D.C. Council members Robert C. White Jr. and Trayon White Sr. — Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s top challengers in the Democratic mayoral primary — were elected in 2016, giving them six years on the city’s powerful legislative body to create laws and policies that shape D.C. life.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
Robert White holds a citywide council position, tasked with representing residents in all eight wards. Trayon White represents Ward 8, which has a high concentration of poverty, and his bills and votes have focused on serving his constituents. Although neither has been a main leader behind the council’s hallmark bills of the past six years, both have built reputations as advocates for liberal solutions to the city’s big challenges, including housing, education and crime.
Their legislative records overlap, generally placing them to the left of Bowser: For example, both were introducers on an overhaul of the Youth Rehabilitation Act, which Bowser refused to sign and continues to criticize, saying the law makes it too easy for young offenders who commit serious gun crimes to avoid lengthy sentences. Both men voted to raise taxes on high-income earners last year, over Bowser’s objections, though neither was part of the trio of left-leaning council members who crafted the tax plan.
Advertisement
But the two diverge on some issues, such as whether workers who receive tips should receive the full minimum wage — Trayon White voted to overturn voters’ support of a 2018 ballot initiative that would have mandated such wages and said he’ll vote against a similar initiative on November’s ballot, while Robert White supports the initiative and voted against repealing it four years ago. Last month, Robert White voted for removing police from public schools, while Trayon White, citing violent confrontations in school buildings, voted for keeping officers there.
While both have made promises on the campaign trail — for example, Robert White says he’ll guarantee a job to any D.C. resident who wants one, and Trayon White vows to clear some of drivers’ traffic tickets — a look at their legislative records and accomplishments on the council can offer clues about what type of mayor each one might be.
Robert C. White Jr.
Robert White has declared that he would be the “education mayor”— the same moniker that Bowser gave herself when she first ran for mayor nearly a decade ago. The council member argues that his leadership would improve the academic outcomes of Black students in the city in ways he said the mayor has failed to do.
Advertisement
But a look at White’s council record provides few clues to how he would boost student outcomes. Asked to name his biggest legislative achievement on the issue of education, White named the 2018 Birth to Three Act — a law spearheaded by Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) that focused on early childhood care and includes ambitious plans to subsidize parents’ child-care expenses that have never been funded or implemented.
White hasn’t introduced big proposals on public education, but he has been vocal during council fights on contentious bills such as the closing of the alternative middle and high school Washington Met (which he voted to keep open) and the relocation of Banneker High to the larger former Shaw Middle School site (which he voted to move to the site instead of reopening a neighborhood middle school at the location).
In an interview, White pointed to his advocacy on key education issues, saying he has heightened the urgent need, for example, to improve reading proficiency of D.C.'s Black and Hispanic children, most of whom are performing below grade level.
Advertisement
“Legislation isn’t the only way you make progress,” White said. “One of the most valuable things I’ve brought to the council is an intense focus on the lack of urgency in improving education, the disparate outcomes and the need for more accountability at the top of the system.”
On other subjects, White’s signature legislative accomplishments deal primarily with incarceration. White has written legislation helping former inmates get back on their feet when they return to D.C., and a law that allows D.C. residents who are incarcerated to continue voting while they are behind bars.
The logistical scramble to help D.C.'s inmates vote in 2020
White led the way on creating a civilian review board with the authority to investigate misconduct complaints involving Metro Transit Police, and at a time when D.C. police were racking up overtime, he co-introduced a bill to require the department to report overtime spending to the council, which Bowser (who later gave the police chief carte blanche to use “any overtime necessary” to combat gun violence) refused to sign.
Advertisement
He also introduced successful legislation to give local minority-owned businesses preference for medical marijuana licenses, and has proposed a law that would give preference to government contractors who create apprenticeships for D.C. residents. In one of his earliest votes, White voted to create the city’s paid parental leave program, which Bowser opposed because it was funded by a tax on employers and often benefits people who work in the District but live in the suburbs.
