If you’re surprised to learn that a Puerto Rico-born immigration lawyer is running for local office in D.C. as a Republican, you’re probably not alone.
“I am probably one of the most unconventional Republicans you will meet,” admits Manuel Rivera.
Rivera wasn’t even a Republican until the last presidential election. Before that, he was a lifelong Democrat — a conservative one, by his own telling — who once mounted an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the Rhode Island House of Representatives.
But now he’s flying the Republican flag, and running for D.C. attorney general.
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Rivera is one of seven like-minded Republican candidates vying for local office in D.C. this year, a slate that includes other similarly convention-bucking contenders. For example, a self-proclaimed Biblical Christian woman is challenging the D.C. Council chairman, who has been in office longer than she’s been alive. And a Republican will be on the ballot in Ward 1 — considered the city’s most progressive ward — for the first time in 16 years.
“This election is especially important because it represents a renewed effort by the Republican Party to offer the District’s voters a range of ideas and qualified candidates,” Rivera told The Washington Sun. “We have assembled one of the strongest Republican slates in history.”
But for as strong as Rivera may think that slate is, so too are the local currents working against it. There hasn’t been a Republican elected to office in D.C. for almost two decades, and President Donald Trump’s vote share in the 2024 election barely exceeded 6%.
“It’s pointless,” said David Krucoff, who ran for the Ward 3 council seat as a moderate Republican in 2022 — notching a respectable 22% of the vote. He later became disillusioned with the party and is now an independent.
Still, turnout in the June Republican primary was higher than it has been in 14 years, a sign party leaders say is an indication of renewed local energy in the face of an inescapably tough political landscape. And many Republicans concede that even with victory unlikely, the value in running is just to offer voters something different.
“Washington, D.C. is a one-party system,” says Rivera. “I believe democracy works best when voters have a real choice. Somebody must be willing to challenge that status quo.”
Crime, Rodents and Education
The conventional wisdom in D.C. is that Rivera’s chances — like those of his fellow GOP candidates — aren’t very good in November.
Beyond the raw political reality that only 5% of the city’s 485,000 registered voters are Republicans, the party’s national brand has been on a downward trajectory in urban areas over the last three decades. There hasn’t been a Republican elected to the council since 2008.
“If you want to be a local Republican in D.C. now and generally are affiliated with the administration, that’s just not a popular thing to be,” said Krucoff.
Still, Rivera and the other GOP contenders say that D.C. voters are sophisticated enough to look past party labels. And D.C. voters certainly have in the past: In 1994, Carol Schwartz, a Republican member of the council, scored 42% of the vote against Marion Barry in the city’s mayoral race.
“Public safety, government accountability, taxes, and protecting our citizens are not just Republican or Democrat issues,” said Rivera. “They are D.C. residents’ issues.”
The main issue that animates almost all of the GOP contenders in D.C. is public safety — which has also been a primary focus of Trump’s, who last year deployed the National Guard in the city and frequently touts his successes on bringing down crime rates.
“People don’t care if you’re from the left or the right. I tell them I am a Republican, that might jar them a bit, but I say, ‘Hey, what’s your biggest issue?’ And they say public safety,” said Jett Jasper, a candidate for the Ward 1 seat on the council, who says he would focus on increasing hiring for the Metropolitan Police Department.
Jorge Rice, who is running in Ward 6, says his emphasis on public safety comes from personal experience — he was assaulted on the D.C. streetcar in 2024, leaving him with a broken nose. “It made me want to take action,” he said.
In Ward 5, Jeff Kihien says it was rats in his backyard — as bipartisan a complaint as there is in D.C. — that motivated his own decision to run. “Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States, of the most powerful country on the whole planet, but we cannot solve the basic problem of rodents,” he said.
Kihien — who immigrated to the U.S. from Peru — also said he supports a “family wage” that would allow one half of every married couple to stay home instead of having to work.
Darrell Green, a former D.C. police officer who is running for an at-large council seat, is focused on one thing: “Education, education, education.” He thinks D.C. needs to do more to battle high truancy and absenteeism in schools. Abi Prudent, a candidate for council chair, is similarly interested in schools, primarily in preserving the IMPACT teacher assessment tool that some Democratic officials and activists have said they want to scrap.
“It’s hard for me to understand why we’d want to take away something that’s benefitting kids,” she said.
Denise Rosado, who is running to be D.C.’s non-voting delegate to Congress, would de-emphasize the city’s fight for statehood, instead pushing to exempt residents from paying federal taxes. As for Rivera, he criticizes incumbent Attorney General Brian Schwalb for “filing a lot of flashy lawsuits and some of them are settling for pennies on the dollar.”
‘The Hard Route’
The goal for the Republican candidates in D.C. seems clear: Don’t let Trump dominate the conversation. None of them fully shy away from Trump; they will say they voted for the president, but just as quickly point out where they disagree with him.
“It’s to the benefit of the voter you are talking about issues that you would have control over, and those are local issues like trash and recycling and rats and schools and the local budget,” said Carolina Celnik, the executive director of the D.C. GOP.
Still, there’s often significant overlap in D.C. between what happens on the local and federal levels — largely because the city is often beholden to the whims of Congress and the White House.
In that, the D.C. Republican Party has evolved over the years. It was once consistently in favor of Congress letting District residents and their elected officials determine their own fate; it even gave a nod towards the eventual goal of D.C. statehood. Now, Celnik says, local Republicans are content with the newly aggressive role that Capitol Hill is playing in local politics.
“They are doing what they are doing for the benefit of D.C. residents,” she said. “It’s honestly kind of embarrassing that the federal government has had to step in and do for the city what the city should have been doing for itself.”
D.C. voters, though, may disagree. A Washington Post poll conducted over the summer found that 79% of respondents said they opposed Trump’s aggressive involvement in local issues.
But given that the GOP has become so enmeshed in the city’s local affairs, the Republican candidates say they could serve as a friendly conduit between the White House, Congress and local officials.
“We should have a better relationship with the federal government and White House,” said Rivera. “As a Republican… I can build that bridge.”
Krucoff, the former Republican, thinks there is space for right-leaning candidates in D.C. Starting in 2028, independent voters — and there are roughly 80,000 of them — will be able to cast ballots in either the Republican or Democratic primary. That, he says, could open a path for a conservative contender while avoiding the political baggage of being associated with the GOP brand.
“It has never been a better time for anyone who sees themselves as center or right of center to become active in D.C. politics as an unaffiliated voter,” he said.
For D.C.’s local Republican candidates, though, the focus now is more pedestrian: They need to knock on doors and meet voters, as well as raise money. In that, another very real challenge emerges. As of last month, for one, Rivera had just over $10,000 in his campaign’s account. Schwalb, the Democratic incumbent, had $821,000. Prudent had roughly $2,300; Chairman Phil Mendelson, the incumbent, had $87,000.
Nonetheless, Prudent remains upbeat about the challenge she has assigned herself.
“Yes, I have allowed myself to take this campaign the hard route by running as a Republican,” she said. “But what’s most important for me is not trying to make things happen the easy way and trying to convince people to vote for me because of a letter that’s next to my name.”
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