhoods. What I'm going to do, my first piece of legislation is going to be a 'use it or lose it' bill. If you're building has been vacant for three or more years, I want the city to buy it at fair market value, whatever that is, and then put it right back onto the market for mixed use housing and retail. We have, I believe, thousands of vacancies up and down Georgia Avenue. We have more vacancies along Georgia Avenue than we've had since the riots. So we can turn it around and we can bring housing, and we can bring some affordable housing."
Miguel Trindade Deramo: "Certainly streamlining permitting and other processes to allow us to actually build housing where we have parcels. It can take years, decades sometimes, to build housing, which is unacceptable. And also some concepts like 'gentle density' are very interesting. The council should be looking at them. How do you enable people to rent out carriage houses? How do you subdivide larger buildings into several starter homes, right? It's very hard for young families to afford their first home, and that's of course a cornerstone of the American dream and how people build wealth over time. I also want to point out affordability isn't only about housing. I also mentioned childcare. The District has some gold star programs in childcare, but the funding is always in doubt, and it's incredibly unfair not only for families but also early childcare educators. Something else I'm trying to highlight I don't hear others talk about quite as much is the health of our commercial corridors, sort of the 'downtown' of Columbia Heights and Georgia Avenue and U Street. We're losing a lot of staple businesses: the laundromat, dry cleaner, taco shop, 7-Eleven, that sort of band that people really rely on everyday for staples. Those are neighborhood anchors, and they're getting squeezed out. We're getting a lot of Michelin star restaurants, which is cool, and there's fast foot. But that sort of in-between, which are often mom-and-pop individual family-owned local businesses are finding it very hard to survive, and that does have an affordability implication for all of us."
The candidates say what they believe needs to be done to improve affordability. (7News)
Jackie Reyes Yanes: "My dad came here in 1980. I came here in 1990. He could afford to buy a house in Mt. Pleasant for $75,000 on a dishwasher's salary. I want people in the working class, to be affordable for us. How are we keeping diversity in Ward 1? We have seen a lot of changes happen, and we cannot afford it. A working class cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment here, or childcare. To affordable housing, what are we doing with rent control? Do we have enough units? There's 400 vacant houses in Ward 1. What are we doing? Are we doing tax relief for people that are going to be doing this, affordable housing? On Georgia Avenue, we have a lot of stores empty. But what about on the second floor? I'm talking about the low-hanging fruit through affordable housing. If I don't have people living here, then I won't have people to represent."
Jett James Jasper: "For rental, I'm a renter. I pay rent. It's going up. It's gone up. The biggest thing we can do is simple economics: supply vs. demand. If we don't have more supply, then the demand is going to stay there and the prices are going to go up. If we have more supply, demand is going down, prices may flatten. I don't know if they will go down, but they're not going to increase at the rate they have been doing."
Aparna Raj: "The number one issue I hear around affordability, specifically, is around the cost of housing, and so that will require us building more housing, housing for all income levels, housing along transit corridors and in commercial areas, but also expanding the tenant protections that D.C. is known for and that make D.C. what it is. I want to expand rent stabilization to all multi-family buildings across the District. I want to restore the the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, so tenants are able to potentially own their own homes and form co-ops. And I eventually want to move to social housing, so that it's publicly owned resident-controlled housing. I'm also pushing for free childcare for every family in D.C. funded through the business activity tax, as well as pushing to hold monopoly utility companies accountable and appoint public service commissioners who won't just raise rates year after year. Also investing in solar and having the District produce our own energy, and eventually moving to the municipalization of our energy companies."
The candidates say what they believe needs to be done to improve affordability. (7News)
Describe what you see as the ideal relationship and level of cooperation between the District and the federal government.
Terry Lynch: "Well, we're interwoven. We've got to work with the federal government. They've got to work with us. We don't have the rights other states have. We don't have the leverage, perhaps, other states or cities do. But we have to figure out how do we work together to fix things. I like that the federal government is finally fixing their fountains and parks. It's about time. I don't like having their soldiers at the street corners. We've got to figure out how do we interact successfully. We've lost that balance. We can get it back. We need the federal government to take care of their properties, take care of their signs, take care of their fountains, their parks, and work in a way that lifts everybody, instead of creating divisions that set us apart and create hardships."
Miguel Trindade Deramo: "Ideally, they're nice to us and we have a governor, and we can be a state, so that would be wonderful. But for the time being, under the current administration, we have to take care of our own, bottom line, and I don't think the current council was proactive enough in doing that, especially since August - the federal intervention. The hammer of the federal government fell hardest on Ward 1, indisputably - Columbia Heights, Mt. Pleasant - and we didn't see municipal officials coming out to stand with the community to express empathy, basic solidarity. And so, for me, that's the proper relationship, to stand up for our own. I will also say I've been involved in and founded the ANC Home Rule Caucus. We've done a lot of Free DC collaborations, lobbying on Capitol Hill, and I've taken away from that an understanding that I think a lot of our relationships on the Hill are very ad hoc and temporary, and I think we need to invest more in not only councilmembers, but also council staff, the mayor staff, and developing long-term relationships on the Hill so that lawmakers from other states who don't know D.C. will really get a sense of what's going on here and also the way this is being used as a testing ground for certain policies that may be explored elsewhere in the country. Then they wouldn't like it if it's happening in their home states."
