Barry Gets Some Competition

Marion S. Barry Jr. may be expecting to roll to re-election as Ward 8 councilmember next year, but he may not have the ballot to himself.

This evening Skyland resident Ahmad Braxton-Jones is announcing an exploratory bid for Barry’s seat.

Braxton-Jones, subject of a 2002 City Paper profile, ran unsuccessfully for at-large councilmember that year, but he now says he’s considerably wiser. He pumps up his community cred, including two terms on the local advisory neighborhood commission and a day job helping kids as a program manager for the East of the River Clergy-Community Partnership.

But why take on the mayor-for-life, whose support in Ward 8 is supposedly legendary?

Braxton-Jones, 33, acknowledges that unseating Barry will be tough, but he says he’s relying on some of his youth-first rhetoric from his first council run, relying on “the next generation of politics” to put him over the top.

His electoral strategy: Get 50 percent of the ward’s nonvoters to cast ballots—a tough task in a ward where turnout was under 30 percent for the last council primary. A “core” of 50 volunteers, he says, will help him get the vote out.

Braxton-Jones says Barry’s constitutents don’t see his face enough. “I don’t see any participation in the community,” he says. “I don’t think the current incumbent has the passion.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Marion Barry, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.