Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans, the longest serving member of the District Council and a Georgetown resident, made it official June 8 by announcing his candidacy for Mayor of Washington, D.C., way ahead of the Democratic primary on April 1, 2014. Evans spoke in front of the 14th Street entrance of the new Le Diplomate restaurant, a hot new place on a hot site very characteristic of the city’s booming reputation as an urban hot spot.
Evans had been dropping hints and pretty positive signs that he would be running for some time now—his talk at the Downtown Business Improvement District’s state of downtown report several weeks ago sounded very much like a campaign speech touting the many project’s and development game changers of which he has been a part: the Verizon Center, the new Washington Convention Center, the coming of the Washington Nationals baseball team to the District, legislation creating business improvement districts and more.
In announcing his candidacy, Evans sounded a richer theme than merely being a high profile mover and backer of major developments, of being a finance and numbers wiz on the council as chair of the finance committee, of being able to claim a large part of the credit—along with the council and three mayors—for the changing physical, demographic changes of D.C. and its budget surplus. On June 8, surrounded by his wife Michele and other family members, he preached the gospel of inclusion mindful of what many observers still see as a divide in the city, especially as evidenced in several recent council election and the last mayoral elections.
Evans has served on the District Council since 1991 and has run for mayor before, in 1998.
Now, Evans joins a field that so far includes Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser and Ward 6 Council member Tommy Wells.
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- Nora Birch
