D.C. Council member David Grosso lives in Ward 5. (AFRO File Photo)
Ward 5, located primarily in Northeast Washington with a sliver in Northwest, can count four D.C. Council members as residents, with three of those lawmakers making up three-fourths of the council’s at-large contingent. D.C. Council members Vincent Orange (D-At Large), Anita Bonds (D-At Large), David Grosso (I-At Large), and Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5) all call Ward 5 home.
“When my wife and I were looking where we wanted to live in the city, we decided that we didn’t want to be pioneers,” Grosso told the AFRO. “We wanted to live in a place where there is racial, economic, and age diversity with a number of white-collar residents. We settled on Michigan Park and it is great to be in an area of people with different backgrounds.”
Grosso pointed out that Orange and Bonds are long-time residents of the ward and that McDuffie grew up in the ward.
Ward 5 has 74,308 residents according to the most recent census statistics and 77 percent of those residents are Black. The Black population of the ward has decreased from 86 percent in 1990 to its present rate largely because of the influx of young Whites who have settled in neighborhoods such as Bloomingdale and Michigan Park.
On the D.C. Council, McDuffie is the chairman pro tempore of the body and is chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, Bonds chairs the Committee on Housing and Community Development and is the chairman of the D.C. Democratic State Committee, and Grosso is the chairman of the Committee on Education, a key panel as District leaders focus on improving in that area.
Ward 5 has long been a force in District politics. One of its voting precincts, 66, consistently has the highest turnout in District elections and the Ward 5 Democrats is highly regarded in political circles. “The Ward 5 political machine is a little more organized and more successful than the other wards,” Leo Alexander, a 2010 candidate for mayor and a political activist in Ward 4, told the AFRO. “That is why you have the at-large candidates from that ward. Anita Bonds and Vincent Orange are products of the Ward 5 Democrats. As far as Grosso is concerned, he ran a great shoe-leather campaign in 2012 and ran against an incumbent, Michael Brown, who was involved in scandal.” Brown, the son of former U.S. Secretary Commerce Ron Brown, is currently serving a prison sentence for bribery.
Orange was elected to the council as the Ward 5 representative in 1978 and served until 2007. He got back on the council in an April 2011 special election as an at-large member, was re-elected in 2012, and is seeking re-election this year.
Bonds was selected to the council by the D.C. Democratic State Committee in late December 2012 because Phil Mendelson was elected as the council chairman that year. Bonds won election to the body in an April 2013 special election. Bonds was re-elected in 2014.
McDuffie was elected in a special election in May 2012 to replace D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr., who resigned because of legal troubles. He was re-elected in 2014.
Frank Wilds has lived in Ward 5 for decades and serves as the advisory neighborhood commissioner for district 5A01. Wilds, who votes in the 66 precinct, recognizes that his ward is represented well on the D.C. Council but is still troubled by it. “We have four representatives on that council and Ward 5 should carry a lot of weight but we don’t,” Wilds told the AFRO. “Plus, the mayor grew up in Ward 5. With the clout that we have on the council, we should be above Ward 3 but instead we get less than all the other wards except Ward 8.”
Wilds said the problem isn’t the politicians at the John A. Wilson Building, where the mayor and city council work, “but the citizens who need to be more active in the community.”
Alexander agrees with Wilds on the Ward 5 council members seeming lack of political clout.
“Where is the growth in Ward 5?” he questions. “I have not seen where they have benefitted Ward 5. I see growth on the Rhode Island Avenue corridor but that was the result of Vincent Orange and Harry Thomas.”
Grosso said that he and his three colleagues don’t work as a bloc on the council even though they collaborate on legislation. “We never have tried to work that way,” he said. “We do have similar interests but we have never come together as a bloc. Kenyan talked about us getting together some time ago but it never materialized.”