Candidate Profile: Ben Bergmann For Ward 3 DC City Council Seat

WASHINGTON, DC — Ben Bergmann is a member of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission and chairman of ANC 3D. The 32-year-old attorney and consultant lives in Wesley Heights/Cathedral Heights with his wife Karuna and their two children.

Bergmann is on the ballot for the June 21 Democratic Party Primary. He's running against eight other candidates to fill the vacant Ward 3 seat on the D.C. City Council: Deirdre Brown, Henry Z Cohen, Tricia Duncan, Beau Finley, Eric Goulet, Matthew Frumin, Monte Monash and Phil Thomas. The winner will square off against Republican David Krucoff in the Nov. 8 general election.

Patch has asked each of the candidates running in select races to fill out a questionnaire, sharing facts about themselves and why voters should choose them to represent their party in November.

Name

Ben Bergmann

Campaign website

Ben Bergmann

DC Neighborhood

Wesley Heights/Cathedral Heights

Office sought

DC Council, Ward 3

Party affiliation

Democrat

Education

B.A., Duke University; J.D., Yale Law School

Occupation

Attorney & Consultant

Family

I met my wife Karuna a few weeks after graduating from college in Houston, Texas, where we both worked as public school teachers. My son, Sameer, is 5 years old and attends kindergarten at Mann Elementary. Our daughter, Ramona, was born in March 2020 (!) and is currently in daycare.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

N/A

Age

32

Previous public office, appointive or elective

I am an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner and the Chair of ANC 3D.

Why are you seeking this office?

I am running to make this city more affordable and to bring a fresh, independent perspective to a council that has repeatedly failed to exercise oversight or push aggressively to address systemic challenges. I will fight every day to make sure this is a city where everyone can gain a foothold, raise a family, and age in place.

Please complete this statement: The single most pressing issue facing my constituents is ___, and this is what I intend to do about it.

This city is too damn expensive. DC is consistently rated at the top of the list when it comes to the cost of housing. The District also has the *highest* childcare costs in the nation. We must tackle both if we want this to be a city where all families can thrive. I have set forth a comprehensive plan to reduce the cost of housing by dramatically increasing the supply of housing through a comprehensive plan to deliver more market-rate and affordable units at the scale that we need to truly make it possible for families to thrive here and seniors to age in place. With respect to childcare, we must push to reduce costs and expand access through Birth to Three in the short term. But long term, I want to start a process of expanding public education in the District to include the toddler and infant years.

What is your position on DC statehood?

YES! I firmly believe that statehood has become inevitable. The partisan attitude towards statehood is actually beneficial in many ways. Joe Manchin is now the last of his kind--no Democrat will be elected to the U.S. Senate going forward who does not support DC statehood and ending the filibuster (a prerequisite to the first). When Democrats next gain unified control, statehood will happen.

How would you address the problem of gun violence in the District?

There are no simple solutions to gun violence, which is why we must proceed with a comprehensive approach to public safety. Most of the guns that are used to commit crime in the District are flooding in from other states, many illegally. The Council must ensure that sufficient resources are directed to the difficult task of finding and closing the conduits by which guns enter the District. Read my full public safety plan at www.benbergmann.com/

What are the major differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

Of the leading candidates, I am the only one who has refused to take tax increases on the wealthy off the table. I am also the only candidate to focus on childcare, a significant burden on families in the District. The issue is essentially absent from all the other candidates' websites and agendas. While many candidates proclaim that they are invested in building more housing, their statements are heavily caveated and few are committed to building housing at the scale that we need if we actually want to drive down costs, as well as produce more deeply affordable units. From the very beginning, I have made a point to invest the time and energy into putting out a detailed set of plans and ideas for voters to evaluate.

If you are challenging an incumbent, in what way has the current officeholder failed the community?

N/A

What other issues do you intend to address during your campaign?

