Unofficial results of tonight's special election: ANC 4B04 commissioner Doug Smith recalled

The results of the special election for the recall of ANC 4B04 commissioner Doug Smith are as follows: 75 votes in favor of the recall, 59 votes against it. Sixteen absentee ballots and eight special ballots still need to be counted; according to the District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics, a final count will be held on March 9, and certification is scheduled for March 13.

This means that Smith, who also serves as ANC 4B's treasurer, will have to win at least 17 of those 24 outstanding votes in order to keep his seat.

At the Metropolitan Police Department's Fourth District Headquarters, where the special election was held, Smith's supporters clustered together in one circle while supporters of the recall effort, most of whom are members of the civic group Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East, congregated in another. When the results were posted on the door of the police station's community room around 8:20 pm, both groups anxiously converged upon them, and neither group went away with a sense of satisfaction. Nobody wanted to wait ten more days for the official results, but such is the way of extremely close elections.

ANC 4B01 commissioner Sara Green was there to lend her support to Smith. Upon seeing the results, Smith offered to turn in his office key to Green, who is also ANC4B's chairperson, and told her that she should think about her next treasurer. She asked if he would consider running again should the recall become official; he said he would consider it but that he "really wasn't feeling it." A 4B04 resident chimed in with: "Think of it this way...at least you won't have to deal with these nasty people anymore."

For more background on the recall, see Behind the effort to recall ANC 4B04 commissioner Doug Smith.

Behind the effort to recall ANC4B04 commissioner Doug Smith

John Beverly, the president of Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East and the man who has spearheaded the effort to recall ANC4B04 commissioner Doug Smith, says that he initiated the effort due to Smith's "lack of communication with residents" and "lack of involvement" in community issues. Smith serves as treasurer of ANC4B; he also created and co-chaired the Large Tract Review committee which examined Walmart's development proposal for the Curtis Chevrolet site.

When asked for specifics, Beverly said that Smith left 4B04 residents in the dark about issues surrounding that development. I told Beverly that, as a 4B04 resident myself, I've attended quite a few meetings on that very topic. When asked if he had attended any of the meetings, he said he had not, because he didn't know about them. He blamed Smith for not informing his constituents that the meetings were being planned.

The strange thing is this: Doug Smith is a contributing member of Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East. Smith told me that he joined the group around the same time he began campaigning. Smith said that since he was elected, he's communicated with the group regularly, even bringing flyers announcing his special 4B04 meetings to their meetings.

I thought this might be a digital divide issue, as older residents often don't make use of email, and 4B04 has a sizable number of senior citizens. One of the biggest topics of discussion at the Large Tract Review committee meetings was how to reach out to those community members who don’t have access to email and therefore may not be aware of the development’s progress. But when I asked Beverly how past ANC4B04 commissioner James Sydnor used to disseminate information to constituents, he said that it was mostly by email, and that he was satisfied with Sydnor's level of communication. (One thing Smith hasn't done is establish a list of his constituents' email addresses in order to disseminate information through email blasts; Smith told me this is something he will work on.)

I told Mr. Beverly that there have been questions about the recall effort posted on the Brightwood listserv and asked if he had seen them. He said that he was not a member of the listserv. "Other ANCs want to support him, and that's fine," he said, "but this is a 4B04 issue."

The recall election will be held on February 28 at MPD's Fourth District Headquarters (6001 Georgia Avenue NW).


By the way, I had been wanting to track down Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East for quite a while, and was happy to have reached Mr. Beverly. He informed me the the organization formed a little under two years ago, and generally meets on the second Wednesday of each month, though they're now in recess until March. A website is under construction; til it goes live, if you're interested in being alerted about Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East meetings, drop me an email and I'll make sure you get onto Mr. Beverly's notification list.

Recall election for ANC4B04 commissioner Doug Smith will be held Feb. 28 at MPD 4D HQ

Did you know that there was a recall effort underway for 4B04 ANC commissioner Doug Smith?

Yeah, I really didn’t either. I first heard about it on November 23, when the DC Board of Elections and Ethics tweeted that recall petitions were being collected. I did a little more research and found that the effort has been underway since at least September (see the hearing transcript at the bottom of this post). The folks who have spearheaded the effort seem to be members of Concerned Citizens of Brightwood East.

This morning, the DCBOEE tweeted:



So there you go. Recall election on February 28.

Doug Smith is a good commissioner who got caught up in a storm, and that storm is called Walmart. I believe that the people who initiated the recall effort were upset that Smith hasn’t publicly come out in opposition of the development. The issue of will-Walmart-be-good-for-us-or-not has divided the neighborhood deeply, and it has put Smith in the difficult position of trying to represent all of his constituents fairly in the midst of the uproar.

But here's the thing: if the planned development at Georgia and Missouri doesn’t happen, it will be because Walmart decided to pull out. And that would be purely Walmart's decision, not based on community opposition, and definitely not on whether an ANC spoke out against it or not.

Smith has done nothing to deserve a recall. If you want to oust a politician, save your energy and work to oust one of the many in this city who actually have done things that warrant a recall.

UPDATE: Please read this newer post, Behind the effort to recall ANC 4B04 commissioner Doug Smith for more background on the issue.

Hearing on Approval of Petition to Recall Douglas Smith