“Sack Jack [Evans]” Happy Hour

[Anonymous]

It’s late notice, but I just heard that a group is putting on a “Sack Jack” happy hour tonight (7/30) in Dupont: https://ggwash.org/calendar/event/73109/sack-jack-happy-hour. While I know that Evans has his fans, plenty of people are looking for alternatives too.

I also saw that one of Evans’s challengers, Patrick Kennedy, has some meet and greet events coming up: https://www.patrickforward2.com/events. He’s an interesting candidate to me because he co-chaired Evans’s 2016 re-election campaign. John Fanning could also be a strong candidate. The other two challengers to Evans seem enthusiastic but not as experienced.

Anyway, if you’re a DC resident living anywhere in the city there are some things you can do to start showing this incumbent that his support is eroding. If you throw a few dollars toward one of Evans’s challengers before the end of the day on Wednesday that show up in the campaign finance reports that close on 7/31. If enough people mobilize, it might be enough to change the narrative in the press and to change people’s thinking about Evans’s entrenchment on the Council.

[Anonymous]

There's 5 people running against Jack Evans now. The funny thing is that I'm getting emails from Jack Evans asking me to come to constituent events for the last few months, when for the last decade in which I lived in Dupont Circle, he never sent any messages at all. Hopefully he'll realize he's going to lose and will withdraw.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/?utm_term=.91fe644e1e15

[Anonymous]

The blood is in the water for Jack Evans, which is why he has so many challengers. He lost his finance seat and there's a law firm that's going to investigate him.

[Anonymous]

The number of challengers is a worry for me. Despite "blood in the water," which is an assessment that I agree with, someone needs to get the majority of the votes in the Democratic primary on June 2 in order to unseat Evans. I worry about vote splitting with so many candidates in the race. In talking to voters and people who have been out canvassing, a lot of DC voters are low information voters. Many in Ward 2 know who Jack Evans is but do not know that they are his constituents. Others are not in a great position to evaluate the experience of the candidates. For example, they do not know what the Advisory Neighborhood Commission system is. (ANC's are the lowest level of elected government in DC. Commissioners are not paid and serve in an advisory role only over a limited scope of things such as liquor licenses, zoning variances, and certain aspects of DDOT projects.) This information is important because Patrick Kennedy, John Fanning, and Kishan Putta have had experience as ANC commissioners in Ward 2. Jordan Grossman and Daniel Hernandez do not have any experience working in local government. While I respect Grossman's experience on the federal level, there are a lot of quirks to DC government, and I want someone who understands the day-to-day implications of the Home Rule Act of 1973, MPD issues, the Comp Plan, etc. before he arrives on the Council. (FWIW, I don't think that many of our current Councilmembers had a good grasp on these things before entering the Wilson Building, and it shows.)

All of this is a long way of saying, I hope that we get a lot of local press coverage about these candidates soon and that voters pay attention. We need to narrow the field and start coalescing around a couple of strongly qualified people if we're going to have a chance of unseating Evans. As awful as the news about Evans has been, he has deep-pocketed donors. Also, his power base is in Georgetown where voters lean on the more conservative side. Those constituents have forgiven Evans a lot over the years; they may do so again. In the eastern portion of Evan's Ward where the median voter age is much, much younger, participation in local elections is lower and knowledge of DC politics is less.

Also, if you're someone who cares about such things, today would be a really good day to donate money to a qualified candidate. It's the financial reporting deadline, so your donation will count toward showing that Evans has opposition. And please volunteer to canvas for a candidate of your choice. Awkward and time consuming as it is, it is the single most effective strategy for changing people's minds and mobilizing voters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The number of challengers is a worry for me. Despite "blood in the water," which is an assessment that I agree with, someone needs to get the majority of the votes in the Democratic primary on June 2 in order to unseat Evans. I worry about vote splitting with so many candidates in the race. In talking to voters and people who have been out canvassing, a lot of DC voters are low information voters. Many in Ward 2 know who Jack Evans is but do not know that they are his constituents. Others are not in a great position to evaluate the experience of the candidates. For example, they do not know what the Advisory Neighborhood Commission system is. (ANC's are the lowest level of elected government in DC. Commissioners are not paid and serve in an advisory role only over a limited scope of things such as liquor licenses, zoning variances, and certain aspects of DDOT projects.) This information is important because Patrick Kennedy, John Fanning, and Kishan Putta have had experience as ANC commissioners in Ward 2. Jordan Grossman and Daniel Hernandez do not have any experience working in local government. While I respect Grossman's experience on the federal level, there are a lot of quirks to DC government, and I want someone who understands the day-to-day implications of the Home Rule Act of 1973, MPD issues, the Comp Plan, etc. before he arrives on the Council. (FWIW, I don't think that many of our current Councilmembers had a good grasp on these things before entering the Wilson Building, and it shows.)

All of this is a long way of saying, I hope that we get a lot of local press coverage about these candidates soon and that voters pay attention. We need to narrow the field and start coalescing around a couple of strongly qualified people if we're going to have a chance of unseating Evans. As awful as the news about Evans has been, he has deep-pocketed donors. Also, his power base is in Georgetown where voters lean on the more conservative side. Those constituents have forgiven Evans a lot over the years; they may do so again. In the eastern portion of Evan's Ward where the median voter age is much, much younger, participation in local elections is lower and knowledge of DC politics is less.

Also, if you're someone who cares about such things, today would be a really good day to donate money to a qualified candidate. It's the financial reporting deadline, so your donation will count toward showing that Evans has opposition. And please volunteer to canvas for a candidate of your choice. Awkward and time consuming as it is, it is the single most effective strategy for changing people's minds and mobilizing voters.

I agree, people need to rally around one opponent. Five people running against Evans would be disastrous for those who want him gone. Apart from entrenched voter apathy, a big reason why bad DC politicians remain entrenched in their jobs is that their opponents split the vote. Just look at Nadeau, a cretin who has no business being on the Council but won reelection because she faced two opponents in the primary (Nadeau got only 47.92 percent of the vote in the primary, the lowest -- by a pretty wide margin -- of the six Council members who were up for reelection last year).