District of Columbia
Most LGBTQ Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners not seeking re-election
No candidates running in 56 districts, reflecting waning interest in posts
Only ten of D.C.’s 34 known LGBTQ Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are running for reelection in the city’s Nov. 8 general election, according to the most up to date list of ANC candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections.
Some of the 24 LGBTQ incumbent ANC members who are not running for reelection have said they decided to step down after having served multiple two-year terms in an unpaid elective office that they say involves a considerable amount of time as well as political strife that can be stressful.
Congress created the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions as part of the city’s home rule local government in the early 1970s. There are a total of 40 ANCs located throughout the city with each having between two and ten single member districts representing the city’s diverse neighborhoods. Currently, there are a total of 345 single member districts citywide.
Under the city’s Home Rule Charter, the ANCs are charged with making recommendations to city officials on a wide range of neighborhood issues, including the approval of liquor licenses for bars and restaurants, for which city officials are required to give “great weight” but the government officials are not required to adopt the recommendations.
Thirty-three of the current 34 openly LGBTQ ANC members were among a total of 47 known LGBTQ ANC candidates that ran in the city’s 2020 general election.
One of the current LGBTQ ANC members, Dupont Circle community activist Randy Downs, won in a special election to fill a vacancy earlier this year for the Dupont Circle ANC Single Member District 2B07. Downs, who served as an ANC member in previous years, is among the 24 LGBTQ ANC incumbents who are not running for reelection in November.
Other LGBTQ members who have decided not to seek reelection include longtime Dupont Circle ANC member Mike Silverstein, who is completing his tenth two-year term, and Logan Circle ANC member John Fanning, who’s completing his seventh term in office.
“I have served seven terms, and I just felt like it was time to allow another resident of my single member district an opportunity to serve,” Fanning told the Washington Blade. “And I am happy that I accomplished the things that I did in my seven terms,” he said.
Silverstein attributes what he called “COVID fatigue” as one reason some of the LGBTQ as well as non-LGBTQ ANC incumbents are not running for another term in office. He said another factor prompting at least some incumbents not to run again is greater demands on ANC commissioners and less support from city officials.
Among other things, he said, some community members who disagree with the recommendations made and positions taken by ANCs have filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests seeking hundreds of email messages exchanged among ANC members, forcing ANC members to expend many hours of work tracking down those messages as well as other documents.
“People don’t want to be hassled, they don’t want to be subjected to the same crap that people who are making $140,000 a year go through when they’re not being paid anything,” Silverstein said. “We’ve had to beg people to run,” he said in referring to him and other Dupont Circle ANC incumbents who were trying to find qualified people to replace them.
The D.C. Board of Elections list of ANC candidates shows that there are no candidates running in 56 single member districts across the city, the highest number of districts in which no ANC candidate is running since the ANC’s were created. Observers familiar with the ANCs note that the candidate list also shows there are a record number of single member districts in which only one candidate is running, which the observers say indicates an apparent lack of public interest or support for the city’s ANCs.
Silverstein and Fanning said they know of several non-incumbent LGBTQ ANC candidates running in the November election, but they don’t have a complete list of all known LGBTQ ANC candidates citywide.
At the time of the 2020 D.C. general election, the then newly created LGBTQ ANC Rainbow Caucus compiled a list of the known LGBTQ ANC candidates. But Silverstein and Fanning said the Rainbow Caucus has been inactive this year, in part, due to its former chairpersons becoming involved in other activities.
One of the founding chairs of the caucus was local transgender activist and Ward 3 ANC member Monika Nemeth, who is not seeking reelection this year. Also serving as one of the founding chairs was gay Ward 1 ANC member Japer Bowles, who resigned from his ANC seat earlier this year after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser appointed him as director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
Nemeth and Bowles couldn’t immediately be reached this week to determine whether they have arranged for others to replace them as leaders of the ANC Rainbow Caucus and whether the caucus will compile a list of LGBTQ ANC candidates running in the November election.
Among the other incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who are not running for reelection include longtime Southwest waterfront commissioner Andy Litsky of ANC 6D04; Dupont Circle ANC 2B09 member Kyle Mulhall, an attorney and longtime LGBTQ rights advocate; and Logan Circle ANC member John Guggenmos, the co-owner of the Logan Circle area gay bars Number 9 and Trade.
Also, among the LGBTQ incumbents not running this year are Logan Circle ANC members Rehana Mohammed and Alexandra Bailey.
Following is a list of the ten incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who are running for reelection in November, their ANC single member districts, and the neighborhoods they represent:
Kent Boese, 1E01 (Park View)
Michael Wray, 1E03 (Park View)
Larry Handerhan, 1B01 (Ledroit Park)
Michael Shankle, 2C01 (Penn Quarter-Chinatown)
Evan Yeats, 4B04 (Takoma)
Ra Amin, 5B04 (Brookland)
Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, 5D05 (Trinidad)
Robb Dooling, 6A06 (Capitol Hill East)
Ronald Collins, 6D02 (Near Southwest)
Anthony Lorenzo Green, 7C04 (Deanwood)
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats set to celebrate 50th anniversary
Mayor Bowser expected to attend March 20 event
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, members of the D.C. Council, and local and national Democratic Party officials are expected to join more than 150 LGBTQ advocates and supporters on March 20 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the city’s Capital Stonewall Democrats.
A statement released by the organization says the event is scheduled to be held at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery building at 702 8th St., N.W. in D.C.
