First-time candidate and former District government attorney Brooke Pinto officially became the Democratic nominee for the Ward 2 D.C. Council seat Wednesday, when D.C.’s elections board certified the results of the June 2 primary.
Pinto also declared victory in the separate June 16 special election to fill the vacancy that ex-veteran lawmaker Jack Evans created in resigning from the seat in January. At 28, she’s now poised to be the council’s youngest member and to start serving after she’s sworn in later this month.
But before she’s even taken the seat, Pinto has already attracted a new challenger who plans to run as an independent in the November general election. Around the same time the D.C. Board of Elections certified the primary results, Martín Miguel Fernandez, a 29-year-old Thomas Circle resident who works at a major D.C.-based science nonprofit, picked up petitions to compete in the coming election. To qualify for the ballot, he has to collect 150 valid signatures and submit them to the board by Aug. 5.
Fernandez, who also plays as a DJ and runs his own record label, says he’s seeking the Ward 2 office because he’s disappointed about the primary results. He was registered as a Democrat up until this week and voted for progressive candidate Jordan Grossman in the primary, though he says the field included a “clutch of interesting candidates.”
He points to a recent report in the Washington City Paper as well as a resident’s formal campaign-finance complaint against Pinto as motivating factors in his decision to run. “I don’t think that Brooke Pinto is an ethical replacement for Jack Evans, and just because she’s young doesn’t mean that she’s moral,” Fernandez says, noting that Pinto comes from a wealthy family and was the only Democratic candidate in the primary not to use the District’s public financing program.
Pinto has defended her campaign’s practices, telling DCist earlier this week she was “confident that we will soon be able to put this complaint behind us.” The complaint centers on allegations that she used a recently purchased home in Logan Circle as a campaign headquarters, but didn’t disclose any expenditures related to it in campaign-finance reports required by the city. She also told the City Paper that “it’s just not true that we bought this race” and that other candidates had raised more money than she did.
But Fernandez, who describes himself as a “leftist” and works at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says he’s not only running because he was disappointed about the outcome of the primary. He says he feels a “pretty deep spiritual connection with D.C.,” having moved to the city from Lima, Peru, as a child. (He grew up in Cathedral Heights and his family later moved to Kensington, Maryland.)
As an adult, Fernandez has lived in the District since 2013. Prior to his current job, he worked for the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency.
“As I have more time to develop [my campaign], I think people can look forward to seeing a more polished presence and platform from me,” he says, adding that the process of preparing for his bid has “kind of been a whirlpool.”
Fernandez says he was inspired by the successful campaign of Ward 4 upstart Janeese Lewis George, a progressive challenger who beat Mayor Muriel Bowser-backed incumbent Brandon Todd in the Democratic primary. (Notably, both George and Pinto previously worked for, and were endorsed by, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine.)
Like George, Fernandez says he supports defunding D.C.’s police department and redirecting taxpayer money toward other agencies, in order to bankroll such things as affordable housing, employment services, and violence-prevention programs.
“I don’t believe that [the] Metropolitan Police Department needs a $580 million annual budget, and, in particular, I don’t find that Bowser’s responses to a lot of the Black Lives commentary, whether local or national, has been appropriate,” Fernandez argues.
Among other policies, Fernandez says he supports government-provided rental relief for D.C.’s small businesses, or even a moratorium on their monthly expenses, given the coronavirus crisis.
“One or the other has to happen, otherwise, these places are either going to accrue massive debt or go under,” he tells DCist. “And Ward 2 has already lost so much of its character over the last 15 years due to gentrification. Take a look at 14th Street: There are barely any old-school mom-and-pop businesses on that strip anymore.”
Fernandez says he plans to finance his campaign using the District’s public financing program, which matches small-dollar donations with public funding and has disbursed nearly $2 million in funds so far this election cycle.
Republican Katherine Venice is also running in the general election as her party’s nominee. Venice formally withdrew from the special election, but her name still appeared on the ballot; she took 5 percent of the vote. Given the heavily blue composition of the Ward 2 electorate, it’s highly unlikely that a Republican would win the seat in November.
For those curious about his life as a DJ, Fernandez says he “grew up out of Eighteenth Street Lounge,” the celebrated Dupont Circle club, and, once he was old enough, used to go there two or three times a week “just to catch influence.”
“I’m mostly known for playing house music and disco music myself,” says Fernandez. “I would describe it as a lot of New York- and Detroit-style influence, so most of my record collection is ’70s jazz-funk, Latin jazz, late-’70s disco, early-’80s post-disco, and also house music. And it all makes sense to me together.”
This story has been updated to note that Venice formally withdrew from the special election.
