Candidate Paths to Victory Forming in a Five-Way Race
How campaigns are currently jockeying and angles they may take down the stretch
Ranked-choice voting could make for a societal positive on the margins, but the warm and fuzzies have been dispensed with in the Ward 1 DC Council race as candidates try to differentiate in the final week. The lone cross-endorsement of Rashida Brown and Miguel Trindade Deramo is drawing direct fire from frontrunner Aparna Raj. Brown-affiliated mailers are going after Raj’s voting past, while Janeese Lewis George is boosting Raj through negative signs about Jackie Reyes Yanes according to the latter campaign. And everyone’s leaving self-proclaimed “civic gadfly” Terry Lynch alone as he does his thing, with the lowest odds of the pack but a not-insignificant base of supporters.
What we have here is a hotly contested open-seat election, even if it’s RCV where you can have alliances and voters could feasibly rank every candidate 1-through-5. This piece will provide a high-level look at the coalitions and how they might be realized on the electoral map. What paths the campaigns appear to be taking, and what angles they could each choose to close strong and win on RCV tabulation.
The candidate order is reversed from the issue position table in yesterday’s Ward 1 Intel piece. Also check out the full Ward 1 precinct voter heatmap for reference.
Each candidate is accompanied by a zoomed-in look at the map around their listed campaign headquarters, which tends to align with their initial voting base geographically. But they’re also making inroads elsewhere as they vie for a DC Council seat from Ward 1.
Miguel Trindade Deramo
Where he most needs to drive turnout: U Street
Precinct 22 is second in vote density and could be the key to converting late “Miguelmentum” into a come-from-behind victory. ANC chair Trindade Deramo led all candidates in May-June funding despite still being nowhere close to the lead in funding overall. He is clearly the technocratmaxxing candidate in the field, and per DC DLCP business license data filterable on Ward 1 Intel, when bucketing precincts by neighborhood it’s U Street by far and away facing the most business foreclosures per resident among those started since 2015. It’s also an outlier in terms of crime incidents at more than two standard deviations above the precinct average since 2020.
The plot thickens as outgoing incumbent Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau faced a tough challenge in 2022 from MPD officer turned DC Night Mayor turned ice cream shop owner Salah Czapary, who hit his best mark in Precinct 22 with 673 votes running against Nadeau primarily on public safety. In an election that could feasibly feature a sub-10K electorate and sub-40% winner, that could be a decisive audience. My sources say Czapary has mulled an endorsement of Trindade Deramo, though at the mayoral level Czapary did recently endorse Janeese Lewis George and JLG campaigned with Raj. So we’ll how Salah plays it, but it could be important for the margins down on U. There’s also an identity appeal as Trindade Deramo is the one candidate with a same-sex partner in the race and the 9th/U area has a famous business scene in that regard, anchored by spots like Nellie’s.
Making inroads: Mount Pleasant has been a key marker for feet on the ground and a closing message from the Latino candidate. Precinct 39 ranks near the top among the 15 precincts on indicators related to business closures, public safety, and anti-Nadeau vote, also with the third-highest share of Hispanic residents.
Rashida Brown
Where she most needs to drive turnout: Pleasant Plains
ANC commissioner Brown has the endorsement of outgoing DC Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau and is the sole black candidate in the race. Identity politics nationally has had diminishing returns as education polarization steamrolls its way through old coalition lines, and it will all probably get even more complex with each election as realignment makes its cyclical return.
However, Precinct 37 Pleasant Plains and to a lesser degree (less than 1/3 fraction of the votes) Precinct 20 LeDroit Park are places Brown will need to get people to the polls, as these precincts trail some of the others in Ward 1 by percentage of registered Dems voting in primaries. The neighborhoods house many Howard University students and have the two highest percentages of black residents in Ward 1 at 40% for LeDroit Park and 33% for Pleasant Plains. Rashida and Miguel are cross-endorsing for first/second rank, so it’s also possible Brown could do well on vote transfers in lower Columbia Heights and U Street, and vice versa for Miguel in Rashida territory.
Making inroads: Brown’s Park View headquarters sits on the Precinct 38 edge near the borders of Pleasant Plans (P37) and LeDroit Park (P20). P38 had the highest Nadeau vote share among Ward 1 precincts in the 2022 primary at 56%.
Aparna Raj
Where she needs to drive turnout: Adams Morgan
Raj is the DSA candidate and the rule of thumb — scrap it for generational talents like Zohran or AOC — is she will need turnout from areas with voters who are under 45, white, and holding post-grad degrees. Validating it to be the case here in Ward 1, the GGWash/PPP poll found Raj’s supporters to be 81% white and 68% under 45, compared to the undecided voter pool that clocked in at 57% white and 38% under 45.
