D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) is ending her campaign for a fifth consecutive term and will no longer seek reelection, she said Friday.
Cheh, 71, has long been a stalwart politician in Ward 3, which contains some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. She filed paperwork to run in the June primary election but said in a statement that she had reevaluated her life during the coronavirus pandemic and wanted to change course. Journalist Tom Sherwood first tweeted news of her decision.
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“I have to come to realize that I want to recover my personal life and dedicate more time to my granddaughter, who has been the light of my life since she was born on my re-election day three years ago,” Cheh told her constituents. She added, “It is time for someone else to pick up the mantle, and I am excited for the possibilities and future of Ward 3.”
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Her departure is the latest shift on a council that in recent years has become younger and more left-leaning. She has held the Ward 3 council seat since 2007, making her the second-longest member to serve on the legislative body behind its chairman, Phil Mendelson (D), who is seeking another term this year. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5), the third-longest-serving council member, announced last year that he would not seek another term on the council and is running for D.C. attorney general instead.
Cheh, a former special assistant U.S. attorney in the District and a tenured constitutional law professor at George Washington University, has long been known as one of the council’s more pragmatic members and frequently invoked her knowledge of legal affairs. Teaching classes in constitutional law for first-year law students while also working as a council member, Cheh is the only current member who holds a second job while working as a legislator.
She chairs the council’s committee on transportation and has been vocal about shortcomings at the Department of Public Works, an agency that has faced criticism for its handling of city services like street cleaning and snow plowing.
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As transportation committee chair since 2011, she has championed bills such as new regulations on taxis and electric scooters and has also focused on the environment. Cheh has led some of the biggest changes in transportation policy of the past decade including major overhauls of the taxi industry, the legalization of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft and regulations of new private transportation options such as e-scooters and e-bikes.
More recently, Cheh pushed legislation to advance the city’s Vision Zero goals to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries. She sparred with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) for not funding a law passed in September 2020 requiring the construction of more protected bike lanes and sidewalks. Last year, the council, at the recommendation of Cheh’s committee, directed the city to use revenue from 118 new traffic cameras to fund the bill.
She also blocked Bowser’s efforts on multiple recent budgets to eliminate the $1 fare on D.C. Circulator. Cheh and the council raised concerns the move would benefit mostly the tourists and downtown workers the bus system serves, and the money could be put to better use elsewhere.
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But even as she’s helped moved numerous bills to advance bike infrastructure in the city, some of her critics say she hasn’t done enough to bring bike lanes to her own ward. Ward 3 has built fewer bike lanes than most other wards in the District. Cheh, a bicyclist herself, has been an adamant advocate to bring cycle tracks to a 2.7-mile stretch of Connecticut Avenue NW, a project that is now in the path to construction.
She has been a prolific drafter of legislation on other topics, such as hunger (Cheh’s efforts led to low-income children in the District still getting school meals on snow days) and education, recently proposing a law to weaken mayoral control of the school system.
Cheh was first to propose the law passed in 2020 that allows youths in the District to obtain certain vaccines without parental permission, and the act that legalized assisted suicide for terminally ill patients in D.C. in 2017.
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Cheh also oversaw a council investigation into alleged contract steering and preferential treatment afforded by the Bowser administration to Fort Myer Construction. Bowser has disputed the findings.
Cheh drew criticism for her comments last month following a shooting at the Days Inn on Connecticut Avenue, in which she lamented a “state of lawlessness in the community” and criticized a proposal that would limit prosecutions of juveniles in adult court.
She ran uncontested in the 2018 primary election and cruised to victory in the general election, earning 75 percent of the vote against independent Petar Dimtchev. Three candidates had filed to run for the Ward 3 seat in this year’s primaries: Democrats Monika Nemeth and Deirdre Brown, who are a current and a former advisory neighborhood commissioner, respectively, and Republican David Krucoff.
Cheh reported having more than $84,000 in her campaign account at the end of January.
The timing of Cheh’s announcement is likely to encourage more candidates to jump into the race; petitions became available late last month, and council candidates have until March 23 to collect 250 signatures to appear on the ballot.