United States Senate election in the District of Columbia, 2024

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2026 → ← 2020
U.S. Senate, District of Columbia
General election
Election details
Filing deadline: March 6, 2024
Primary: June 4, 2024 General: November 5, 2024
How to vote
Poll times: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voting in District of Columbia
Ballotpedia analysis
U.S. Senate battlegrounds U.S. House battlegrounds Federal and state primary competitiveness Ballotpedia's Election Analysis Hub, 2024
See also
U.S. Senate, District of Columbia At-large District of Columbia elections, 2024 U.S. Congress elections, 2024 U.S. Senate elections, 2024 U.S. House elections, 2024 Arizona U.S. Senate raceCalifornia U.S. Senate raceConnecticut U.S. Senate raceDelaware U.S. Senate raceFlorida U.S. Senate raceHawaii U.S. Senate raceIndiana U.S. Senate raceMaine U.S. Senate raceMaryland U.S. Senate raceMassachusetts U.S. Senate raceMichigan U.S. Senate raceMinnesota U.S. Senate raceMississippi U.S. Senate raceMissouri U.S. Senate raceMontana U.S. Senate raceNebraska U.S. Senate raceNevada U.S. Senate raceNew Jersey U.S. Senate raceNew Mexico U.S. Senate raceNew York U.S. Senate raceNorth Dakota U.S. Senate raceOhio U.S. Senate racePennsylvania U.S. Senate raceRhode Island U.S. Senate raceTennessee U.S. Senate raceTexas U.S. Senate raceUtah U.S. Senate raceVermont U.S. Senate raceVirginia U.S. Senate raceWashington U.S. Senate raceWest Virginia U.S. Senate raceWisconsin U.S. Senate raceWyoming U.S. Senate raceSubmit

Voters in the District of Columbia elected one shadow member to the U.S. Senate in the general election on November 5, 2024. The primary was June 4, 2024. The filing deadline was March 6, 2024. The election filled the seat held by Michael D. Brown (independent), who first took office in 2007. To learn more about other elections on the ballot, click here.

Candidates and election results

General election

General election for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia

Ankit Jain defeated Nelson Rimensnyder in the general election for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia on November 5, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Ankit Jain (D)	89.9	265,360
		Nelson Rimensnyder (R)	9.1	26,968
		Other/Write-in votes	0.9	2,705

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 295,033
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia

Ankit Jain defeated Eugene D. Kinlow in the Democratic primary for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia on June 4, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Ankit Jain	53.1	41,664
		Eugene D. Kinlow	44.7	35,108
		Other/Write-in votes	2.2	1,694

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 78,466
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Andrew C. Haynesworth (D)
• Wendy Hamilton (D)
• Franklin Garcia (D)

Republican primary election

No Republican candidates ran in the primary.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Quinn K. Nii (R)

Candidate profiles

This section includes candidate profiles that may be created in one of two ways: either the candidate completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey, or Ballotpedia staff may compile a profile based on campaign websites, advertisements, and public statements after identifying the candidate as noteworthy. For more on how we select candidates to include, click here.

Ankit Jain

Party: Democratic Party

Incumbent: No

Political Office: None

Submitted Biography:  "I am a voting rights attorney supporting the organization FairVote, advocating for everyone to have the right to cast a meaningful vote through the use of ranked choice voting. Prior to that, I worked for four years as an attorney for the Sierra Club. I was one of the lead negotiators who secured a settlement with the federal government that committed it to spending over $1 billion rectifying environmental harm caused by Trump's border wall. I grew up just outside Washington D.C., in Fairfax County, as the son of Indian immigrants. I have taken the lead in D.C.’s fight for statehood, for a stronger democracy, and in getting young people involved in local Democratic politics. I am an active member of the D.C. Democrats Statehood Committee and regularly attend D.C. Vote and Hands Off D.C. rallies against congressional interference in local affairs. I founded the Young Democrats of Ward 2 to get young people more involved within the Ward 2 Democrats. I was also selected as a member of the Ward 2 Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC) Redistricting Taskforce, tasked with redrawing the Ward 2 ANC boundaries after redistricting. I attended law school at Columbia University. While there, I was one of the lead organizers of the NYC March for Our Lives for stronger gun laws, which drew over 200,000 attendees. I completed my undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago; I spent a summer during my undergrad interning with the D.C. Public Defender Service."

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Key Messages

To read this candidate's full survey responses, click here.

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I have the vision, the skills, and the experience that D.C. needs to get statehood across the finish line and stop Congress from interfering in our local affairs. I have legislative advocacy experience through my work with FairVote and Sierra Club. I have a different vision for how this position can be used and will not fall prey to status-quo thinking that has not served us up to now. I see this position as our chief lobbyist and organizer for our rights before Congress. Finally, I am hardworking and determined. I will use all those skills to advocate effectively for D.C.