Jett James Jasper: "As everyone knows, D.C. is a federal district. We were created way back when James Madison created it, and he made it so that the three branches of government wouldn't be in one state. We need to work with not only the House Oversight Committee, but also the administration to get more money to us, get our budget passed. They approve all of our laws. All of my opponents want to fight, fight, fight. But how is that going to benefit any of our constituents in Ward 1? It's not. The administration is going to be there until 2029. If we're going to pout for two-and-a-half years, it's not going to benefit anybody."
Aparna Raj: "I think, ideally, the city government and the federal government would both be invested in making sure D.C. residents have everything that we need not just to survive but to thrive. But we're seeing an absence in that and we're seeing the federal government actually attack our own residents. I would say on situations we actually agree on things - like maybe on new developments, things like that - definitely want to have a cooperative relationship. But as we're seeing now with ICE on our streets disappearing immigrants, with federal workers really losing their jobs, really thrown into precarity, we need a local government that is willing to protect residents and is not going to cower to the Trump administration."
Rashida Brown: "I know with the Trump administration, it is super hard. And I do not support Trump. I do not support what Trump is doing to our city. But we have got to have federal funding continuously flowing through the District of Columbia for us to be able to preserve our programs and our local government systems. In a normal relationship, we would have a positive relationship with our president, work in partnership with our federal government agencies, and focus not only on funding but strong implementations of programs on the ground. For now, since we do not have that relationship, I look forward to working with the new mayor as a DC councilmember and will support whomever wins, to ensure that those programs that are happening and implemented in Ward 1 are successfully implemented and there's strong oversight throughout the year, not just through our council period where we're having performance oversight hearings, but year-round. And making sure we're not collaborating with federal agents and with ICE, and that includes MPD. We should not be spending our taxpayer dollars in collaborating and sharing data with federal agents and with ICE. And we should be able to keep our residents safe from that."
Jackie Reyes Yanes: "I have experience working in D.C. government and also with councilmembers. I worked for two mayors and one councilmember, and I know this country is a country of laws. And as a resident of Ward 1, I need to know who's arresting me, right? And I have those rights. There's a constitutional right. When it comes down to collaborating, the MPD mandate is to keep us safe, right? That's number one, not cooperating with the federal level. So I have to be very bold on making sure that those constitutional rights are not overlooked. As a responsible councilmember, I will have to make sure everybody in Ward 1 is treated with dignity and respect. If someone comes in here obstructing and disrupting the peace of our constituents, we have lawyers that are going to be ready to tackle that. So as a Latina woman and as an immigrant woman, I have to stand on those constitutional rights. I came here fleeing a civil war. That's not the America I was brought here to, so that's why I decided to quit my job and to make sure I have the facts right, and that my people also know what their rights are. We have the right to remain silent, but also have the right to know who's arresting me if I committed a crime."
Candidates describe their ideal relationship between the city and the federal government. (7News)
What are your short-term plans to address property and violent crimes in the District/your Ward with the current budget restrictions and policing shortages? How will you measure success?
Miguel Trindade Deramo: "Those are real concerns, but I think MPD can do a better job, even given budgetary constraints - just like every city agency needs to be pushed to do better with a little bit less. That's just the reality of where we are. My large priority - and you're talking to the chairman of the ANC for U Street, so I think a lot about these issues - my short-term number one priority is to get MPD back on track toward community policing. They are committed to that by statute, and they're not convening the working group they're meant to be doing, they're not issuing the reports that they are by law required to draft every two years, and we feel it. Business owners on U Street can't name an MPD officer, but they've met a National Guardsman because those guys come through. In the mornings, they say 'hello,' leave a card. Our own police officers aren't building those relationships in the community, and I want that to be foregrounded. I want them to feel like a public safety ecosystem that includes violence interrupters. We have very wonderful programs here and across the city, not only the formal VI programs but also programs in high schools teaching kids how to manage big emotions and de-escalate situations. All of that needs to be seen as a public safety ecosystem, which MPD is a part but they're not the answer to everything. We look forward to increasing those budgets, too, for violence interruption. Council saw fit to cut our investment into violence interruption, which to me absolutely makes no sense."
Aparna Raj: "I think we have to think about public safety as not just responding after the fact, but really investing and preventing violence from happening to begin with, and investing in our communities. So that means making sure our youth have places to go to, whether it's out of school programming or rec centers, making sure we're actually investing in and having accountability around our violence interruption and prevention programs, which have very preliminarily shown reductions in gun violence in the hotspots - I believe only one is in Ward 1 - that they've been deployed to. Making sure we're improving our 911 response times so that if you need an ambulance or you need emergency services, that they're able to get to you quickly and that they go to the right address. And trying to prevent violence by investing in good housing, good jobs, education, things like that, as well. We are dealing with budget constraints, but we also have the option to raise more revenue. We have the option to look at where we may have overspending or where we have tax abatements that aren't giving us the return on investment we need. And it ends up benefiting us all and being a cost saver in the long run if we are able to make sure people have the things that they need to live."
