Councilmember Sekou Biddle (D-At Large)

Four months ago, no one really knew Sekou Biddle. Now, after a tightly contested appointment process by the D.C. Democratic State Committee and a recent fundraiser attended by Mayor Vince Gray and a host of local power-brokers, Biddle is the consummate insider, a guy who has been groomed for elected office more because he’ll be an easy yes vote than because he’s qualified for it. It’s enough to make anyone’s head spin, Biddle’s included.

“I don’t think we’ll ever get beneath the outsider-insider thing, because it’s a story that’s easy to tell when you don’t worry about the details,” Biddle told me late last week as he followed the arc of his career from education advocate to an interim At-Large member on the D.C. Council who has four months to fend of challenges from as many as 15 contenders in the April 26 special election to fill the seat once occupied by D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown.

Sitting in his sparsely decorated office in the Wilson Building, Biddle still seems perplexed by his overnight transformation — he wishes that a reality show had been based around his ascendancy to the Council, if only to correct misconceptions — but strongly fights back at any indication that he got where he is because of the people he knows, rather than the work he’s done. Biddle’s advocacy and activism for education — which started with a stint at Teach for America, moved on to the widely acclaimed KIPP charter school movement and culminated in his 2007 election to the D.C. State Board of Education representing wards 3 and 4 — coupled with a little bit of chance, has put him where he is today.

“Long story short, I helped work with leaders in Ward 7 with my bosses at KIPP to bring the highest-performing middle school in the whole city to the community that had the lowest three performing schools in the city,” he recounted, explaining how he worked with both Gray and Brown on to move the project forward. (Both are Ward 7 natives; Gray’s first term on the council was representing Ward 7.)

“I think that’s a significant accomplishment and speaks to me and the work that I do and the degree to which I can work with a pretty diverse group of people and, frankly, is sort of the foundation for the relationship and trust I’ve built with both the chairman and now Mayor Gray and also Kwame Brown.”