In a large gym packed full of supporters at the Thurgood Marshall Center in Shaw on Saturday, Reta Jo Lewis announced her candidacy for the 2014 mayoral election…again.

Yes, despite already announcing back in July that she would be entering the race, the former official in both the Clinton and Obama administrations held a more formal campaign kickoff, where she re-announced her candidacy in style. She also explained how her “outsider” status makes her an ideal candidate and introduced her stance on a few issues that could dominate her campaign.

For starters, Lewis took shots at the D.C. Council’s decision to delay the city’s first Attorney General election until 2018 and criticized the proposed redevelopment plans for the McMilian water filtration plant. Other than that, Lewis’ campaign kickoff speech remained relatively shy on which issues she’ll campaign on. Instead, Lewis spent most of her nearly twenty-minute speech talking about her status as an “outsider” to the D.C. political scene.

During her 35 years as a D.C. resident, Lewis has worked her away around the national political spectrum, rather than local. She had a high position at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce before working as a special assistant to Bill Clinton during his presidency. She’s also worked for Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hilary Rodham Clinton. Despite her mostly federal-level background, Lewis did have a stint in the early ’90s as the chief of staff at the Department of Public Works and used to chair the D.C. Commission on Women.

Still, Lewis seemed to view her relative disconnection from D.C. politics as a positive. It seems as though her disconnection to D.C.’s turbulent history with political scandal and corruption is something that she very much wants to emphasize. As one of two mayoral candidates in the 2014 election who’s not on the D.C. Council, she’s certainly an outlier, but she’s playing that disadvantage as a strength. “She’s smart, honest, and capable,” her campaign manager quipped in an introduction. And despite not having a hand in District lawmaking decisions, Lewis joked about being privy to many of D.C.’s issues, including the “bike vs. car” wars. “I’m not about climbing ladders,” Lewis said, “I’m about building bridges.”