District of Columbia
Two prominent LGBTQ candidates drop out of race for ANC seats
Musa, Rangel among 46 hit with signature petition challenges
D.C. Capital Pride Alliance board member Anthony Musa and transgender D.C. government official Vida Rangel have withdrawn as candidates in the city’s Nov. 5 election for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats after separate challenges were filed questioning the validity of the signatures on their required nominating petitions.
Musa was one of at least four LGBTQ candidates running unopposed for seats on ANC 2B, which represents the Dupont Circle neighborhood.
Rangel, who described herself as the first Latina trans person of color to run for public office in D.C., was running for the ANC single member district seat 1A10 in the city’s Columbia Heights neighborhood. She was running against incumbent Billy Easley, who identifies as a gay man. Rangel currently serves as director of operations for the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments.
Under D.C. election rules, ANC candidates must obtain the signatures of at least 25 registered voters who live in their ANC single member district to gain access to the election ballot. Under the D.C. government, ANCs are unpaid, voluntary elected positions given the role of advising city government officials on neighborhood issues, with city officials required to give “great weight” to the ANCs’ recommendations.
Musa told the Washington Blade on Sept. 3 that he withdrew his candidacy after realizing he only obtained about 26 or 27 signatures, with a few of them appearing to be from people who did not live in his ANC single member district 2B01. He said the person challenging his petition, whom he called a neighborhood rival, would likely have succeeded in the challenge and invalidated his candidacy.
“With the signatures, I just didn’t meet the level,” he said. “There were several people that I thought lived in my district, but they didn’t. So, if I ever do this again, I’ll make sure I get like triple the amount that I need.”
Rangel told the Blade on Sept. 4 that after receiving the challenge to her petition she too realized she fell short on the number of needed petition signatures. “After reviewing that challenge and checking records of what I could correct, I would have ended up coming just four signatures short,” she said. “So, in the end I decided to withdraw. It’s very disappointing.”
She said she also decided not to run for the ANC seat as a write-in candidate. “I think as a write-in I wouldn’t be anywhere as viable with my opponent Billy Easley running for re-election and with the name recognition he has,” Rangel said. “So, I think it’s best for me to step back and let him continue his service.”
Gay D.C. political activist Joe Bishop-Henchman filed the challenge against Rangel and seven other ANC candidates.
Bishop-Henchman disputed claims by some neighborhood activists who said he and others who challenged the signature petitions of ANC candidates were targeting those candidates because they disagreed with the candidates’ positions on issues impacting their respective neighborhoods. He insisted he only files challenges against “the candidate that says they have the 25 valid signatures but doesn’t.”
Vincent Slatt, who serves as chair of the ANC Rainbow Caucus, which includes LGBTQ ANC members from across the city, said he recognized the names of about three or four other LGBTQ ANC candidates whose petitions were also being challenged.
Slatt said he believes most of the challenges were “petty” and motivated by neighborhood political rivalries. He and Musa pointed out that the person who challenged Musa’s petition, Martha ‘Marcy’ Logan, serves on the board of directors of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association. Some Dupont Circle neighborhood activists, including LGBTQ activists, consider the organization, referred to as the DCCA, to be biased against nightlife businesses, including some of the gay bars in the Dupont Circle area.
Musa said he believes Logan targeted him for a petition challenge because she believes he sides with the nightlife businesses. He describes himself as a “pro-growth” advocate from a neighborhood business perspective as opposed to the DCCA, which Musa considers “anti-growth” regarding community businesses that he feels are an asset to the neighborhood.
The DCCA didn’t immediately respond to a request from the Blade for comment and for contact information for Logan.
Musa said he too decided not to run for the ANC seat as a write-in candidate. With his withdrawal from the race, there will be no candidate on the November election ballot for the 2ANC 2B01 seat.
At the time she announced her candidacy in July, Rangel said among her priorities as an ANC commissioner would be improving language access for the large number of Spanish-speaking residents in the Columbia Heights neighborhood.
