Good elected officials know their constituents, and in that Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) has excelled. Graham has represented the District’s most diverse ward for the last 10 years, easily offing challengers by remaining accessible to his constituents and making his presence known both in times of celebration and crisis. Heck, it’s near impossible to miss a guy with orange glasses and a bow-tie driving a VW Bug from Columbia Heights to Adams Morgan and Mt. Pleasant to Shaw.

Yesterday, we spotted the council member’s signature Bug parked in Mt. Pleasant, and visible through the windshield was a small red flag bearing the letters “FMLN.” For those of you who don’t regularly keep up with Latin American affairs, the FMLN is a former guerrilla group and now progressive political party in El Salvador whose candidate, Mauricio Funes, just won the presidency of the tiny Central American country.

After inquiring with his office, Graham confirmed that the flag was his and that he had displayed it for “over a year.” He spoke highly of Funes, whom he met both here and in El Salvador on one of his five trips there. “I’m very excited for the vision he brings to El Salvador,” Graham said of Funes.

So why would Graham be openly displaying his support for the FMLN? Because so many Salvadorans make the District home, and of those a large proportion can be found in Ward 1. Though smaller in number than Mexicans, Salvadorans in the U.S. are the largest Latin American immigrant population as a proportion of the number of people in their country. The estimated 3 million Salvadorans in the U.S. make up 45 percent of their homeland’s total population and send back almost $4 billion in remittances annually. The Washington region is home to almost 200,000 Salvadorans, and Salvadoran presidential candidates have been known to come to the area to campaign. Basically, it’s good constituent relations for Graham to be flying the FMLN’s colors, especially in Mt. Pleasant.