Today marks the official opening of hyperlocal campaign season, better known as the
elections for Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. Prospective candidates can now pick up petitions from the
DC Board of Elections and have until Aug. 10 to return them with the signatures of at least 25 registered voters who live in the Single Member District the candidate wishes to represent.
Near Southeast is currently covered by two SMDs, as you can see on
my map of ANC 6D or
ANC 6D's map of ANC 6D. The larger and more eastern/northern of the two SMDs is 6D07, represented since the beginning of 2015 by
Meredith Fascett, who has confirmed for me that she is running for reelection.
Then there is 6D02, which crosses South Capitol Street from the bulk of its acreage in Southwest to include multiple residential buildings in Southeast, including 909 New Jersey, Velocity, Parc Riverside, and Capitol Hill Tower--and will before long also include
F1rst,
1244 South Capitol,
909 Half, and all the other pending projects between 1st Street SE and South Capitol Street. (6D07 gets the
Park Chelsea,
Arris,
Dock 79,
Insignia, ORE 82, and
Agora.)
Stacy Cloyd has represented 6D02 since March of 2014, but has announced that she will not be running for reelection.
"Normal" SMD boundaries are drawn to include approximately 2,000 voters, but these two SMDs aren't anywhere close to that anymore, since the boundaries were drawn with
2010 census numbers, and a WHOLE lot more people live in the neighborhood in 2016 than did in 2010, and a
WHOLE LOT more will live in the neighborhood in 2020, when the next census and redistricting cycle will come around. It will be fascinating to see how different the Near SE/SW ANC structure is--along with Ward 6 as a whole--after 2020. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. (If you want to read about the 2011 process,
go here and scroll down a bit to get to the meat.)