Vincent B. Orange, a former member of the D.C. Council, filed paperwork Monday to run for the Ward 5 seat he once held for eight years.

       Long a fixture of D.C. politics, Orange has sought office nearly a dozen times since 1990 and represented Ward 5 between 1999 and 2007. He won an at-large seat in a 2011 special election but resigned from office five years later, amid scrutiny from the public and fellow legislators, after he accepted a job to lead the D.C. Chamber of Commerce while simultaneously serving on the council (an opinion from the District’s Board of Ethics later determined that Orange did not break ethics rules when he accepted the job).

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       Now, Orange — who left the Chamber of Commerce and ran unsuccessfully for an at-large seat on the council in 2020 — hopes to sell voters on his previous council experience and desire to make Ward 5 even more livable for its residents and businesses. He pointed to development he previously helped bring to the ward, including a Giant grocery store and a Home Depot, as well as his effort to restore McKinley Technical High School, as evidence of his commitment.

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       If elected again, Orange said, he would push for more incentives for businesses to remain in Ward 5 and seek to identify parcels of land to provide additional green space.

       “We want to make sure residents that are here are not being pushed out,” Orange said. “I have a record to run on. I’m running to make sure the streets of Ward 5 are safe and we can maintain being an attraction to residents.”

       Axios D.C. first reported on Orange’s intentions to run again in Ward 5. He will participate in the city program that offers public financing to candidates and joins a growing pool of candidates vying for the seat held by Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5), who is leaving his post to run for D.C. attorney general in 2022.

       Three other Democrats have filed paperwork to run for the Ward 5 seat: D.C. State Board of Education President Zachary Parker, chairman of the Ward 5 Democrats Gordon-Andrew Fletcher, and Faith Gibson Hubbard, a former official in the Bowser administration who most recently worked in her Office of Community Affairs.