Robert White (Washington, D.C., politician)

White announced his candidacy for Mayor in the 2022 election in October 2021. He has been endorsed by DC Attorney General Karl Racine, the DC Nurses Association, the Washington Teachers Union, AFSCME DC Council 20, AFGE Local 1975, the DC Latino Caucus, Sierra Club DC, DC Working Families Party, Jews United For Justice Campaign Fund, DC For Democracy, DC NOW, Our Revolution DC, Capital Stonewall Democrats, NASW Metro DC, and Petworth News. He is also a Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate.

As chair of the Committee on Facilities and Procurement, White accepted at $2,000 donation for his 2020 re-election campaign from the head of Security Assurance Management, a company that contracted security officers to the DC Government. In a whistleblower lawsuit, Security Assurance Management was charged with providing staff that worked under expired licenses, fell asleep on the job, and failed to detect test bombs. White said he could not tell who was telling the truth and claimed he would pursue oversight of company. Before White took office, he said all corporate contributions should be banned.

In 2019, White was a deciding vote approving the no-bid, single source award of a $215 million, five-year contract to start the District's sports betting operations. White initially opposed the deal, expressing reservations about a sole source contract. His position changed after his committee was offered oversight of the transit agency. White claimed that he changed his mind because of benefits the no bid contract would bring to local businesses.

White was sworn into office for a full four-year council term at noon on January 2, 2017. In his time on the Council, he has successfully passed numerous pieces of legislation, including: the Birth to Three for All DC Act (expanded early childhood education), The Returning Citizens Opportunity to Succeed Amendment Act, the Bias in Threat Assessments Evaluation Amendment Act, the Youth Rights Amendment Act, the Housing Rehabilitation Incentives Regulation Amendment Act, the Shared Services to Improve Housing Counseling Act, the Generating Affordability in Neighborhoods (GAIN) Act, the Human Rights Enhancement Amendment Act, the Reporting Sexual Misconduct in Schools Amendment Act, the Financial Literacy Education in Schools Amendment Act, the Economic Development Return on Investment Affordability Amendment Act, the Sexual Harassment Data Collection and Reporting Act, the Fund Management Diversification Amendment Act, the Local Work Opportunity Tax Credit Amendment Act, the Returning Citizens Cannabis Equity Amendment Act, the District Government Transgender and Non-Binary Employment Study Act, the Restore the Vote Amendment Act, the Renewable Energy Future Amendment Act, the Senior Co-Living Program Establishment Act, and more.

From 2008 to 2014, he was legislative counsel in the office of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia's Delegate to the United States House of Representatives. In 2014, he was an unsuccessful candidate for an at-large seat on the council, placing fourth out of 16. He won the Democratic primary for the at-large seat in 2016, defeating 12-year incumbent Vincent Orange. After Orange resigned his seat, White was appointed to Orange's complete term, and sworn in on September 16, 2016. He won election to his seat in November 2016 with 217,834 votes, which counted for 38% of the total votes. In October 2021, he announced his candidacy for mayor in the 2022 election. In June 2022, he finished second in the Democratic Primary, losing to incumbent Muriel Bowser.

On June 14, 2016, Robert White defeated Vincent Orange and David Garber to win the Democratic Party nomination for the at-large seat on the city council. His margin of victory was 2 percentage points. The Washington Post said unnamed political observers attributed White's win to White's persistent attacks on Orange's ethics, his use of a paid staff, and an anti-incumbent feeling among voters. The newspaper also noted that White had worked hard to keep other candidates out of the race, allowing the anti-Orange vote to coalesce behind a single candidate.

On July 28, 2016, the D.C. Chamber of Commerce announced that it had selected Vincent Orange to be the organization's next president. Orange's colleagues on the council claimed this created a strong conflict of interest, and Orange resigned from the council effective August 15, 2016 (the same day on which his Chamber of Commerce position began).

On September 15, 2016, D.C. Democratic State Committee officials voted 43-to-2 to appoint Robert White to Orange's at-large city council seat. He was sworn in the following day.

In June 2016, White endorsed a D.C. campaign finance reform proposal to prohibit any person or corporation from receiving a city contract worth $100,000 or more if they donate to a city council election. The proposal was one of the strictest of several proposals to address corruption and ethics issues facing the council, several of whose members had been found guilty of ethics and fraud charges in the past several years.

On November 8, 2016, White easily won election to the seat to which he had been temporarily appointed. He received 37.9 percent of all votes cast. Incumbent At-large Councilmember David Grosso also retained his seat, coming in second with 17.84 percent of the vote. Challengers G. Lee Aikin (4.82 percent), Carolina Celnik (4.62 percent), and John C. Cheeks (4.12 percent) rounded out the top vote-getters.

White met his future wife, Christy, in law school. She is a lawyer for the SEC. The couple's first child, a daughter, was born in July 2016. Their family is Catholic.

In February 2015, Karl Racine, the newly elected Attorney General of the District of Columbia, hired White as the first Director of the Office of Community Outreach. The job paid $95,000 a year.

In October 2015, White supporters formed a committee to explore another run at an at-large seat on the council, challenging incumbent Vincent Orange. White hired the campaign consulting firm Apollo Political, led by Sean Rankin, to run his campaign. But in late November, the District of Columbia Board of Ethics and Government Accountability, the agency charged with overseeing enforcement of ethics regulations for the city's government employees, issued a ruling in which it said that the White exploratory committee could not fundraise so long as White remained a city employee. The exploratory committee shut down, after having raised roughly $15,000.

In January 2013, White was a co-founder of the Brightwood Park Citizens Association, and was elected its founding president.

White resigned from Norton's office in September 2013, switched his political affiliation to independent, and he filed as a candidate for an at-large seat on the Council of the District of Columbia, seeking to defeat one of the two incumbents (David Catania and Anita Bonds). As the primary season neared its conclusion in April 2014, White reported raising $34,000 in donations. In comparison, Bonds had raised $59,000, and realtor and banker John F. Settles II had raised $28,000. The general election field was a crowded one. After the primary, Catania announced he would run for Mayor of the District of Columbia as an independent. Instead of one open at-large seat, voters now needed to fill two slots. A number of candidates registered as independents to run for the at-large seat, while others saw their chances for winning a seat increase.

White enrolled in law school at American University in Washington, D.C., graduating with a Juris Doctor in 2007 from the Washington College of Law.

From 2007 to 2008, White was a law clerk for the Maryland District Court for Montgomery County, Maryland, and at the law firm of Webster, Fredrickson, Correia & Puth. In July 2008, White took a position as legislative counsel to Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. He specialized in economic development, environmental protection, and home rule legislation.

White attended the private Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, D.C., where he began playing lacrosse his senior year. After graduation, he attended St. Mary's College of Maryland in St. Mary's City, Maryland. He graduated in 2004 with a bachelor's degree in political science and philosophy. He is the first member of his family to graduate from college.

Robert C. White Jr. (born 1982) is an American attorney and politician who had served on the Council of the District of Columbia since 2016.

Robert White was born in Washington, D.C., in 1982 to Robert "Bobby" White Sr. and his wife, Tamara (née Richards). Robert is one of five children. His father is a fourth-generation Washingtonian, and a deacon in the Catholic Church. His parents divorced when he was young, and his mother died from breast cancer in September 1990 when he was eight years old. A month after her death, he was critically injured when a semi-trailer truck side-swiped a passenger vehicle in which he was riding on New Hampshire Avenue in Montgomery County, Maryland. The automobile spun, flipped over, struck the median, flipped into the air, and landed on the hood of another car in the opposite lane. He suffered a severe skull fracture, and underwent several operations before making a full recovery.