“We need a commissioner who is going to push for Spanish language resources so that our government officials can hear the voices of all Columbia Heights residents, not just the ones who speak English,” she told the Blade.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vida Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vida Rangel, she/they [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
District of Columbia
Gay-owned pizzeria in Dupont Circle burglarized
Protest Pizza owners say community has expressed support
Gay activist Randy Downs said he and his business and life partner Ricky Bennett are grateful for the support they have received from the Dupont Circle community after they released a video showing a suspect breaking into their recently opened pizza shop and taking money from a cash register shortly before 3 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21.
The surveillance video shows a man wearing black clothing with his face covered, smashing the glass front door of Protest Pizza, located at 1633 ½ P St., N.W. The video, which Downs and Bennett provided to D.C. police, also shows the suspect climbing over the bar to get to a cash register, which he opened to take out cash.
A D.C. police report obtained by the Washington Blade lists the incident as a Burglary in the Second Degree and says the owners reported “approximately $78 in cash” was taken from the cash register. The report says the incident is not listed as a suspected hate crime.
Downs told the Washington Blade that after he and Bennett reported the break-in and theft on social media, they received an overwhelming showing of support from neighbors and others, including business owners, from across the nation.
“The break-in was upsetting, but it is not what will define Protest Pizza,” Downs said. “What defines us is how quickly people showed up,” he told the Blade. “One person came looking for a cash register; our community saw a gathering place worth protecting. The response reminded us that Protest’s real value was never in the register.”
Downs said he and Bennett, who live around the corner on the section of 17th Street, N.W., near several other bars and restaurants, including the gay bar JRs are located, opened Protest Pizza in November 2025.
“Ricky and I built Protest Pizza as a positive, welcoming, queer owned neighborhood restaurant and bar — a space for protest and joy,” he said.
A D.C. police spokesperson said police offer a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a suspect responsible for the type of burglary and theft that occurred at Protest Pizza. Police say anyone with information to help solve this type of crime should call the police tipline at 202-727-9099.
District of Columbia
Advocates honored at Engendered Spirit Awards
Annual ceremony held at conclusion of Trans Pride DC
The 2026 SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards ceremony took place at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library in D.C. on Saturday. The ceremony was held at the conclusion of the day-long Trans Pride DC: Encore.
Honorees included D.C. Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs Deputy Director Vida Rangel; the LGBT+ Counseling Collaborative, Inc.; and Connor Keuntje, CLP, CLPC.
Trans Pride DC: Encore was held throughout Saturday with several workshop sessions and a virtual conversation with actress and advocate Dominique Jackson.
The annual Engendered Spirit Awards were renamed the “SaVanna Wanzer Engendered Spirit Awards” in honor of SaVanna Wanzer, founder of D.C. Trans Pride. Wanzer died on April 24 of this year.
Speakers at the ceremony included Japer Bowles, director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Bianca Sprague, executive director of D.C. Trans Pride.
“The intent behind this award and honoring members of our communities, organizations, and allies, is to really elevate all of the work that they’re doing to provide resources, tools, learning opportunities and connections: centering trans folks, gender non-conforming, and gender diverse individuals,” Sprague said.
Immersive ‘Nation-State’ imagines a society free of authoritarianism
New book examines Trump cuts to LGBTQ healthcare
E-INFOSOL leaders encourage youth to pursue tech careers
Milo Yiannopoulos deported to UK
San Francisco, long a queer safe haven, remains competitive for homebuyers
Music icon and dear LGBTQ friend Dolly Parton remembered
New data shows record-high LGBTQ population amid Trump attacks
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
Please join me in supporting the Washington Blade Foundation
Chris Van Hollen says the Democratic Party needs change. Is he the one to lead it?
-
Obituary5 days agoMusic icon and dear LGBTQ friend Dolly Parton remembered
-
National5 days ago
New data shows record-high LGBTQ population amid Trump attacks
-
District of Columbia5 days ago
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
-
Commentary4 days ago
Please join me in supporting the Washington Blade Foundation
