Phew! It’s been quite the year, huh? In this periodic end-of-the-year series, we look at the people and places that made 2011 what it was. In this installment, it’s Sulaimon Brown.

Who could have known that a third-tier mayoral contender like Sulaimon Brown could have ended up not only derailing Mayor Vince Gray’s first year in office, but also provoking a federal investigation that continues to this day?

No one, that’s who. And that’s what makes him one of the defining figures in the District in 2011.

During the 2010 campaign, Brown had no money, no organization and nothing much to offer. He was the sort of guy that you’d hope would just pull the plug on his quixotic mayoral ambitions and let the real contenders—Gray and Mayor Adrian Fenty—battle it out alone. But he didn’t, persisting through the September primary, in which he received a mere 209 votes, or 0.16 percent of the total ballots cast.

After that, Brown somewhat faded from view, until a Post article on February 19 listed him as a $110,000-a-year employee of the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance. Five days later, amidst scrutiny as to how he landed such a plum job, he was escorted out of his office by security officers and fired.

But he wasn’t going to go quietly, nor was he going to go alone.

Over the next few months, Brown claimed that senior officials in Gray’s campaign had not only paid him to attack Fenty on the campaign trail, but that they had offered him a good job to boot. There were alleged exchanges of cash-filled envelopes, text messages and phone calls with Gray and his senior staff, and a concerted effort to get him a job in the D.C. government by Gerri Mason Hall, then Gray’s chief of staff.

The accusations prompted investigations by the D.C. Council, a congressional committee and the U.S. attorney’s office, the latter of which remains unresolved. Hall eventually resigned, Green was forced to distance herself from Gray, and the new new mayor’s staff had to awkwardly to explain how exactly five children of senior officials landed government jobs and why so many of Gray’s agency heads were pulling down salaries above legal caps.

While neither the council nor the congressional reports pointed the finger at Gray, they both hinted that he had been either dangerously unaware of what was happening or simply insulated himself well enough to dodge direct blame when it all came crashing down. Gray was forced to institute stricter background checks on senior officials, and the council passed legislation restricting executive hires and limiting their salaries. Politically, Gray’s first year in office was lost to scandal.

In all of these months of political turmoil, the enduring image that may well scar D.C. politics for years to come was of Brown testifying before a council committee in June while wearing sunglasses. Though he said that he had been up late preparing for the appearance, the sunglasses seemed to offer an insight into the low esteem he felt for a political system that he had both helped corrupt and been corrupted by.

Though he has popped up in the news now and again, Brown has been quiet as of recent. But as the past year has shown, whenever Brown has disappeared from public view, it has been but a prelude to an exciting and controversial return. Who knows what he’ll bring with him next time he makes the news.