Jack Evans Withdraws From Special Election
By • March 19, 2020 0 820
Former Council member Jack Evans decided on Wednesday, March 18, the deadline day, not to turn in the signatures he had collected to compete in the June 16 special election to fill the Ward 2 Council seat for the remaining six months of the term.
Evans resigned that seat, which he had held for almost 30 years, in January, just hours before a vote was to be taken to expel him for ethics violations.
But Evans said he would unquestionably stay in the race for the new four-year term, to be decided in the Nov. 3 general election. The Democratic primary is set to be held on June 2.
“I have decided it is best to not seek to run for the position which I resigned from in January and instead focus on a new start for the next four years,” Evans told The Georgetowner, repeating the statement he had made to the Washington Post on Wednesday. “Not running in the special is also a way of showing my sincere regret for the mistakes I made.”
“I am excited about coming back on the Council and using my financial experience and expertise particularly at this time,” Evans told The Georgetowner in a second telephone interview.
Evans’s many achievements in developing the District’s business base and fiscal stability are readily acknowledged by many in Georgetown. He lives close by Wisconsin Avenue and P Street and raised triplets here after the early death of his first wife from cancer. But several ethics investigations — focusing on his alleged use of the privilege of office to benefit private clients — and then his decision to run for office again just 10 days after he resigned his seat, has drawn much criticism.
“Even supporters of Jack have told me that, especially at this time during all the uncertainties during the coronavirus shutdowns, we don’t need more disruption in the Council race,” said Georgetown-Burleith Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Kishan Putta, who is running in both the special election and the general for the Ward 2 seat.
In addition to Putta, candidates for the seat in the special election include John Fanning, Jordan Grossman, Patrick Kennedy, Brooke Pinto, Katherine Venice and Yilin Zhang. Their campaigns have moved to phones, social media and the internet. As of this writing, no virtual debate has been planned.
There are nine candidates, including Evans and Daniel Hernandez, running for the seat in the general election. Most are a generation younger than Evans and represent a greater diversity of racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and even national heritage backgrounds than does the current Council.
