Update 7/18:

Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray has announced that he will run for reelection next year in an interview with the DC Line. Gray has not yet filed his paperwork with the Board of Elections, but told the outlet that he’s “absolutely running again for re-election and looking forward to continue to serve the people of Ward 7.”

Original:

Outspoken ANC commissioner Anthony Lorenzo Green announced today that he will seek the Ward 7 seat currently held by former mayor Vincent Gray.

In announcing his run on Twitter, Green said that the status quo isn’t working for the ward. “Too many times we have leaders that don’t seem to hear them when they speak, stand up against injustices or be an advocate for solutions to problems that affect us everyday,” he wrote.

Green has served as an ANC commissioner since 2013—first in Ward 8, on ANC 8B04, and since 2017, on 7C04. He tells DCist that he has been mulling a run for more than a year, prompted mainly by the encouragement of his own constituents and community members.

“I didn’t know if the D.C. Council fit with my style of politics. But it was really everyday people saying that the way I’ve been advocating for folks, pushing and listening to people when they tell their stories, instead of just talking at them, is necessary,” he says. “I had no choice but to come to the conclusion to make that leap.”

Green says that he does not feel Gray has been a vocal enough advocate for his constituents during his time on the council. “I know one thing that I hear a lot from families is that they want a councilmember to actually fight for them, advocating and speaking up,” he says. “You can’t just hide in the Wilson Building and think everything is going to be blow over and be okay.”

Gray, who has not officially announced that he will seek reelection, ran for the Ward 7 seat as a comeback after losing his mayoral reelection bid to Muriel Bowser amid a U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation into his 2010 mayoral campaign (Gray was never indicted, though other members of his campaign were). There was widespread speculation at the time that he would seek an At-large seat, but Gray instead challenged his one-time protege, Yvette Alexander. Before serving as mayor, Gray was the chairman of the council from 2006 to 2010. Prior to that, he served as the Ward 7 councilmember for one year.

Green says his top priorities on the council would be safety, development, and education. If elected, he would to advocate for development that benefits people who already live in Ward 7, he says, and only the developments they’ve explicitly said they want. And Green says he would deemphasize police as the route to keeping his community safe, and instead look at addressing trauma and other root causes of violence.

“Just placing police officers in our community is not keeping us safe. It just puts up a facade of safety. We’ve got to change our whole mindset and idea of what safety is and what it looks like,” he says.

Green has been a vocal proponent of police reform and has been highly critical of the Metropolitan Police Department’s activity in his ward, particularly in the Deanwood neighborhood, which falls under his current ANC.

Last summer, he wrote a scathing letter to Police Chief Peter Newsham after a group of officers conducted a seemingly unprompted stop-and-frisk search of several men standing on a corner near Nooks Barbershop in Deanwood. “Taking our grandmothers out for coffee and donuts, only to create a false narrative to promote on social media, does not give your department a free pass to subject their sons and grandsons to disproportionate and unfair treatment,” Green wrote to the chief.

In May, Green was accused of inciting violence against police officers after tweeting harsh criticisms of officers, in response to footage of a confrontation between community members and MPD officers. Green said that he trying to prevent violence, not incite it. “There are a lot of people, members of our community, who are telling me they’re drawing a line in the sand. They’re tired of being harassed and treated as criminals no matter where they are or what they’re doing,” Green told DCist at the time.

James Jennings also filed to run in Ward 7 in mid-May. He appears to have run as a write-in candidate in Ward 7 during a special election in 2007.

And another Ward 7 ANC commissioner, Veda Rasheed, announced earlier this month that she was launching an exploratory committee for a potential run against Gray (and now Green) herself. Her campaign website says she is looking to “end the corrupt system of personal dealing and insider politics that has made Ward 7 dead last.”

The Democratic primary, which generally amounts to the general election in the District, is scheduled for June 2, 2020. Most of the race, thus far, has centered on the ever-growing list of challengers to Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans.