David Garber (Photo courtesy Twitter)

Gay former advisory neighborhood commissioner David Garber last week announced his candidacy for the at-large D.C. Council seat currently held by Council member Vincent Orange (D-At-Large), saying he will challenge Orange in the city’s 2016 Democratic primary.

In an online video linked to his campaign website, Garber raised eyebrows by going on the attack against Orange. Calling on supporters to join him in the “movement for communities over corruption,” he raised the issue of the city’s ethics board reprimanding Orange for allegedly pressuring a city agency to call off regulatory action against a grocery store.

“While I applaud the incumbent for his long tenure in D.C. government, we simply deserve better,” Garber said in his campaign video. “Council member Orange was the first Council member to ever be publicly reprimanded by the D.C. Board of Ethics and Accountability for using his influence to – get this – to stop a health inspection of an insect and rat infested grocery store owned by one of his largest campaign contributors,” Garber said in the video.

James D. Brown, who serves as chief of staff at Orange’s Council office, released a statement to the Washington Blade taking exception to Garber’s criticism.

“Councilmember Orange has a ‘clean record’ with the D.C. Board of Ethics and Government Accountability (which you may verify),” Brown said. “CM Orange’s actions, that Mr. Garber speaks of, resulted in the health code violations being abated in less than 24 hours, the entity in question passing the D.C. Health Department inspection in less than 24 hours, and the avoidance of forty employees being laid off without pay during the Christmas holiday.”

Brown added in his statement that Orange “looks forward to addressing his insurmountable record of achievement” on a wide range of issues, including transgender rights, during his upcoming re-election campaign.

In his successful 2012 re-election campaign for his Council seat, Orange received support from a number of prominent LGBT activists, including Ward 8 civic activist Phil Pannell and Ward 3 gay ANC commissioner Lee Brian Reba.

If successful in his race for the at-large seat, Garber would become the first gay person to serve on the Council since the Council’s two long-time gay members — David Catania (I-At-Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) — left the Council in January. Catania gave up his seat in his unsuccessful race for mayor. Graham lost his re-election bid in the city’s 2014 Democratic primary.

Garber, who has named former Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance President Bob Summersgill as his campaign treasurer, surprised some of his former ANC colleagues when he made it known at the time of his campaign announcement last week that he’s gay.

Andy Litsky, one of three out gay members of ANC 6D, where Garber served as a member between 2011 and November 2014, said Garber never self-identified as gay during his tenure on the ANC. Litsky also noted that Garber first won election to ANC 6D when he defeated another gay commissioner, D.C. businessman Bob Siegel, in the November 2010 election.

“Not that it makes any difference,” said Litsky. “Everybody comes out in their own way at their own time. I wish him well as a gay man.”

Pannell, who said he plans to remain neutral in the 2016 Council elections, said running as a gay candidate could be helpful to Garber in the Democratic primary, where voter turnout tends to be low and where a large turnout of LGBT voters could work in his favor.

Summersgill pointed to a statement that Garber posted on his Facebook page in April acknowledging his sexual orientation wasn’t widely known.

“In my public roles around the city, I haven’t typically felt the need or been forced to use a bullhorn to announce all that much about my personal life,” Garber said in his posting, noting that he has preferred to highlight his numerous civic activities.

“I’m gay,” he said. “It’s one thing that defines me and the way I see others and the world. But it becomes an especially important thing for me to be proud of, to fight more personally for, and to raise a flag for when the conversation turns away from more straightforward city matters, to something like equality.”