It was fitting, if a bit depressing, to see a former president with a slew of felony convictions and pending charges win another term in office Tuesday just as a certain Ward 8 councilmember facing bribery allegations did the same.
Donald Trump and Trayon White may be political polar opposites, but this isn’t the first time the president-elect and the Ward 8 councilmember have invited comparisons. Though the circumstances are wildly different, each one has demonstrated the ability to inspire loyalty among their respective fan bases that defies logic or reason. Why listen to what the media or establishment politicians have to say when you believe your candidate is the only one who will stand up for you?
Trump has long shown a willingness to hand out federal pardons to troubled big city officials, so perhaps the ties between the two will grow even closer in the coming months. (Loose Lips could not help but note that White posted and then deleted a message boosting Trump and denigrating Vice President Kamala Harris on his very active Instagram account.) But, in the near term, White is in a much more precarious position than the president-elect.
As expected, he won a third term on the Council with about 76 percent of the vote, as of the most recent tally released Tuesday night, which is just two points less than his margin four years ago. But many Ward 8 politicos spent Election Day looking past these results and toward a future special election that would come after his likely ouster.
White told reporters at his Players Lounge victory party that he hopes his sizable win “sends a message to the D.C. Council about keeping the decision in the hands of the people.” And, after this article was published, he wrote in an email to LL that “I will not just go away.” “This is America and I look forward to my due process in court,” he added.
Yet LL finds it hard to believe that any lawmakers will be swayed by this result, since most were bracing for exactly this outcome—and the more defiant White grows, the more federal prosecutors will be incentivized to pressure him to resign and/or plead guilty. There’s good reason that none of the half dozen sources in the ward that LL spoke with see Tuesday as the last word on White’s political future.
“There are quite a few people that are preparing themselves for a special election,” says Jacque Patterson, a Ward 8 activist who won reelection himself Tuesday as an at-large representative to the State Board of Education. “There’s a feeling in the ward that there may be a conviction, because it’s the FBI involved. And if there’s a conviction, they want to be prepared, because we know special elections aren’t that long.”
White’s win is a bit less impressive than it might appear at first blush. He only managed about 18,200 votes, compared to the 25,300 he racked up in his 2020 general election victory and 27,000 he managed in 2016. There are some additional votes to count, but it’s clear that many voters in the ward didn’t cast ballots or simply chose not to vote for anyone—the Board of Elections reports that about 2,500 people left the Ward 8 Council race blank on their ballots, a big increase from the previous two cycles where White ran for office.
“A lot of people were just operating very strategically,” says Robbie Woodland, an advisory neighborhood commissioner in Congress Heights who supported one of White’s opponents in the primary. “They’re going to vote Trayon in and, if and when he has to step down, or if the Council makes him step down, then they’d rather have him in there and wait for a special election.”
Salim Adofo, another Congress Heights ANC who finished second in the primary to White, agrees that many voters simply held their noses and supported him to prevent Republican Nate Derenge (the only other candidate whose name was on the ballot) from winning.
“I was telling him, ‘If you present a little better, people might take you more seriously,’” Adofo recalls. Derenge instead focused his campaign on screeds against the D.C. government and posting bizarre rap videos. He finished with about 14 percent of the vote. That’s better than the 2 percent he earned four years ago (and it aligns roughly with the small uptick that Trump himself saw in support in the ward).
The write-in candidates didn’t fare much better, picking up a combined 9 percent of the vote. Many of the better-known names in the ward chose to take a pass on a difficult write-in bid in order to wait for the prospect of an open-seat special election sometime next year. As Woodland puts it, “no one felt that there’s a good enough candidate over here to run in this ward,” noting that many of the write-ins had barely any campaign infrastructure to speak of. The biggest name was former ANC and union organizer Olivia Henderson, who tells LL she felt “electrifying” energy at the polls in favor of change, but never got the support from the ward’s Democrats or other institutions to take a serious run at White.
“It’s disrespectful to ask Ward 8 to wait [for a special election] when they really need help right now,” Henderson says.
It can’t be understated, however, just how much support White maintains in the ward. Plenty of voters might have begrudgingly backed him (or only voted for him because he was the Democratic nominee in a presidential year) but many others undoubtedly chose to support him despite the serious accusations about his conduct. White’s Instagram is full of reposts of his loyal fans casting doubt on what appears to be clear video evidence of him accepting bribes—even many of the politicians LL spoke to for this article remain hesitant to criticize White directly.
“Trayon has been in the community, he’s always been available, he’s always been the guy that goes to every function,” says newly re-elected Shadow Rep. Oye Owolewa, a Ward 8 resident who LL has heard mentioned among possible contenders for the Council seat. “I think that that was rewarded in this election.”
Even in the face of his political demise, White’s inner circle certainly hasn’t abandoned him. And they have been so aggressive in his defense over the past few months that it’s not hard to imagine things getting testy if indeed the Council is forced to expel him.
For instance, Henderson recalls seeing White’s supporters crowding around the front of the polling place at Hendley Elementary School in Washington Highlands. When she and her volunteers confronted them about this, calling it “intimidation,” it wasn’t long before she found herself locked in a shouting match with longtime White confidant Regina Pixley.
“I just felt that I’m not going to be intimidated like other candidates have been throughout the years. We’re going to stand strong,” Henderson says. Pixley didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Despite all that, Henderson says she’ll “absolutely” consider running again in a special election, should one eventually take place. Patterson tells LL that he won’t be among those lining up for a bid, but pretty much every other major politico in the ward will probably at least give the contest a look. After all, it’d be the first open seat race in Ward 8 since Mayor-for-Life Marion Barry’s death in 2014. (Though that assumes, of course, that White doesn’t imitate ex-Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans and run again.)
There’s already buzz about D.C. Democrats Chair Charles Wilson, Ward 8 Dems President Troy Prestwood, and longtime activist (and chief of staff to Ward 7 Councilmember Vince Gray) Sheila Bunn eyeing the contest. Adofo, too, has kept himself visible in the ward since his second-place finish in the primary, campaigning aggressively in favor of Initiative 83 in the run-up to Election Day.
But any race without White wouldn’t exactly be drama free. Adofo and Woodland, in particular, have continued clashing over the inter-ANC disputes that defined the primary race. LL hears that this includes a particularly heated exchange outside Union Temple Baptist Church Tuesday morning.
Adofo says he was canvasing in support of I-83 when Woodland began “very aggressively yelling and cursing at me” and “calling me homophobic slurs.” Philip Pannell, a longtime gay activist in the ward, says he heard from witnesses that the exact term Woodland used was “f—-t ass bitch.”
Woodland allows that the pair had an “argument,” after she heard that Adofo was urging people to run against her for ANC. But she calls Adofo a “liar” and says Pannell has been misinformed about the exchange.
“I just tried to walk away,” Adofo says. “You will never hear me say anything bad about Commissioner Woodland, I just relay what she says to me.”
Election season may be over in the rest of the country, but it’s probably just getting started in Southeast.
This article has been updated with comment from Trayon White.