A Man for Uncertain Times: Malcom Fox
By • May 13, 2026 0 834
Malcom Fox doesn’t look like a boogeyman. But read the City Paper or the messages from Democratic Socialists and he is the personification of dark money, trying to buy D.C.’s municipal elections, a puppet controlled by rapacious developers.
So, it is a bit disarming when this one-time Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer responds to the taunts not with political jousting, but by saying if he had to sum up in one word where he thinks our city is today, it would be “uncertainty.”
To be clear, Opportunity DC, of which Fox is executive director, is a political advocacy organization. It endorses candidates: McDuffie for mayor and a slate of Council members including current Chairman Phil Mendelson.
At one point, Fox worked for McDuffie, making that endorsement perhaps not a surprise.
The idea for Opportunity DC came from the Federal City Council, a collective of corporate and business leaders, with a smattering of community activists. The policies it promotes are based on economic growth rather than economic redistribution.
Opportunity DC also undertakes education campaigns, such as for ranked-choice voting, running a direct-mail campaign after polling showed that two-thirds of likely Black voters were unfamiliar with the system. Whether ranked-choice voting would help Opportunity DC’s preferred candidates is unclear.
But beyond the politics, Opportunity DC and Fox are totems of a pivotal moment. A seismic change is quietly, but definitively, reshaping our city.
One inflection point is economic. The Covid hangover of remote work and the hollowing out of office occupancy was exacerbated by the Trumpian evisceration of the federal employment base. The communal budget hole we faced suddenly became a crevasse. The question is no longer how, and on whom, should the money be spent, but where will it come from.
Another is demographic. While the median age of the city has stayed around 34, there has been a massive shift in the past three decades from a mostly Black city to one where white and Black populations are almost evenly divided. But beyond race, the change came largely in a tidal wave of professional Millennials who arrived with Obama and stayed for Biden.
Where does this lead? The traditional power structure in D.C. is ceding power to a new generation, and Malcom Fox represents that change.
In a town that defines “transient,” at 31 he can be considered a D.C. lifer. He moved to the city in 2017 with a freshly minted political science degree, part of the generation of eager new arrivals who took up residence in neighborhoods then considered less than inviting: Shaw, H Street NE, Bloomingdale, Eckington.
But rather than joining the cult of Capitol Hill, he committed to the city, working in city politics, going to graduate school at Georgetown in public policy and working on local campaigns (losing one, Marcus Goodwin’s, the disappointment of which still lingers).
According to a longtime former colleague, Fox today “dances the line” between D.C.’s business interests and his own progressive beginnings, a reminder of which takes the form of his girlfriend’s work financing affordable housing.
Ask him where he stands on the city’s challenges today and he rattles off his three-point agenda: making the city “safe, affordable and prosperous.” Critics will point to his support for increasing housing as a sign of his being a tool of developers. His retort: “If we don’t increase housing, where will people live? And if housing is scarce, prices will never come down.” What of gentrification? “That is a problem.” His suggestion that rapid housing growth and raising wages are the answer will ring hollow for many.
When pushed about what Opportunity DC means to the traditional power of D.C. that emanated from Wards 7 and 8, he pauses, acknowledging that his organization is a disruptor. He believes it is time for the city to get over ideological politics and economic policies based on “free.”
Malcom Fox is a disruptor wading into our collective uncertainty. This fall will see a new mayor, three newly elected Council members and a new representative to Congress. It is as close to wiping the slate clean as it gets. What comes out of the election will likely shape what happens in D.C. for the next decade.
Opportunity DC openly wants to tilt those scales. While you can argue with his prescriptions for the city, what really counts is that Malcom Fox represents more than an economic and social philosophy. He is the vanguard of a changing of our city’s guard.
He won’t be alone.
