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A write-in campaign may be imminent, giving voters other options as D.C. Council member Trayon White seeks reelection in Ward 8 after being arrested by the FBI and charged with a federal count of bribery.
Markus Batchelor, a Ward 8 community leader, confirmed to WTOP that he is “seriously considering the option and actively exploring it.”
Batchelor is a former member of the D.C. State Board of Education and a former Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner who ran for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council in 2020.
The two candidates who ended up winning at-large seats in that race were Christina Henderson and Robert White, but Batchelor was competitive, getting more than 19,000 votes.
Mounting a write-in campaign in the coming weeks would be challenging, and Batchelor would need to hit the ground running, knocking on doors, introducing himself and explaining the whole situation to voters in an effort to get thousands of people to write his name down on the ballot.
Despite that, given White’s legal problems, Batchelor said is “seriously concerned about our options in November.”
White is set to be on the November ballot as the Democratic nominee in Ward 8, facing Republican Nate Derenge. But he could also decide to drop out of the election because of his legal issues, which could get tricky.
“Voters don’t have one choice, they have a plethora of choices honestly, if we actually believe in the system,” said Salim Adofo, an Advisory Neighborhood Commissions chairman in Ward 8. “There’s the opportunity to have write-in candidates, and you can choose whoever you want to choose.”
Earlier this week, Adofo met with other ANC leaders to discuss the situation.
“Things like this cause people to have distrust in the system,” Adofo said, adding that he’s reaching out to White “to see if he’s available to come and just talk to the residents in Ward 8 about what’s next, what can happen and what can’t happen.”
“A lot of people have opinions, but it’s up to us who have been elected to lead the community to try to be as objective as possible and to maintain a certain level of calm in the community,” Adofo said. “While we don’t condone what he’s been accused of doing, he’s still due his due process in the court of law.”
White is accused of accepting cash bribes from the owner of two companies that had contracts with D.C. to provide violence intervention services.
Prosecutors accused White of agreeing to accept a total of $156,000 in cash payments from the owner, who was not named in court documents.
White allegedly took the money and, in return, agreed to pressure D.C. government employees and agencies to renew the owner’s contracts and continue supporting the companies.
“We recognize the seriousness of this matter,” White’s office said in a statement. “We want to assure Ward 8 residents and stakeholders that our office remains fully operational and steadfast in our commitment to serving the public.”
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