Rashida Brown: "My definition of success would be for everyone to feel safe in walking around their communities. For the District of Columbia, we know that crime is going down statistically, but there are pockets of the ward that are saturated with higher concentrations of crime. There's a strong correlation between poverty and crime. Research tells us that. So I will focus on prevention, making sure that our violence interruption programs are well-funded and being implemented at the initial program design that it's intended to be. I will also make sure that I'm working with the chief of police and our new mayor on a community policing model. I am a 10-year advisory neighborhood commissioner Park View/Pleasant Plains community, where we have some concentrations of gun violence and crew crime, youth crime. So it is my job currently to work closely with MPD and bring the crime rate down in those targeted pockets of the area of the ward. For me, as councilmember, I would like to advance policies and funding to get our police trained, walking out on the beat, and getting off the cell phones, and getting out of their cars, getting to know neighbors, talking with ANCs, talking with civic leaders, and collecting data and solving problems together. I did that as the co-founder and the leader of Georgia Avenue Thrive. I helped to solve root cause issues related to crime and economic disparities on lower Georgia Avenue. We had a commercial property owner that bought up most of the commercial properties on lower Georgia Avenue and left them vacant and blighted, and kicked out our legacy Black and Brown businesses. So I've worked together with the community, and we recruited businesses that were willing to expand, and that's why you see Midlands. It was an old Sunoco gas station. And Hook Hall. It was an old Murray's grocery store. Now, it's a thriving event space. We have Qui Qui and St. Vincent, a Black-owned wine bar. Those are the type of spaces that, really, we can be proud of as a community, but it activates those spaces that were once vacant and puts eyes and ears out on the streets, and we can be able to partner together, and solve those things together. Regarding our youth crime, I believe that the curfew is a band-aid, and I'm seeing our youth be racially profiled and being verbally attacked at transit stations. We need to be expanding our departments and rec centers. As councilmember, I will support our mayor by funding extended hours at our Department of Parks and Rec, making sure we have chaperones and mentors that are engaging with our youth. Our youth are telling us they want to have arts and culture, and engage in that - go-go and live music - and then we can pay for transportation and sent them home safely to their parents. Those are the types of strategies we know can work. Marion Barry had the template for it, and we can use the same template and bring those strategies out to the community, as well as ensuring our youth have access to career pathways. We've got to partner with our trade institutions, with our unions, our pre-apprenticeship programs, enroll them into those programs. We have to have more youth programs and civic engagement programs. I certainly benefited from that as a youth when my dad had cancer. If it wasn't for youth programs, I wouldn't be as successful as I am in life."
The candidates give their short-term solutions to address public safety. (7News)
Jett James Jasper: "Because of the police staffing shortage, we have to figure out a way to either get their compensation packages richer, get them signing bonuses, we have to make an effort to actually hire more MPD. Right now, we're down 800 budgeted officers, and every single one of my opponents don't want to hire a single one back. I'm the only candidate that actually wants to hire the 800 budgeted officers that we're lacking, and that's where public safety starts for me."
Jackie Reyes Yanes: "I am pro-curfew. As a mom, because I grew up here in the 1990s and this is not the Washington, D.C., of the 1990s, I lived through the Mt. Pleasant riots. I worked very close to make sure we have language access, right? So as a product of the Latin American Youth Center, I know that intervention at the right time and makes sense. But right now, our young people are not making the right decision. So as a parent who also raised three kids here, I need to know where my kids are by 9 o'clock, so I am pro-curfew. I think I am one of the few candidates that are pro-curfew. But also making sure that our young people earn what they learn, so having year-round workforce development. If you see my campaign, I have given young people jobs. Number one is I have to make sure our residents feel safe, our kids are safe, and by doing that we have to get the curfew up and going."
Terry Lynch: "My definition of success is people are going to be able to hold me accountable. Are we having less homicides and less arrests? I support teen curfews. Several of my opponents don't. I support more teen activities. I've helped bring lacrosse, ultimate frisbee, and youth activities, youth athletics. I want to see that we're not having the shootings, the kids running through stores, taking what they want. We can't have that. We've got to have parents accountable. We've got to have youth activities, and also teach them accountability. At the same time, have the police walk the beats. How often do we see police sitting in cars, SUVs, looking at cell phones? Get back to basics. Get back to 'I have cars that have expired out-of-state tags, owe thousands of dollars, should be towed. What are they doing in high drug traffic areas? I know what they're doing. I want them towed already. I want them out of here. I want to kick the drug dealers and drug buyers out of our neighborhoods. They're coming in. I want to kick them out. There's things we can do that aren't rocket science."
The candidates give their short-term solutions to address public safety. (7News)
Early voting will continue until Sunday, June 14, from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. at early vote centers. You can find a list of early vote centers by clicking this link here.
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