Earlier this year, D.C. Shadow Rep. Dr. Oye Owolewa counted among those who frequented the John A. Wilson Building during a budget season unlike any in recent history.
Despite Owolewa’s advocacy, along with that of several other D.C. residents and organizations, the council approved a budget that didn’t fully reverse cuts and health care coverage restrictions proposed by D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. Months later, as District residents deal with Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement collusion, Owolewa says the council could do more to stand up for constituents.
“There [haven’t] been enough fighters for some time,” Owolewa, a pharmacist and Ward 8 resident, told The Informer as he reflected on events that have unfolded in recent weeks. “As a child of African immigrants, as someone who lives east of the river, as a pharmacist who’s seeing a bunch of my patients lose their health insurance… I looked at the council and wondered where the fight was.”
In September, Owolewa launched his electoral bid against D.C. Councilmember Anita Bonds (D-At large), whose term ends in 2026. This effort comes toward the end of a year where Owolewa has supported efforts to protect D.C. Home Rule and budget autonomy against congressional Republicans. In speaking about his council run, Owolewa criticized the veteran lawmaker he says has lost touch with working- and middle-class D.C. residents.
“I’m running against somebody that unilaterally supported the Commander’s deal with no conditions— unconditional support,” Owolewa said. “Had we had one more council member that stood up and said ‘We needed this, we needed that,’ we could have gotten more. There’s no rent stabilization efforts for the people living in that community. There’s no plan to freeze property taxes for homeowners who’ve been living in Kingman Park and beyond for five, 10 years.”
However, Owolewa says it doesn’t stop at Bonds.
“I’m not just running against an incumbent, I’m running against a status quo of doing things,” Owolewa told The Informer. “I’m running against the idea that you have to be on a certain donor’s list in order for you to get real opportunities in the District. I’ve dedicated my life in public service to leveling the playing field, and I think people are really paying attention to it.”
A Closer Look: The Makings of a David vs. Goliath Battle
During the earlier part of October, weeks after announcing his council run, Owolewa reported the vandalism of his Southeast townhome. Though he said not much has been discovered by local authorities as of late, Owolewa told The Informer that he has reason to believe that the offender made no mistake about defacing his abode.
“It feels pretty targeted given that my house is not in the end [of the row of townhomes],” Owolewa said. “There’s nothing in this community that screams me on it, but someone may have found out through the Board of Elections or for another means where my address was and I do feel like it’s only one reason and I feel like it only could have been because of me.”
In his recounting of the incident, Owolewa said that he didn’t pay close attention to the blue paint he saw in his periphery while accepting a food order at his door the night before the Anacostia Coordinating Council ’s boat ride.
Owolewa went on to tell The Informer that on the next day, upon returning from the cruise, he saw the full scope of what he overlooked: blue letters “F U” sprayed across the floor of his porch and a large splash of blue spray paint on his door. He said the incident, though jarring, hasn’t tempered his council ambitions.
“However, it does show me that I have to keep myself safe,” Owolewa told The Informer. “I have to keep myself out of harm’s way and keep the people around me out of harm’s way. It’s only made me more passionate about things I care about.”
Should Bonds choose to run for reelection, she will face Owolewa, and what’s anticipated to be a handful of other candidates, in the 2026 D.C. Democratic Primary. That contest, scheduled for June 16, will count among the first in which the local electorate will participate in ranked-choice voting, the implementation of which Bonds questioned earlier this year during the budget season.
During the 2022 D.C. Democratic Primary, Bonds defeated Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Lisa Gore, Nate Fleming, and Dexter Williams with less than 36% of the vote. Months later, during the general election, she and D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (I) garnered the most votes out of a field that included a slew of independent candidates and candidates representing the Republican and D.C. Statehood Green Party.
Thus continued a council tenure that started during the spring of 2013 when the D.C. Democratic Party, as allowed in the D.C. charter, voted Bonds’ into an at-large council seat formerly occupied by Phil Mendelson before he became council chairman. Since winning a subsequent special election, no one has unseated Bonds, whose experience includes working with D.C. Mayors Marion Barry and Adrian Fenty, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Bonds’ office didn’t immediately respond to The Informer’s inquiry about the council member’s reelection efforts.