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I will serve as a liaison between the Council and Congress as the Council is considering legislation to understand how Congress will react and see if there are ways we can tweak or message bills to avoid congressional interference. However, sometimes we will have to fight Republicans in Congress over important legislation. I will defend every D.C. law no matter my personal opinion on the legislation or what the Mayor or any member of the D.C. Council thinks.

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I will fight for positive action by Congress on important D.C. priorities. For example, I will work to secure federal funding to avoid the devastating service cuts Metro faces, and then to expand service by building the Blue Line Loop or Silver Line Express. I will fight to remove the federal Height Act so that our local government can weigh the tradeoffs between preserving D.C.’s skyline and building more housing to reduce D.C.’s high rent and home prices. I will work to remove restrictions on our local government helping low-income women afford abortions and that stop us from legalizing the sale of marijuana.

This information was current as of the candidate's run for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia in 2024.

Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey responses

Ballotpedia asks all federal, state, and local candidates to complete a survey and share what motivates them on political and personal levels. The section below shows responses from candidates in this race who completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Survey responses from candidates in this race

Click on a candidate's name to visit their Ballotpedia page.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

Expand all | Collapse all

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

Ankit Jain (D)

I have the vision, the skills, and the experience that D.C. needs to get statehood across the finish line and stop Congress from interfering in our local affairs. I have legislative advocacy experience through my work with FairVote and Sierra Club. I have a different vision for how this position can be used and will not fall prey to status-quo thinking that has not served us up to now. I see this position as our chief lobbyist and organizer for our rights before Congress. Finally, I am hardworking and determined. I will use all those skills to advocate effectively for D.C.

I will serve as a liaison between the Council and Congress as the Council is considering legislation to understand how Congress will react and see if there are ways we can tweak or message bills to avoid congressional interference. However, sometimes we will have to fight Republicans in Congress over important legislation. I will defend every D.C. law no matter my personal opinion on the legislation or what the Mayor or any member of the D.C. Council thinks.

I will fight for positive action by Congress on important D.C. priorities. For example, I will work to secure federal funding to avoid the devastating service cuts Metro faces, and then to expand service by building the Blue Line Loop or Silver Line Express. I will fight to remove the federal Height Act so that our local government can weigh the tradeoffs between preserving D.C.’s skyline and building more housing to reduce D.C.’s high rent and home prices. I will work to remove restrictions on our local government helping low-income women afford abortions and that stop us from legalizing the sale of marijuana.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Ankit Jain (D)

I am running for this position because I truly believe in democracy. I am a voting rights attorney who has dedicated my life to advancing democracy forward for our nation, yet me and my neighbors are denied those basic rights here in D.C. I understand the value of democracy, and that is why I will be an effective advocate for our democratic rights.

In addition, I am a strong environmentalist. In a city context that means I support stronger public transit, more bike lanes, and denser housing to reduce the need for people to use cars and cut down on our greenhouse gas emissions.

Finally, I am a strong advocate for gun violence prevention measures. I will push Congress to pass common-sense gun laws to reduce crime in our city.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

Ankit Jain (D)

I have the vision, skills, and experience to get statehood over the finish line and protect our rights. I have a clear idea of what this position can be–our elected lobbyist and chief organizer for our rights before the Senate. I have the skills to be effective. I am collaborative and will work with the entire statehood community, from the mayor to D.C. Vote to our Council to the many other organizations advocating for statehood, to get us all on the same page and pursuing the same strategy with the same messaging. Every group and person has a unique role to play, and I want to serve as a unifier to make sure our movement is greater than the sum of its parts. I also bring the strategic thinking we need in this position. I have a clear plan on how we are actually going to make statehood happen–see my previous answers for more details. And I know how to influence members of Congress who don’t have the same interests we do in D.C. I also bring legislative advocacy experience to this position. I am a voting rights attorney with the ranked-choice voting group FairVote, and I worked as an attorney for the Sierra Club for four years before that. In both of those roles, I have run numerous advocacy campaigns to get important bills and regulations passed. I will use that experience to be an effective lobbyist for D.C. Finally, I will use my connections with the nationwide pro-democracy community to get this community to fight hard for D.C. statehood. We need more than words—we need these organizations to stand strong when the going gets tough and the possibility of “compromise” on the backs of D.C. citizens comes up. These organizations can be some of our strongest allies in convincing wavering Senators and Representatives to vote yes on D.C. statehood, since many of them have a strong on-the-ground presence in these representatives’ districts, and I want to partner with them effectively.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

Ankit Jain (D)

