Updated: Nov. 4, 2024, at 4:38 p.m. 

A civil rights attorney and Dupont Circle resident is challenging incumbent Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto in Tuesday’s D.C. Council election, with a write-in campaign centered on promoting racial justice and affordable housing. 

Rondell “Magic” Jordan said he decided to launch his bid for the seat, which represents Foggy Bottom and the surrounding area, after D.C. officials in March enacted Pinto’s bill to address a spike in District crime by harshening punishments for some offenses and reviving a 1990s-era tool that allows city police to create temporary drug-free zones in public spaces with illegal drug activity. Jordan, a Brooklyn native who moved to D.C. in 2019, said he grew up during New York City’s stop-and-frisk policing in the 1990s where he witnessed the “viscerally racist” policy target Black men in his community.

He argues that Pinto’s crime bill would do the same in D.C.

“I saw again what I experienced as a kid,” Jordan said. “This is an attempt to snatch away a generation of people who are hurting, honestly, and again, criminalizing Blackness and criminalizing Black childhood. I testified several times. I implored Councilmember Pinto and the entire D.C. Council to not pass this legislation.”

The Secure DC bill included more than 100 provisions, spanning from lowering the threshold for felony theft from $1,000 to $500 and increasing penalties for gun possession offenses. Before officials enacted the bill, a D.C. Council office that assesses bills’ potential impact on racial equity found that the bill would likely aggravate racial inequity in D.C. and contains provisions that “are not substantiated by evidence-based research.”

Jordan said alternatively, he has helped Black, low-income communities, which he said are the most marginalized and vulnerable people in the city, since he moved to D.C. after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh law school in 2018. He worked from June 2022 to February 2024 at Open City Advocates, a nonprofit defending and advocating for youth in the D.C. juvenile justice system and represents youth in court hearings. 

He said he’s witnessed the disproportions in D.C.’s justice system, as Black people make up 44.4 percent of the city’s population but those in youth and adult jails in the District are “almost exclusively” Black. He said Pinto’s crime bill will make this trend more pervasive by lengthening prison sentences in a justice system that already disproportionately incarcerates Black residents.  

“I was just so frustrated, like this is not gonna happen again,” Jordan said. “And I got guidelines and got in this race to unseat her.”

Jordan said he felt a spiritual call pulling him to D.C. in 2018 amid a housing affordability crisis in the District that caused swaths of evictions, particularly for low-income, Black residents. After his move, he began working as a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of the District of Columbia, where he represented Black, low-income tenants in eviction cases before the D.C. Superior Court during the pandemic’s onset. He said landlords were evicting tenants who struggled to pay rent in 2020, despite the federal government enacting an eviction moratorium in September 2020.

Jordan said he loved his job but grew frustrated at the time that the organization didn’t have an advocacy or policy wing because he believed the group could further assist low-income tenants by urging the D.C. Council to adhere to the federal eviction moratorium and pause rent for those struggling. 

He said that years later, this experience prompted him to center his write-in campaign around eliminating homelessness and housing insecurity in the District, issues he said city officials haven’t made sufficient strides to address. Jordan said officials haven’t combatted skyrocketing housing costs in D.C., while he supports arranging contracts with housing developers that guarantee mixed-income housing while providing adequate shelter spaces for unhoused community members. 

He said he would represent Ward 2 if elected, but he hopes his policy proposals would serve D.C. residents at large because D.C.’s wards are left over from segregation and trends in different wards tend to overlap.

“Our city doesn’t have any walls between it,” Jordan said. “What happens in Ward 8 and what happens in Ward 7 affects what happens in Ward 2.”

Jordan said he also plans to introduce council initiatives to address the D.C.’s climbing cost of living and to urge councilmembers to develop a sustainable plan for ending childhood poverty. He plans to propose subsidies or tax credits for childcare, free school meals in low-income neighborhoods, investing in early childhood education for low-income families, enhancing school-based health services and expanding job training programs for low-income parents.

D.C. currently has a childcare tax credit with a $1,160 cap per child and free breakfast and after school snacks or supper for all students in DC Public Schools.   

“This is an opportunity for every voter in Ward 2 who is fed up with a party that’s not responsive to them, fed up with a councilmember who’s not responsive to them,” Jordan said. 

Pinto, his opponent, took office in June 2020 after winning a special election to serve the remainder of former Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans’ term after he resigned in January 2020. Previously an assistant attorney general for former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine, she narrowly secured the Democratic nomination for her next term in June 2020, with 28.4 percent of the vote in a three-way race. Pinto defeated two independents in the November election that year, tallying more than 68 percent of the vote.

During her tenure, Pinto introduced and passed legislation to streamline business licensing processes to support small, local businesses and expanded access to menstrual products in public city spaces. She became the chair of the council’s Judiciary and Public Safety Committee in December 2022, where she was tasked with addressing rising crime in the District and pushed through the controversial Secure DC bill. 

Pinto has twice faced allegations that she violated campaign finance rules — in 2020 for not reporting a property as her campaign headquarters in campaign finance reports and in 2021 for raising $21,000 to pay off campaign debts more than six months after her election. D.C.’s Office of Campaign Finances dismissed the 2020 complaint.

Pinto didn’t return a request for comment.

In the overwhelmingly blue city, Democratic nominees like Pinto typically sweep general elections, and Jordan said he’s likely facing an uphill battle as a write-in candidate. But he said his “entire life has been an uphill battle” and that he’s posted 300 campaign signs around the ward and has engaged with residents he said Pinto often ignores, like Black communities in the Shaw neighborhood, to increase his odds of victory. 

He added that his candidacy will show D.C. voters that they have the option to support a “true progressive, not just a Democratic in name.”

“It’s not about this office or this seat, it’s about actual change and demanding change,” Jordan said.

This post has been updated to correct the following: 

The Hatchet incorrectly reported that Jordan currently works at Open City Advocates. He worked at the nonprofit from June 2022 to February 2024. We regret this error.