D.C. police spent $40 million on overtime during racial justice protests
In 2017, White wrote a bill that created a task force to study the idea of turning downtown office buildings into housing. The task force returned with a bleak outlook, saying office buildings weren’t the best way to address the housing shortage. But White has continued to promote the idea of converting office buildings as one of the key planks of his vision for housing policy, and Bowser has recently explored the idea as well. “Now we see we should have started doing that five years ago when I suggested it,” White said.
Some of the legislation he has proposed has failed, like a financial literacy program for students and a stipend for senior citizens to rent rooms to other seniors that he termed the “Golden Girls” bill.
Advertisement
As mayor, he says, he could better pursue his vision on police overhauls, housing and education. In a system where the mayor has control of public education, White said it’s difficult to shape schooling through the council.
He would loosen the mayor’s control of schools, and says he would listen to school communities and staff before making changes. Critics have slammed the Bowser administrations for taking a top-down approach to education.
Among his education proposals on the campaign trail: changes to the controversial teacher evaluation system that ties student performance to job security.
Trayon White Sr.
In his six years as Ward 8′s council member, Trayon White has charted a track record of legislation, although he hasn’t passed laws on some topics that he touts as his top priorities such as schools.
Advertisement
He introduced legislation in 2017 to decriminalize fare evasion on Metro, so youths hopping the turnstiles wouldn’t end up with a criminal record; it passed, despite Bowser’s veto. He spearheaded a law that now lets families view police officers’ body-camera footage if their relative is killed by an officer, invoking on the council dais the death of Marqueese Alston in 2018 and Alston’s mother’s pursuit of the footage for more than a year. With Anita Bonds (D-At Large), White successfully introduced legislation that bans evictions on days when it’s snowing or raining and allows tenants limited access to their apartments for the week after an eviction so they can claim their belongings, rather than losing their possessions or seeing them tossed to the curb right away.
D.C. elections: What mayoral candidates say about housing, schools, crime
As he recounted some of these bills during an interview last month — while also questioning a city leader about conditions at the D.C. jail during a Zoom hearing and handing out yard signs to supporters — Deborah Rorls stopped her car and told White she needed help: She wanted to buy a condo, but living on Social Security as her only income, she was struggling. Glancing down at two of his phones, White asked questions — whether she had owned a home before, whether she had a job — and then recommended the Douglass Community Land Trust as an organization that might help. He made sure Rorls had his phone number before she left.
That’s what keeps his phones — he carries three at a time — ringing off the hook. “If I check my messages, I probably got three or four of those today” from other people asking for help finding affordable housing, he said.
Advertisement
As he rides to his next campaign stop, a call comes in from a resident with a complaint about police conduct. A minute later, White has connected her with a police commander. While they talk, he turns down his phone volume and pulls up a text from a mother that’s been haunting him — a bloody photo of her teenage son, who suffered a gunshot wound, White says.
Once a week, he starts his day with therapy to grapple with the violence he’s witnessed. Much of what troubles him includes youths. “I’m seeing the violence. I’m seeing the young guys walking around with guns in their possession and they’re 15,” he said. “I’m doing funerals a few times a week.”
D.C. mayor’s budget would expand police ranks amid crime worries
White’s legislative output has slowed down, though he insists he’s still working on as many ideas as ever. This council period, he has introduced fewer bills than any other member but Gray, who missed part of the term after suffering a stroke.
Advertisement
He has proposed some ideas that he has not been able to enact, particularly on public safety. He wants to make it easier for convicted felons to get more crimes expunged from their records so they can more easily pursue jobs and housing after they finish their sentences. “My priorities are not everyone on the council’s priorities,” White said.
As Election Day in D.C. approaches, candidates remain hot on the trail
Sometimes, he has introduced bills that colleagues have praised in concept, but died when those same council members pointed out legal or logistical flaws in White’s drafting. That’s what happened when White suggested, after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 by a Minneapolis police officer, that D.C. law require police to take a suspect for a medical evaluation if ever a person says the words, “I can’t breathe.”
It happened again when White introduced legislation in memory of Stormiyah Jackson, a 12-year-old who killed herself at a D.C. charter boarding school, meant to prevent smaller settlements in wrongful death lawsuits because of the race or gender of the deceased. “We’re still working on that,” White said. “We’re not going to let that die at all.”