Outside of the Howard University area where Brown should command a decent margin, the highest under-45 precinct is P24 Adams Morgan at 69%. It is also the whitest among all 15 precincts by a fair distance at 63%. Raj is a tenant organizer and each of the three Adams Morgan voting precincts rank in the top third of Ward 1 precincts for percentage of renters.
Making inroads: Precinct 24 includes the popular gay and lesbian sports bars Pitchers and A League of Her Own on 18th Street, which is the dividing line from Precinct 25 including southwest Adams Morgan and Kalorama Triangle. This area includes the highest post-grad share among all Ward 1 voting precincts and several popular gay bars lower down 18th moving towards Dupont. Raj’s camp contacted the LGTBQ issues publication the Washington Blade to let them know she is bisexual with a male husband after the paper had announced Trindade Deramo as an LGBTQ candidate in the Ward 1 race. The Blade then interviewed Raj and clarified that she joins Trindade Deramo in the distinction. Both candidates will hope to represent the community on the DC Council as they jockey for these potentially determinative votes in Ward 1.
Terry Lynch
Where he most needs to drive turnout: Mount Pleasant
Local nonprofit leader Lynch served as campaign director for the Sabel Harris campaign’s challenge to incumbent Nadeau in 2022. Harris would garner 20% of that vote to Czapary’s 31% as Nadeau prevailed. The 45-plus and public safety-focused crowd suits well to his home base in Precinct 39, which lands fourth in the former and third in crime incidents since 2020.
Lynch’s sign game and relatively positive name recognition around Ward 1 wouldn’t make you think he polled last place in the March PPP poll, with his 3% among likely voters landing him 15 points behind Raj along with 55% undecided. He’s also been a known fixture around Mount Pleasant and Columbia Heights as someone who gets on the city to fix potholes. Again, he is a self-proclaimed “civic gadfly” going after tangible neighborhood improvements in his free time.
Making inroads: Columbia Heights occupies half of Precinct 39 to make it the only voting precinct to really straddle two neighborhoods in Ward 1, and Lynch recently voiced drug and violence concerns about the neighborhood on WTOP. Trindade Deramo along with Raj and Brown were all No on teen curfews in the Washington Post survey, potentially ceding some of the public safety lane to the Yes of both Reyes Yanes and Lynch. It’s practically an 80/20 issue citywide per polling, though there’s no Ward 1 breakdown to be found. This curfew position is the reason that Lynch — a man other campaigns have said has committed supporters who only consider ranking Terry (real Terryheads) — would only consider Reyes Yanes as a potential second-choice ballot instruction to his base. Note that I got intel prior to the Reyes Yanes contributor info decision Friday that is now apparently being appealed, so hopefully we get more clarity before Election Day. On that….
Jackie Yanes Reyes
Where she most needs to drive turnout: Columbia Heights
Have to start off with Friday’s breaking item that the Reyes Yanes campaign has had their Fair Elections Program certification revoked by the DC Office of Campaign Finance, joining Lewis George in the Friday OCF probe news. Essentially there are discrepancies in Reyes Yanes campaign contributor information and instances of listed contributors denying that they gave the donations. The campaign will appeal and based on the signals so far, it seems like they will argue some combination of 1) Her heavily Hispanic base experiencing confusion with the forms and outreach from DC government, and 2) The contributor denials are motivated by a sense of self-preservation when it comes to interfacing right now with the American government, similar to the dynamic leading to undercounts of Hispanic residents on the 2020 Census.
It’s also plausible that contributor information was falsified. It would be really great to get more details on the revocation and appeal before Election Day. Whether it’s James Comey or election finance chicanery, this is not what you want if you’re Reyes Yanes going into the weekend. It is the campaign with the strongest early vote center presence and real infrastructure as Reyes Yanes was the Latino Affairs Director under outgoing Mayor Muriel Bowser. Problem is you can find campaign signs tying her to the unpopular mayor on 14th Street right by stretches of housing with a strong Hispanic presence in Precinct 39. Reyes Yanes will need to shore up support this weekend in Columbia Heights Precinct 41 (31% Hispanic share) and Precinct 42 (25% Hispanic share).
Making inroads: Precinct 36 in Columbia Heights has a 24% Hispanic share and this area could be a flashpoint in the competition for votes between all five candidates. It possesses the third-most Democratic primary votes, is centrally located between the five campaign headquarters, and sends out different demographic signals that appeal to a real theory of the case for each contender.
Up next: DC budget pouring money into Ward 1 primary