“The evening will honor the people who built Capital Stonewall Democrats across five decades – activists who fought for rights when the odds were against them, public servants who opened doors and refused to let them close, and a new generation of leaders ready to carry the work forward,” the statement says.
Founded in 1976 as the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the organization’s members voted in 2021 to change its name to the Capital Stonewall Democrats.
Among those planning to attend the anniversary event is longtime D.C. gay Democratic activist Paul Kuntzler, 84, who is one of the two co-founders of the then-Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. Kuntzler told the Washington Blade that he and co-founder Richard Maulsby were joined by about a dozen others in the living room of his Southwest D.C. home at the group’s founding meeting in January 1976.
He said that among the reasons for forming a local LGBTQ Democratic group at the time was to arrange for a then “gay” presence at the 1976 Democratic National Convention, at which Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for U.S. president and later won election as president.
Maulsby, who served as the Stein Club president for its first three years and who now lives in Sarasota, Fla., said he would not be attending the March 20 anniversary event, but he fully supports the organization’s continuing work as an LGBTQ organization associated with the Democratic Party.
Steven McCarty, Capital Stonewall Democrats’ current president, said in the statement that the anniversary celebration will highlight the organization’s work since the time of its founding.
“Capital Stonewall Democrats has been fighting for LGBTQ+ political power in this city for 50 years, electing people, training organizers, holding this community together through some really hard moments,” he said. “And right now, with everything going on, that work has never mattered more. This gala is the first moment of our next chapter, and I want the community to be a part of it.”
The statement says among the special guests attending the event will be Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Malcolm Kenyatta, who became the first openly gay LGBTQ person of color to win election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly in 2018.
Other guests of honor, according to the statement, include Mayor Bowser; D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5, the Council’s only gay member; D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At-Large); Earl Fowlkes, founder of the International Federation of Black Prides; Vita Rangel, a transgender woman who serves as Deputy Director of the D.C. Mayor’s Office of Talent and Appointments; Heidi Ellis, director of the D.C. LGBTQ Budget Coalition; Rayceen Pendarvis, longtime D.C. LGBTQ civic activist; and Phillip Pannell, longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic activist and Ward 8 civic activist.
Information about ticket availability for the Capital Stonewall Democrats anniversary gala can be accessed here: capitalstonewalldemocrats.com/50th
District of Columbia
Owner of D.C. gay bar Green Lantern John Colameco dies at 79
Beloved businessman preferred to stay ‘behind the scenes’
John Colameco, owner of the popular D.C. gay bar Green Lantern, has died, according to a March 7 announcement posted on the bar’s website and Instagram account. The announcement didn’t provide a date of his passing or a cause of death.
Green Lantern manager Howard Hicks said Colameco was 79 at the time of his passing.
“It is with great sadness that Green Lantern announces the death of our beloved owner, John Colameco,” the announcement says. “Most of our patrons might have heard John’s name, but might not have known his face,” it says.
“He was a ‘behind-the-scenes’ kind of guy who avoided the limelight,” the announcement continues. “He preferred to stay in the back of the house with staff and team ensuring everything was running smoothly so that everyone out front was having a good time.”
The announcement adds, “As a veteran and businessman, John wasn’t a member of the LGBTQ + community, but he was one of the best damn allies our community has ever had.”
It says he “long provided spaces for the queer community to come together” since the 1990s when he owned and operated a popular restaurant on 17th Street, N.W. called Peppers.
According to the announcement, Colameco and his then business partner Greg Zehnacker opened the Green Lantern in 2001 in an alley off of 14th Street, N.W., between Thomas Circle and L Street, N.W.
The announcement points out that the Green Lantern first opened in the same location in the early 1990s before it later closed when the original owners decided to purchase and open other bars, one of which was the gay bar Fireplace near Dupont Circle. Colameco and Zehnacker were able to reopen the bar with the Green Lantern name.
“When Greg died unexpectedly in February 2014, John remained steadfastly committed to carrying on their vision and ensuring that Green Lantern remained part of the fabric of D.C.’s queer community,” the announcement says.
“Over the years, through Green Lantern, John has provided support to many community organizations, most notably Stonewall Sports, the Gay Men’s chorus of Washington, and ONYX Mid-Atlantic with Green Lantern serving as a gathering hub for their activities,” it states.
The announcement adds that Colameco’s family was planning a memorial for him in his hometown of Philadelphia.
“His Green Lantern family will celebrate his life by operating the bar as usual and we encourage you to stop by and join us,” it says. “Community coming together and having a good time – it’s exactly what John would want.”
District of Columbia
D.C. Black Pride theme, performers announced at ‘Speakeasy’
Durand Bernarr to headline 2026 programming
The Center for Black Equity held its 2026 DC Black Pride Theme Reveal event at Union Stage on Monday. The evening, a “Speakeasy Happy Hour,” was hosted by Anthony Oakes and featured performances by Lolita Leopard and Keith Angelo. The Center for Black Equity organizes DC Black Pride.
Kenya Hutton, Center for Black Equity president and CEO, spoke following the performances by Leopard and Angelo. Hutton announced this year’s theme for DC Black Pride: “New Black Renaissance.”
Performers for 2026 DC Black Pride were announced to be Bang Garcon, Be Steadwell, Jay Columbus, Bennu Byrd, Rue Pratt and Akeem Woods.
Singer-songwriter Durand Bernarr was announced as the headliner for the 2026 festivities. Bernerr gave brief remarks through a video played on the screen at the stage.
DC Black Pride is scheduled for May 22-25. For more information on DC Black Pride, visit dcblackpride.org.
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