The Shadow Senator is D.C.’s elected lobbyist and chief organizer for our rights before Congress. There are two main parts to that role: defending local D.C. policy from congressional interference and pushing for statehood. Looking first at defending D.C. laws, to successfully defend these laws, we need to run strong campaigns against efforts to overturn them. We have already seen the difference between running a bad and running a strong campaign to protect a local law. Our Criminal Code reforms were overturned because we ran a bad campaign that focused too much on the principle of democracy and not enough on the politics of the vote in moderate Democrats’ home districts. In contrast, we successfully defended our police reforms by pointing out that it implemented common-sense changes that aligned with how most moderate Democrats had already voted in the past. Our Statehood delegation organizes these campaigns; we need people in these positions who are committed to defending our local laws and who can do so effectively. Looking at the push for statehood, the movement has been lacking a clear, forward-thinking strategy on how we can actually make statehood happen. I will bring that clear strategy and vision to this fight. The most likely path to achieving statehood is by getting a filibuster exception for the bill in the Senate (perhaps as part of a larger nationwide pro-voting bill) and passing the bill through Congress on a simple majority vote when Democrats have full control of government. But regardless of what strategy we pursue, I will work with the entire statehood community, from the mayor to D.C. Vote to our Council to the many other organizations advocating for statehood, to get us all on the same page and pursuing the same strategy with the same messaging. Every group and person has a unique role to play, and I want to serve as a unifier to make sure our movement is greater than the sum of its parts.

What legacy would you like to leave?

Ankit Jain (D)

I hope that when I’m old I can tell people I played at least some part in ending one of the greatest democratic injustices still occurring in America–the disenfranchisement of 700,000 tax-paying American citizens, a majority of whom are people of color and a plurality of whom are Black. I want to give the people of D.C. the power we deserve to control our destiny and influence our own government.

What do you think of the filibuster?

Ankit Jain (D)

Certain bills are so important that we cannot allow a supermajority requirement that has no basis in our Constitution to stand in the way of their passage. D.C. statehood, which is about core democratic rights for 700,000 tax-paying American citizens, is one of those issues. I will push for a filibuster exception for D.C. statehood so it can pass on a simple majority vote.

What organizations or individuals have endorsed your campaign?

Ankit Jain (D)

Council Member Brianne Nadeau, Former Council Member Elissa Silverman, D.C. for Democracy, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees District Council 20, New Politics, D.C. Voters for Animals, Representative Daniel Riemer

Campaign finance

Name	Party	Receipts*	Disbursements**	Cash on hand	Date
Ankit Jain	Democratic Party	$0	$0	$0	Data not available***
Eugene D. Kinlow	Democratic Party	$0	$0	$0	Data not available***
Nelson Rimensnyder	Republican Party	$0	$0	$0	Data not available***
Source: Federal Elections Commission, "Campaign finance data," . This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). * According to the FEC, "Receipts are anything of value (money, goods, services or property) received by a political committee." ** According to the FEC, a disbursement "is a purchase, payment, distribution, loan, advance, deposit or gift of money or anything of value to influence a federal election," plus other kinds of payments not made to influence a federal election. *** Candidate either did not report any receipts or disbursements to the FEC, or Ballotpedia did not find an FEC candidate ID.

Election history

2020

See also: Municipal elections in Washington, D.C. (2020)

General election

General election for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia

Incumbent Paul Strauss defeated Eleanor Ory and Cornelia Weiss in the general election for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia on November 3, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Paul Strauss (D)	81.2	251,991
		Eleanor Ory (G)	10.0	31,151
	Submit photo	Cornelia Weiss (R)	7.8	24,168
		Other/Write-in votes	1.0	3,154

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 310,464
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia

Incumbent Paul Strauss advanced from the Democratic primary for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia on June 2, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Paul Strauss	96.8	86,014
		Other/Write-in votes	3.2	2,860

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 88,874
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Green primary election

Green primary for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia

Eleanor Ory advanced from the Green primary for U.S. Shadow Senator District of Columbia on June 2, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Eleanor Ory	90.8	423
		Other/Write-in votes	9.2	43

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 466
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

See also

District of Columbia	2024 primaries	2024 U.S. Congress elections
District of Columbia congressional delegation Voting in District of Columbia District of Columbia elections: 2024 • 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018	Democratic primary battlegrounds Republican primary battlegrounds U.S. Senate Democratic primaries U.S. Senate Republican primaries U.S. House Democratic primaries U.S. House Republican primaries	U.S. Congress elections U.S. Senate elections U.S. House elections Special elections Ballot access

External links

• Search Google News for this topic

Footnotes

[show]

Washington, DC's current delegation to the United States Congress

Senators

Ankit Jain (D)

Paul Strauss (D)

Representatives

Eleanor Norton (D)

Oye Owolewa (D)

Democratic Party (4)

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