Robert White won the Democratic nomination to become D.C.’s nonvoting member of Congress on Tuesday, succeeding his one-time boss, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who served as the District’s “warrior on the hill” for 35 years.
The 42-year-old D.C. councilmember received 63.16% of the first-rank votes as of Tuesday at 11:45 p.m. ET. In deeply blue D.C., the Democratic primary is paramount to the November election, where he will face Republican Denise Rosado and Kymone Freeman of the D.C. Statehood Green Party.
White triumphed over a crowded field, besting four other candidates, including D.C. Council colleague Brooke Pinto. A spokesperson for White confirmed that Pinto conceded the race.
“I’m excited and humbled," White told City Cast DC. "I’ll be presumptively the third ever person in D.C. that’s sent to Congress and they are sending me at a time when we’re under attack and they need somebody who is ready to fight for D.C., defend D.C. and make life better for everyday people who keep getting left behind.”
“I’m still digesting it," he added. "It’s surreal as a native Washingtonian who had no clear path to a position like this, but I’m excited tonight.”
It was a competitive, expensive and at times nasty fight over a seat with relatively little power. The D.C. delegate can sit on and vote in congressional committees, as well as introduce legislation and debate on the House floor – but they can’t vote on legislation before the full House.
The role of the nonvoting delegate has been largely defined by Norton, who in her 18 consecutive terms became the face of the fight for D.C. statehood for a generation of Washingtonians. The seat has been essentially uncompetitive since Norton won in 1991, and the 89-year-old lawmaker originally planned to run for re-election. But she ended her campaign in January after months of intense scrutiny, questions about her mental acuity and public calls from some of her closest confidantes to step aside. White, who worked as legislative counsel in Norton’s office for five years, has called her a mentor.
This race marked the most expensive on record for D.C. delegates, with candidates collectively raising almost $3.3 million as of May 27, according to campaign finance records. White’s campaign had the third-most funds, behind Kinney Zalesne and Pinto.
White – who has served on the D.C. Council since 2016 – challenged Mayor Muriel Bowser for mayor in 2022, losing with 40% of the primary vote to Bowser’s 49%. He had planned to run for mayor again, he told City Cast DC in a May interview, but said the escalating encroachments to D.C.’s autonomy led him to pursue Congress instead. He announced his campaign in September, days after the end of the 30-day crime emergency declared by President Donald Trump and amid surging concerns about D.C. police’s cooperation with immigration enforcement.
“I was planning to run for mayor but, last year, especially by late last summer, it became clear that D.C.’s home rule is under real threat,” White said. “Like we might wake up one day and no longer have a council or mayor.”
Throughout the campaign, he posited himself as a counterweight to Trump – though so did his primary opponent, Pinto. On their faces, the two candidates’ campaign priorities were not all that different. However, their time on the D.C. Council paints a clearer picture of where the two diverge. White has consistently aligned with progressives on the council and endorsed democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George for mayor, while Pinto often takes a more moderate stance.
White told City Cast DC he plans to raise the D.C. delegate’s national profile, build relationships and seize upon the national conversation around redistricting to strategically lobby for statehood.
The race turned ugly at times, most notably when Pinto posted to her website a 67-page dossier of opposition research on White, including his home address and information about his family. In response, White called on Pinto to drop out of the race, calling it “beyond the pale.” Pinto’s campaign later removed the dossier and posted another version without information about White’s family.
“We need folks who are ready for the fight that we are in… but understand that, even in war, there are lines that you don’t cross and frankly family is one of them,” White said of the dossier.
Later that month, it was White’s turn to take down something he’d posted. Hours after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’s Association Dinner, he posted on X, using the shooting to rip on youth curfews: “Looks like we need a curfew on the Correspondents Dinner. It’s clear we need to hold the parents responsible.”
He later removed the post and apologized: “I’ve deleted an earlier tweet. It was inappropriate and insensitive. I should not have tried to make a point by referring to an incident of gun violence.” (White has been one of the five councilmembers to repeatedly vote against targeted youth curfew zones.)
Leo Nyberg and Peter Kumar contributed to this report.
