The Race for D.C.’s Delegate

The following story is co-published with Pete Tucker’s Substack.

I’m not sure who better epitomizes the sorry state of the Democratic Party, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton or her opponent, D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto. Fortunately Washington’s congressional race has other candidates, but let’s stick with these two for a moment.

Norton, at 88, is the oldest member of the House of Representatives, and she’s faltering like we saw with former President Joe Biden, who’s six years younger. Also like Biden, Norton stubbornly refuses to step aside and is running to retain the seat she first won back in 1991 — when the George Bush invading Iraq had “H.W.” for middle initials.

Norton came out of the civil rights movement, and for many years she fought tirelessly for the District, earning the moniker “warrior on the Hill.” Those days, however, are long gone.

According to a recent D.C. police report that the local NBC station WRC-TV got its hands on, Norton now suffers from “early stages of dementia” and has a caretaker with power of attorney. Norton’s office denies both counts, although not necessarily convincingly. “Norton’s spokesperson declined to say whether Norton has had any diagnosis, telling News4 her office does not comment on the congresswoman’s health,” the WRC reported.

The police report was filed last month after Norton welcomed into her home individuals claiming they were there to work on the ventilation system. But they did no work and charged Norton’s credit card nearly $4,400. While Norton was apparently unaware of the scam underway, a caretaker with access to Norton’s home security cameras saw what was going on and called the police.

Norton’s diminished state appears to threaten not only her own well-being, but also her constituents’. This was made clear by her performance at a September committee hearing on D.C.’s imperiled sovereignty, which The New York Times described like this:

The 88-year-old congresswoman was escorted into the hearing room by a staff member who held her by the arm and helped her to her seat on the dais, where she sat alone reading a newspaper until the proceedings began. When recognized, she read haltingly from a script that it appeared she sometimes did not understand.

As an enfeebled stalwart who refuses to step aside, Norton represents one archetype of the lackluster Democratic Party. Norton’s 33-year-old opponent represents another.

Nepo baby

In 202 at the age of 28, Brooke Pinto won a seat on the D.C. Council in no small part thanks to her wealthy parents, their friends and The Washington Post.

“Early poll numbers had Pinto at just 2 or 3%, but the tides appeared to shift when The Washington Post editorial board announced its unexpected endorsement of her campaign,” City Paper reported at the time.

D.C.’s Ward 2, which stretches from downtown to wealthy Georgetown, is lousy with Post readers. Pinto somehow secured the Post’s endorsement for the seat even though she had never voted in D.C. (Yep, her first vote in D.C. was for herself.)

Also key to Pinto’s 379-vote win in 2020 was her war chest — shockingly little of which came from D.C. donors. Keith Ivey, a local politico, crunched the numbers and found Pinto received less than 14% of her campaign funding from D.C. residents other than herself, and less than 9% from Ward 2 residents.

But Pinto made up for that by hitting up wealthy friends and family across the country; her top two donor ZIP codes were both in Greenwich, Connecticut, where Pinto grew up.

In addition to their Greenwich home, Pinto’s parents also owned a house in Palm Beach, Florida, just four miles up the road from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. This must have proved convenient on New Year’s Eve of 2015-16, when the Pintos joined Trump — who six months earlier had kicked off his racist bid for the White House — at his annual Mar-a-Lago celebration, according to Instagram posts.

Those posts were quickly taken down after I published one of them in a 2020 story at Counterpunch. The story noted:

At his New Year’s Eve bash, Trump, then the Republican presidential front-runner, glad-handed guests and in brief remarks pledged to “make America great again!” Then just before midnight, with his family and the Mar-a-Lago party as his backdrop, Trump touted his candidacy live on Fox News.

The nearly 700 guests at the party, according to a first-person account, were an exclusive bunch consisting of “club members and old friends [of Trump].” It’s unclear which of these categories the Pintos may fall into.

Before publishing my 2020 story, I reached out to Pinto for comment about her presence at Trump’s party — which doubled as a campaign event — and she issued a non-denial denial, saying via email, “I am not a member of Mar-a-Lago.”

After publication, however, Pinto had more to say, dismissing me as “a person who is clearly not interested in my success,” and “clearly engaged in some conspiracy thinking.”

Having now served five years on the D.C. Council, Pinto is seeking a promotion to Congress. Her campaign got an early boost when, days before she announced, Pinto’s Council office spent $85,000 on a flier sent far beyond her ward, a potential campaign finance violation first reported by veteran D.C. journalists Mark Segraves and Tom Sherwood. (Pinto’s first campaign was also marked by campaign finance irregularities.)

Pinto is once again raking in an impressive haul, saying she raised an eye-popping $300,000 on the first day of her campaign. Meanwhile, WAMU-FM radio reported that part of Pinto’s pitch to D.C. voters is that “she’ll be able to assuage Trump and Republicans.” And she has a point; after all, what other candidate can say they partied with Trump at Mar-a-Lago?

The rest of the field

In addition to Pinto and Norton, the race for D.C. delegate has other candidates, chief among them Robert White, a three-term at-large D.C. councilmember and former Norton staffer.

In 2022, White ran for mayor, finishing second to incumbent Mayor Muriel Bowser. Political insiders expected White to run for mayor again in 2026, but he’s instead running for Congress because he questions “how much longer we’re going to have a local government if we can’t start to turn back this federal momentum,” White told WAMU, referring to Trump’s military takeover of D.C., which began in August and continues to today, albeit in less intense form.

Among the other Democrats running for Norton’s seat are Jacque Patterson, president of the D.C. State Board of Education; Deirde Brown, chair of the Ward 3 Democrats; Kinney Zalesne, a former Democratic National Committee official; and Gordon Chafin, a dog walker and advocate.

Among non-Democrats is my friend Kymone Freeman, a D.C. Statehood Green Party candidate. Freeman, co-founder of We Act Radio, also ran against Norton in 2024.

Of course whoever wins the race will only sort of be in Congress. D.C.’s lack of statehood means the city’s representative — referred to as “delegate” — can’t actually vote.