Jack Evans keeps coming back—even to national politics.
Shortly after resigning from his D.C. Council seat in January amid a major ethics scandal, the disgraced former Ward 2 councilmember shocked the District by filing to run for his old seat, both in the Democratic primary and the special election to fill the vacancy his departure created.
But Evans never gave up another position he held, despite calls for him to do so: national committeeman for the D.C. Democratic Party. And because of that, he’s slated to represent the District as a superdelegate at the highly anticipated Democratic National Convention in July, in Milwaukee, according to party officials.
DCist has learned that Evans will get to be one of the District’s unpledged, or automatic, delegates to the convention, along with Mayor Muriel Bowser, House Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s two shadow senators, and three other D.C. Democratic Party officials. Whether he’ll cast a vote at the convention, though, remains to be seen.
While it may seem strange that Evans will play such a distinguished role after an official investigation found he violated the council’s ethics rules in at least 11 instances—most of them related to his private business dealings—the party’s local leaders say his attending the convention is above board. Evans’ position as national committeeman automatically guarantees him a spot there due to the party’s bylaws.
For his part, Evans says he’s pumped to partake in the festivities. “I love going to conventions because they’re exciting and, certainly as a Democrat, I want to get my candidate elected,” he tells DCist in a phone interview. “The biggest help we can get for the city is having a Democrat in the White House.”
Asked why he didn’t resign from his official party position, Evans points out that he was fairly elected to it in the 2018 Democratic primary (he was last re-elected to the Ward 2 seat in 2016). “I was elected as national committeeman overwhelmingly, with two-thirds of the vote in all eight wards, so I’m here to represent the people who elected me,” he says, sounding a little winded during a break from jogging.
Evans defeated D.C. State Board of Education Vice President Markus Batchelor with over 63 percent of the vote in that election, which occurred the year before the council’s ethics investigation as well as another investigation by a Metro board committee. (Evans served as the chair of Metro’s board before resigning from the board last June.)
Meanwhile, the leadership of the D.C. Democratic Party appears resigned to Evans’ convention appearance. The chair of the party, Charles Wilson, says at this point, there’s really no way to stop Evans from going if he follows through. The secretary of the Democratic National Committee is set to confirm D.C.’s list of automatic delegates this Friday, per the District of Columbia Delegate Selection Plan, but Wilson said the automatic delegates are already decided.
“It’s nothing that we’re proud of, at all,” he says. “But he was elected by the electorate and we have to follow the bylaws.”
The party’s rules are such that no one has the power to remove Evans, says Wilson, who will also be a superdelegate. “Our bylaws do not state, or provide, or allow members to remove a member who’s been elected by the electorate,” he explains.
Not that members haven’t tried. In December, as the allegations against Evans were piling up, the D.C. Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for him to step down.
“Considering the serious allegations levied against Councilmember Evans, I am calling on him to resign his National Committeeman post immediately to avoid further distractions to the Party,” Wilson said in a Dec. 9 statement.
Apparently, the resolution didn’t faze Evans. “He said he’s not resigning,” Wilson says of Evans’ response. “That’s it.” Wilson adds that the party is currently considering changing its bylaws, “but it’s not likely to happen before the convention in July.”
Evans was first elected to the council in 1991, becoming its longest-serving lawmaker. He’s also been a bigwig of the D.C. Democratic Party for decades, having traveled to seven Democratic National Conventions.
But this will be the first year where Evans would attend as a superdelegate. That means that Evans—unlike regular delegates whose votes for candidates are allocated based on voters’ preferences—will get to decide for himself which candidate to support.
Whether he’ll actually get to vote or not is a bit complicated. After the 2016 election, the Democratic National Committee reformed its rules so that superdelegates could only vote if the convention goes to a second or subsequent ballot, which is relatively rare, although not impossible this year given the close race between former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Regardless, for now, he intends to participate in the convention as a superdelegate, saying he plans to vote for Biden but wishes Sanders luck. By then, Evans should have a good sense of his own political future: The D.C. primary and the Ward 2 special election are scheduled for June 2 and June 16, respectively, and he just handed in the required signatures to run in the primary.
“A week ago people thought Joe Biden was dead in the water, so I mean, politics is a funny business you know?” Evans says.
