Top Democrats Name Anita Bonds Councilmember

Top D.C. Democratic party leaders met Dec. 10 at Catholic University – in a conclave of sorts, as other media quipped – to select an interim councilmember. Filling the vacancy created when Phil Mendelson became District Council chairman because of Kwame Brown’s resignation, the group of elite Democrats named Anita Bonds, the chair of the D.C. Democratic State Committee – that’s the name for D.C. Democratic Party apparatus – an at-large councilmember. Bonds has with several mayors, beginning with Marion Barry in the 1970s. Other Democrats under consideration were former shadow representative John Capozzi and Doug Sloan, a Ward 4 advisory neighborhood commissioner.

According to WAMU, Bonds won 55 of the 71 votes. WAMU added: “Bonds currently works as an executive at Fort Meyer Construction, one of the biggest city contractors. She doesn’t plan to step aside from her role in that job, she said after the vote last night, but she will cut back on her hours. She also said questions about her outside employment bordered on chauvinistic. ‘Because in the past I’ve never heard a conversation about some of the council members — I’m not going to name names,’ she said. ‘You don’t ask those questions, how much they make in their law practice … how much they make as vice presidents of companies. But you’re very concerned about me … little old me.’ “