Former Washington, D.C., Councilman Jack Evans is launching a comeback bid for the district council six years after his resignation from the governing body.
Evans is running for the chairman spot in a direct challenge to current Chairman Phil Mendelson. Evans and Mendelson, both Democrats, were colleagues on the D.C. Council before Mendelson voted unanimously with the council to recommend Evans’s expulsion due to numerous ethical violations. On Tuesday, six years after he resigned over the ethics concerns related to his outside employment, Evans announced his bid to return to the council.
“The district faces serious challenges from educating our children and improving public safety, to addressing affordable housing shortages, high costs, significant budget issues, and ongoing federal intervention,” Evans said in a press release. “I am running to provide experiences, steady leadership that brings people together and gets things done for residents in every ward.”
Evans holds the record for the longest-serving councilmember in the D.C. Council’s history, getting elected 11 times and serving Ward 2 from 1991 until his January 2020 resignation. He resigned following mounting pressure over the ethics charges against him and the December 2019 expulsion recommendation from the council. The ethics investigations into Evans focused on his business dealings as he worked as a lawyer and consultant while also holding public office.
“You always have to remember, at the end of the investigations, particularly the federal ones, nothing ever happened,” Evans told the Washington Post on Tuesday. “I was investigated. No question I made some mistakes. I apologize for those mistakes. I learned from those mistakes, and they won’t happen again.”
Evans is now running for chairman, a position that would prohibit him from holding outside employment. On his campaign website, Evans says he is running for chairman to “bring disciplined leadership, rigorous oversight, and experienced judgment back to the DC Council.”
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON SAYS IT’S TIME TO ‘LIFT UP’ NEXT GENERATION IN RETIREMENT STATEMENT
With the district’s primary elections set for June 16, Mendelson and Evans are the only two candidates who have filed for the chairman race. Mendelson, who has served on the council since 1999 and as chairman since 2012, won his last Democratic primary against ethics lawyer Erin Palmer by a 6.8 percentage point margin.
Evans would not be the first Washington, D.C., councilmember to return after an ethics controversy. In summer 2025, Ward 8 Councilman Trayon White was reelected to the council despite his February 2025 expulsion from the body in the face of bribery charges. White pleaded not guilty to the charges.
