Patrick KennedyVerified account

And no, the framing of the announcement does not surprise me in the least. I have been reflecting a lot on my experiences with Jack over the last seven years, and it is something I've grappled with as I decided what to do.

As can be inferred, I am not a hardcore, longtime Jack Evans hater. I am a community leader and neighborhood activist; that's what I have done for the great majority of my adult life, and Jack has been my councilmember for practically all of my adult life.

When I was elected, I didn't really know Jack, but Foggy Bottom had a reputation of being the constituency he had the most strained relationship with. That was largely, as I was told, a product of tensions over his role in n'hood developments - particularly GW's - in the past.

Longtime Foggy Bottom residents are very protective of their neighborhood and have a very visceral reaction to people and forces that they see as -- for whatever reason -- threatening it further. The exact perceptions vary, but the sensibility is completely correct.

Because Foggy Bottom's permanent residential population has been decimated over the last 70 years, whether by highway projects or large-scale civic and office/institutional projects that have displaced a huge portion of the permanent residential population.

More recently, that force has been GW -- particularly when it was in a period of intense development. Jack was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as either facilitating that or not doing enough to stop it. So yes, I became an ANC fully aware of that history.

The first time I ever dealt with Jack in a professional capacity was in his office, in a meeting over an alley closure that GW wanted in order to facilitate one of their developments. The ANC was unanimously opposed to it and Jack supported it.

I and a few other commissioners went down to the Wilson Building to lobby for our position and got told by 12 offices that they were going to defer to the ward councilmember. So we met with Jack, and...it did not go well. It was a very unpleasant meeting.

But the exercise taught me very early on about the power that ward councilmembers have to affect legislation affecting my constituents, and sure enough, the alley closure went through 13-0. From then on, I resolved - whatever my skepticism - that I would strive to work with Jack.

Foggy Bottom is a relatively small constituency in the ward, much less the District, and it was subject to a lot of pressures (especially from large institutions) that Council - and Jack - could influence. Nasty, personal fights with him over disagreements were not helping us.

So when I became the chair, I did work to develop that relationship -- to be as fair as I could be to him and not attack him. And to his credit, Jack worked very well with us. He never asked me to do anything for him on the ANC, and he helped out a lot on some neighborhood issues

People have always had very polarized reactions to Jack, and experiences differ, but my relationship with Jack was never personal and it was also never about his votes. I fully grant that if I lived outside the ward and hadn't worked with him, my experience would be different.

Jack's views don't match my political sensibilities and they never have, but I respect the good things he has done for the District and -- once he engaged on an issue -- he could be a very effective advocate.

The hint of ethical issues has always been there, but I can't tell you how many rumors about Jack I've heard over the years that have just never panned out or turned into anything. The ridiculous parking jobs, the opacity of his second employment...that stuff has always existed.

But it's genuinely disappointing and saddening to me, and I know a lot of people who have worked with him or supported him in the past, to read about him explicitly offering to trade on his connections to seek outside employment.

I don't know what the U.S. Attorney's Office will find. I hope for his sake & the District's that, as he told me, he will be cleared...but I think what has been stipulated to (by him, and in documentation) is disqualifying for another term. I think he has lost the public's trust.

And I find the entire situation just sad, more than anything else. I don't relish watching anyone's personal destruction, and as I've said, I have always worked very well with Jack. I've known his staff for a long time, some I consider friends.

But I also don't think that he has truly internalized what he did wrong...I don't think he believes anything he did was wrong except using a government email account, forgetting the content and what it says about the perception (if not the reality) of pay-to-play.

My relationship with Jack has been professional, and in that capacity I grew to respect his contributions to the ward on neighborhood matters whatever my disagreements were with his voting record and my uneasiness about some aspects of his personal business.

That considered, I guess I didn't think much of chairing his last campaign. He had no opponent and he asked virtually every other ward leader of prominence to co-chair. I respected Jack and, though others' experiences were different, what he had done for our neighborhood.

As an aside, being a campaign "chair" is very different from being a campaign "manager." My involvement with Jack's re-election involved signing an OCF form and I think I showed up at a couple of events.

I have never worked for him, but I understand why that's the tantalizing hook on which my campaign announcement was reported, and I can only be honest about the circumstances.

But I have worked in the ward for a long time and I've worked well with Jack and his staff. It's not easy to call up someone you have a history with, and friends who work for him, to tell him that you can no longer support him and that you plan to run for his seat.

But I feel like I can contribute something unique to the debate about the District's future, that I have a clear vision , and that my track record in the community demonstrates an ability to work with people of varied interests to achieve results.

I'm grateful to have been encouraged by many to take this step; that's what gives me the confidence to do it, but I would never ask people to take my word for it. I can only be honest, present my record in its totality, and let others who have worked with me share their view.

This election needs to be about more than Jack Evans, however much his issues dominate the dialogue now. It needs to be about something positive and forward-looking. That's the space where I want to contribute, and it's on that basis that I will seek your support.

As I have said, I think even aside from the ethics issues, that Jack's sensibilities and policy preferences just aren't a good fit for the District as it exists today and that this election is an opportunity to discuss doing things differently.

The challenges facing D.C. as a prosperous place are very different than the ones that consumed it as a place in decline, when population was leaving in droves, the government was functionally bankrupt, and there were 400 homicides a year.

We have to confront the factors that contribute to the widening chasm of inequality, whether that's housing costs that are squeezing out younger and older residents alike, a transportation system that is inefficient and unsafe, or an education system that still fails too many.

Jack does not have fresh ideas or approaches to these issues, and I don't think that he is engaged enough in them to make a difference. The sense of complacency that under-girds his approach is actively detrimental to the cause of meeting the needs and challenges of today's D.C.