Former D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange is running for mayor, adding to a growing list of hopefuls in the contest to succeed D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) after her late-2025 announcement that she would not seek a fourth term.
Orange, a longtime presence in city politics, has served two stints on the council and campaigned for public office a dozen times before this run. He joins a field that includes two early fundraising front-runners: council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) and former council member Kenyan R. McDuffie, who resigned from his at-large seat in February. A third candidate, real estate professional Gary Goodweather, has also received contributions from more than 1,000 D.C. donors, the number required to qualify for matching public money through the city’s Fair Elections Program.
Orange has twice run unsuccessfully for mayor, receiving less than 3 percent of the vote in both the 2006 and 2014 Democratic primaries. He said this time will be different.
“This is the moment for Vincent B. Orange,” he said in an interview Friday after filing papers at the D.C. Board of Elections. “This is the moment that requires my skill sets.”
The June 16 primary could transform city politics: This will be D.C.’s first mayoral race without an incumbent in 20 years, multiple council seats are up for grabs and D.C.’s delegate seat for the U.S. House will see its first competitive race in decades.
Before Orange launched his first political campaign in 1990, he rose from humble beginnings in Oakland, California, to achieve academic success, earning law and master’s degrees, becoming an accountant and later cultivating an interest in city government while working in D.C.’s Department of Finance and Revenue in the 1980s. He served as Ward 5 council member from 1999 to 2007, then as an at-large member from 2011 to 2016.
Orange argues he has a track record of proven leadership and results, touting his role in the McKinley Technology High School modernization, the transformation of three recreation centers in Ward 5 and the arrival of big retailers like Home Depot and Costco to the nation’s capital. He introduced legislation that established Emancipation Day, which celebrates the anniversary of enslaved Washingtonians’ freedom. He said he also played a role in setting the stage for the redevelopment of Union Market.
“I think I have about 40 bills that I have passed that people can feel and touch,” he said.
Orange said he will focus his campaign on what he calls the “Orange plan vision” — a promise to deliver public safety, fiscal responsibility and economic vitality to the city. One centerpiece of the plan, he said, is providing paid apprenticeships for young people in D.C. government agencies and local businesses. He wants every graduating high school senior in the city to have access to free tuition at the University of the District of Columbia, tuition assistance to attend a four-year college, a paid apprenticeship at a local business or institution, or an opportunity to start a business of their own, he said.
On dealing with President Donald Trump — a central responsibility for the D.C. mayor — Orange said he would strike a balance by engaging the White House and Congress on issues where they share common ground with the District. But he said he would not be afraid to stand up to the White House when necessary to protect D.C.’s autonomy.
“We will not negotiate in fear, nor will we fear to negotiate,” he said, referencing a quote from former president John F. Kennedy.
Orange also said he would focus on police recruitment and on attracting more businesses to the city’s struggling downtown to make it a destination for families. Overall, he pitched himself as a pragmatic candidate who would bring the city’s politics more toward the center.
“The council is far left,” he said. “I do not believe that ideology works in the District of Columbia. I will be the person that balances everything. I don’t have an ideology agenda. My agenda is to make sure this city runs efficiently and effectively.”
Orange’s colorful personality and political decisions have also drawn intermittent criticism from fellow politicos — including in 2016, when he lost his reelection bid and then accepted a job leading the D.C. Chamber of Commerce while he continued to serve out his council term. The choice rankled colleagues, who argued his dual roles posed a clear conflict of interest, particularly because he chaired the council’s committee overseeing business.
Orange eventually resigned early, and the city’s ethics board later opined that he did not break ethics rules in accepting the Chamber of Commerce gig. He went on to lead the chamber until 2020. “I was cleared,” he emphasized in the interview Friday.
Orange has launched political comebacks twice since: first when he sought an at-large seat again in 2020 and lost, and then when he ran for the Ward 5 council seat in 2022 — a campaign where he drew criticism for dismissing his opponent Zachary Parker’s decision to come out as gay as “a matter of convenience.” Orange said Friday that he did not mean the comment as an attack on Parker’s identity and instead wanted to question whether his opponents had a record of helping the LGBTQ community.
In recent years, Orange has worked more behind the scenes in D.C. government, as a program analyst at the Department of Employment Services — a post he said was valuable, since he managed an apprenticeship program that he said recently placed 22 graduating high school seniors in full-time health care jobs at Howard University. He resigned from that post Thursday to make a third run for mayor, he said.
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