We need a robust agenda on transit. Investing in transit, including building out a Home Rule transit network using the Circulator and Streetcar to fill in gaps in the existing system could be a game changer, especially if done alongside bus lanes and other improvements. Long term, we need to push for Metro expansion within the District down Wisconsin Avenue.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I am an accomplished attorney with experience handling complex anticorruption investigations and sprawling litigation matters. As a former teacher and a current DCPS parent, I have unique insight into where we are falling short and what we need to do to build strong schools in every neighborhood. As an ANC Commissioner, I have brought neighbors together around a bike lane proposal on New Mexico Avenue without significant acrimony because of my commitment to sustained engagement.

What is the best advice anyone ever gave you?

Don't forget to sleep.

Is there anything else you would like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

My focus on ensuring our schools and teachers are equipped to meet our students' socio-emotional needs is influenced by my own experience as a young learner. I grew up in Gainesville, Florida the youngest child of professors whose jobs required that they live long distances away from each other. From kindergarten until the end of middle school, my parents taught history at two different universities in two different states. My mom was a not-yet-tenured professor at the University of Florida and my dad was a professor at the University of Connecticut. During the academic year, my dad would commute every other week to Florida for the weekend. This dynamic clearly played a role in fueling significant behavioral issues during my childhood.

Throughout elementary school, I struggled to meet behavioral expectations. I refused to follow directions, I would shut down during tests, I would speak out of turn, I would throw fits. I would shout down adults who tried to discipline me, and I would try to keep them away by swinging sticks and hitting. I was rude and I refused to apologize. I took up too much space and too much time. Things were better when I wasn’t there. As a result, suspensions were frequent and I was often forced to sit at a desk up against the chalkboard or somewhere else far from peers.

By 6th grade, I had one expulsion under my belt and had cycled through 5 different schools, two public schools, one Jewish day school, one local private school, and finally a Waldorf-inspired school. The suspensions continued, although the volatility, stubbornness, and other behavioral issues of the early years gradually subsided. My parents were able to keep looking for different educational environments, which required both research and resources, and I shudder to think what our experience would have been like had we been unable to do so.

In fourth grade, the principal at the fourth elementary school I attended confidently told me and my mom I would end up in jail. I suppose he intended to try to “scare us straight” before he expelled me. I grew up becoming accustomed to seeing my mom be shamed and browbeaten over my behavior. My father was only home every other weekend during the academic year so the burden of sitting through conference after conference and having to drop everything to pick me up fell on her. I still remember sitting in the backseat as she broke down and cried after yet another suspension. It took a long time for me to find my footing but I eventually did, in large part because I had several incredible teachers who believed in and encouraged me despite the outbursts or the fits of aggression. It wasn’t true, they discovered, that I couldn’t read—just that I found filling in bubbles hopelessly boring and did not much like being told what to do.

Good teachers can change a child’s life. They did for me.

I was very lucky. We had sufficient resources to search and find a non-traditional learning environment where I was ultimately successful. Statistics show that my trajectory would likely have been different had my parents not been white academics. There are so many children in our city dealing with similar issues, lashing out or shutting down as a result of trauma and circumstances far more dire than mine, and we routinely fail to meet their needs year after year after year. We label them. We give up on them. And we eventually push them out and act as if it wasn’t on us. These kids don’t need drilling and testing, they need love and support.

Kids are more than data points defined by test scores, which means that our schools must meet the needs of the whole child. The pandemic has shined a spotlight on the importance of attending to our kids’ social and emotional well-being. But well before 2020, there was a need for more school-based mental health services and for robust trauma-informed professional development. If elected, both will be a personal priority for me.

Related:

Candidate Profile: Deirdre Brown For Ward 3 DC City Council Seat

Candidate Profile: Tricia Duncan For DC City Council In Ward 3

Candidate Profile: Beau Finley For DC City Council In Ward 3

Candidate Profile: Matthew Frumin For DC City Council In Ward 3

Candidate Profile: Monte Monash For City Council In Ward 3

Candidate Profile: Phil Thomas For Ward 3 DC City Council Seat