One D.C. Democrat is spending a month in Central America taking language classes. Another is setting up a political action committee to support home-rule-friendly legislators across the country. Others are beginning to think about staffing for their likely jobs in January.
For Democrats who won in June’s primary for seats on the D.C. Council and beyond, the November election is likely to be a walkaway in the heavily blue city. So the not-quite-candidates-elect in the District are in an odd limbo period. They can campaign and prepare for office, but legally they cannot begin the formal process of a transition or hire staff for offices they have yet to win outright.
That’s part of why Aparna Raj, the Democratic nominee to become the next D.C. Council member for Ward 1, is spending the month in Guatemala. She’s attending a Spanish immersion school in Antigua, which includes five to six hours of daily instruction.
Ward 1 has the largest population of Latinos in the District. For many constituents, their first interaction with government often happens at council offices, Raj said. She thinks about people wanting to know why their utility bill went up or who might have an issue with trash pickup.
“I really want to be able to speak more directly with constituents, assuming I get elected in the general, and so I’m hoping to get more conversational here,” Raj said from Guatemala.
When I say we can fight for a better DC for all, I mean all. During this slow period before the general, I’m extremely fortunate to be able to attend an immersive Spanish school in Guatemala for the month of August to better connect with my Spanish-speaking neighbors in Ward 1! pic.twitter.com/H1wusiFgbO
— Aparna Raj (@aparnafordc) August 6, 2026
She said she drew an overwhelmingly positive response when she announced her trip on social media. But some detractors wondered why she opted to head to Central America to learn Spanish, rather than doing so in D.C. Raj said she wanted to experience total immersion in the language, which would help her improve more quickly.
Raj said she is “fighting for all of our residents to be able to have a government that works for them and fights for them.”
“A big part of that is even making sure that they can access basic government services in the language that they’re comfortable with,” she said.
In recent weeks, D.C. Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large), who won the Democratic primary to be the city’s next nonvoting delegate to Congress, has been taking advantage of his proximity to the U.S. Capitol.
He has reached out to members of Congress, including Democratic leadership, the heads of committees he would like to sit on, and Republicans “to start to test the water to see what, if any, common ground there is.” White and his team have been preparing memos about ways to expand the delegate role.
He is also staying up-to-date with goings-on in the House.
“Since the primary election in June, attacks on D.C. have not stopped at all,” he said, noting bills introduced by Republicans in the House that target the District, including one that would restrict the city’s ability to change its tax code and another that would overturn its law requiring motorcycle riders to wear a helmet.
While he acknowledges that his win is likely come November, the broader fate of the House is very much up in the air. On Monday, White announced a dual effort to support candidates friendly to home rule: bringing D.C. residents to purple districts in nearby states to canvass for them, and the creation of a leadership PAC called DC51 to support them monetarily.
“We are more impacted than anybody by who holds the majority in the House, so we’re not going to sit on the sidelines and cross our fingers,” White said.
Oye Owolewa (D) is taking the reverse route as White. He currently serves as the District’s shadow representative, an elected but unpaid position that tries to get federal lawmakers on board with D.C. statehood. But after focusing on Capitol Hill in recent years, he is narrowing his lens to the Wilson Building.
Owolewa, who faced eight other candidates and eight rounds of ranked-choice voting to advance from the Democratic primary for an at-large seat on the D.C. Council, has used the summer to buff up on the finer points of legislating.
Despite his current political role, “I’ve never really been a legislator,” he said. “Understanding the dynamics on the council, understanding the dynamic in the community and also knowing that a year is going to go by very fast — even faster if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Owolewa is also meeting with his future colleagues on the council — “My goal is to be the best team player I can be,” he said — and also beginning to lay the ground work for hiring his team. He plans to contact some of the staffers who worked in the offices of outgoing council members so he can have some institutional knowledge on his team.
“The difficult thing with making a lot of promises in the campaign is you can be unlucky and win,” he joked. “So we are definitely trying to be creative on how we fund some of the ambitious ideas I had,” such as making the University of the District of Columbia more affordable and bringing more youth sports to the city.
While Democratic winners have the luxury of time after the primary, independent Elissa Silverman has faced a much more harried summer.
Silverman overwhelmingly won the special election to fill the remaining months of an at-large council seat vacated by Kenyan R. McDuffie before his mayoral run (and which she had held from 2015 to 2023).
She had very little time to celebrate her victory.
By the end of primary week, she was headed back to the D.C. Board of Elections to pick up 600 pages of nominating petitions so she could run in the general election for a full term for the seat she had just won. Silverman needed at least 3,000 signatures to get on the ballot, which she has successfully done. Plus, she had to requalify for public financing.
There were also the logistics of closing out the special-election operation and jump-starting one for the November general election.
Smack dab in the middle of all of this, she was sworn in as council member in mid-July. Already, she has received a bunch of meeting requests.
There was only one problem: “When I moved into my office, it was practically empty,” she said. “We don’t even have a conference table right now.”
So on top of campaigning and hiring staff for her council office, she has to sort out the furnishings of the space, too.
Still, Silverman has no regrets.
“It’s the right path for me because I truly am an independent,” she said. “It is the seat that I’m running for and want to occupy, but this cycle came with just incredible challenges.”
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