What’s one more in the already enormous field of at-large D.C. Council candidates? The District is about to find out, because now Shadow Sen. Michael D. Brown says he’s running, too.

“I’m tired of being ignored,” says Brown, who’s one of two unpaid shadow senators tasked with pushing statehood on Capitol Hill. Brown has already switched his party registration to independent, enabling him to run for one of the Council seats reserved for non-Democrats.

This isn’t Brown’s first attempt to get on the Council. In 2010, he ran for the at-large seat then held by Phil Mendelson. Brown’s similar name to then-Councilmember Michael A. Brown made Mendelson so worried that his campaign printed up flyers and signs explaining the difference. Apparently, it worked—-Mendelson held on to his seat, and Brown went back to the shadow delegation’s’ basement office in the Wilson Building.

Now that Michael A. Brown has gone from rising star to future prison inmate, the name similarity could count against Michael D. Brown. Brown says he isn’t worried, though, thanks to his old rival’s work back in 2010.

“I think Phil Mendelson, God bless him, spent $250,000 letting people know there’s two of us, and now people know there’s two of us,” Brown says.

While Brown waited to pick up his nominating petitions, he run into another newly minted independent, at-large candidate Elissa Silverman. Silverman said she was surprised to see Brown leaving the Democratic Party.

“I am a good Democrat, just like you!” Brown said. “But the rules are the rules.”

Photo by Darrow Montgomery