Earlier this year, Owolewa, in his third term as D.C. shadow representative, revealed that he wouldn’t run for another term. His announcement came just as D.C. Councilmembers Robert White (D-At large) and Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) launched their bid for the D.C. delegate seat, currently held by Eleanor Holmes Norton, and as Councilmembers Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) and Kenyan McDuffie (I-At large) hint at mayoral ambitions.
For Owolewa, the announcement about the end of his tenure as shadow representative will pave the way for new energy in the statehood movement.
“It was really for the idea of passing the baton,” Owolewa told The Informer. “For the fairness of the rest of the city, I wanted those who wanted to pick up the mantle of fighting for D.C. statehood as the next U.S. representative to know within three months of the end of the year that this seat will be open.”
In 2020, Owolewa was elected as D.C. shadow representative — a role, though not recognized by Congress, that designates him as a locally elected statehood advocate for a two-year term. Before entering that seat, Owolewa served as advisory neighborhood commissioner in ANC 8E, a jurisdiction which includes Shipley Terrace and Washington Highlands.
Owolewa won reelection in 2022 when he defeated Linda L. Gray in the Democratic primary and Joyce Robinson-Paul, a D.C. Statehood Green Party candidate, in the general election. In 2024, he secured a third term as D.C. shadow representative, once again defeating Gray in the primary and Republican candidate Ciprian Ivanof in the general election.
As shadow representative, Owolewa has utilized grassroots strategies — including a motorcade throughout the District — to press for the passage of statehood legislation. With a focus on marginalized D.C. residents, he’s also organized record expulsion clinics for returning citizens, and facilitated a capital business seminar where small businesses owners learned how to secure contracts, grants and certifications.
More recently, Owolewa, an American-born Nigerian hailing from Boston, has connected immigrants to information about legal services at the beginning of the second Trump administration. If elected as an at-large council member, Owolewa, who declared D.C. in an unofficial state of health care emergency this summer, aspires to tackle health and economic-related issues in a manner most beneficial to the District’s working and middle class.
Both areas, he told The Informer, deserve special attention amid Medicaid cuts and the mayor’s pivot to sports, entertainment and technology.
“My experiences in health care can make our health care system a lot more efficient,” Owolewa said, noting the existence of factors that keep the latest medical technology and amenities out of impoverished communities. “We’re talking about formularies need to be synchronized under DC Medicaid MCOs (managed care organizations). We’re talking about the need to end [direct and indirect remuneration] fees and [pharmacy benefit manager] reform so we can keep hospitals, pharmacies, health professionals all throughout the District and not just in the chosen few wealthy areas.”
Despite assertions that the District, in the age of Trump, wouldn’t be able to afford public safety nets, Owolewa says that helping people and practicing fiscal responsibility shouldn’t be mutually exclusive concepts.
“I bring up a lot of things that’s going to take major investments from the city, but I’m also looking at ways to make the city more efficient,” Owolewa said. “I’m also looking at ways to make responsible revenue raisers, but not just chunk up taxes every time I have an idea. There’s a lot of things that we can deprioritize in terms of funding, and I believe our values need to match our budget, and our budget needs to reflect what the 99% needs, not just the 1%.”
A Ward 5 Resident Stands Up for Owolewa
Owolewa has a fan in Minnie Elliott, an organizer and Ward 5 resident who calls the D.C. shadow representative and council hopeful most in touch with issues on the ground.
“He would definitely make a great [council] person because he’s caring and he’s very involved in all kinds of different situations in helping people,” said Minnie Elliott, president of the Brookland Manor Residents Association. “He’s grassroots and he’s also out in the street with different people doing different things. Those are some of the things that our officials usually don’t do.”
In years past, Elliott and other Manor Park residents have stood up in demand of inclusion in the Rhode Island Avenue redevelopment project. More recently, as District residents reel from increasing cost of living, Elliot and her neighbors had to go without water. She said that Owolewa, stepped in to address residents’ concerns.
“We were able to get the water shortage [solution] delivered and he even was…donating water to us,” Elliottt told The Informer. “Oye did not have to take time to do these things, but he did go out of his way for a while. He’s very active and he puts things out and lets you know. Not only that, he walks the communities. That’s very important.”