Photo by mediaslave

As we reported last night, Kenyan McDuffie won yesterday’s special election in Ward 5 and will fill the seat once held by disgraced former councilmember Harry Thomas, Jr.

Today he made the rounds, appearing on NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt and WAMU’s The Kojo Nnamdi Show. During the latter interview, McDuffie spoke of his own upbringing, which included graduating from Wilson High School. After that, though, he took a somewhat circuitous route to becoming what he will soon be—Ward 5’s representative on the D.C. Council.

McDuffie said he sold ice cream at the National Zoo, and attended the University of the District of Columbia, where he failed one class and dropped a second. Leaving the academic life, he took a job as a letter carrier, delivering mail out of the Friendship Heights station. He worked for the U.S. Postal Service until August 1998, after which he returned to college, attending UDC but graduating from Howard University. Afterward, he went to law school at the University of Maryland, worked as a prosecutor for the Department of Justice and eventually became a policy advisor to current Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Paul Quander.

Needless to say, it’s now way easier to say that McDuffie delivered during yesterday’s election.