Republican Withdraws From Ward 2 Special Election

Katherine Venice, the sole Republican candidate for the Ward 2 seat on the District Council, is withdrawing from the June 16 special election to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of embattled Council member Jack Evans. She plans to remain a candidate for the seat in the Nov. 3 general election.

Venice is taking this action, she wrote in a statement issued by her campaign on June 4, “so that I can spend time over the next few months working to get Trump out of office as soon as possible.”

Stating that the president “presents the greatest threat to American values, to liberty for all, the rule of law, and our shared humanity,” and that “Trump, Barr and the other enabling ‘Republicans’ have thrown wide open the gates to American authoritarianism,” she goes on to write that the “current version of the Republican party, with its sociopathic, anti-Constitution leaders, is not sustainable, nor should it be.”

The statement also highlights her concern about “the risk to LGBTQ rights and equality protections,” referring to a submission to GLAA, the D.C.-based Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, in which Venice “cited the 65 major actions rolling back LGBTQ rights taken by Trump’s administration so far.”

As she notes in the statement, Venice is a naturalized U.S. citizen. According to her campaign bio, she was raised mainly in England, studied classical music and musicology, then earned an MBA and switched careers, becoming an institutional investor and economic advisor.