Peter Shapiro

We haven’t even gotten to November 6 and people are already talking about the next race for a D.C. Council seat. It’s understandable—it’s not too far off.

With D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson expected to win the November election to finish off former Chairman Kwame Brown’s term, his At-Large seat will be vacant as of January. It will be up to the D.C. Democratic State Committee to select an interim councilmember for the post, and a special election will have to be scheduled between 70 and 174 days after the vacancy is declared.

As the Post’s Mike DeBonis reported earlier this week, D.C. Democratic Party leader and longtime political fixture Anita Bonda has expressed interest in running for the position. Now, the Washington Informer adds, former At-Large candidate Peter Shapiro is also considering a run.

Bonds certainly has the connections to run a campaign, but she’ll be saddled with associations to the troubled D.C. political old guard. Shapiro, on the other hand, will have to overcome the bad feelings his 2011 At-Large run against Councilmember Vincent Orange (D-Ward 5) engendered. While Shapiro had a loyal following among some local progressives, others accused him of stealing votes from second-place Sekou Biddle, who only lost to Orange by 1,746 votes. Some of Biddle’s supporters took to calling Shapiro the “Ralph Nader of D.C. politics.”

There’s also the possibility that a D.C. Republican will try their hand at running for office again; it’s been a few years since 2010 second-place finisher and current State Board of Education member Patrick Mara ran for office. Biddle’s name has also been thrown in the mix, but he refused to answer the Informer’s queries on the topic.

Beyond the actual election, there’s also the intrigue of the Democrats will select as an interim member. The last time they had a selection process was when Brown was elected chairman, and Biddle was narrowly chosen over Orange after three closely contested rounds of voting.