ANC Election 2020: Meet Zachary Hoffman

Of the three candidates running to represent Single Member District 5D06 in Trinidad, Zachary Hoffman has probably been the most visible. He speaks up at ANC meetings, both in person and over Zoom, got his lawn signs out to most intersections early, and he is very responsive on Twitter.

Yet recently, Hoffman has been accused of violently threatening people in 2018 in the debate over the tipped-wage ballot measure, Initiative 77. In an phone interview yesterday, Hoffman strongly denied that he ever threatened or intimidated anyone but admitted that incendiary things were said on both sides and that he wishes “the entire scenario had happened differently.”

“I was physically threatened, doxed, harassed at my job,” says Hoffman. “When someone threatens to blow out your kneecaps with a baseball bat, the rhetoric starts to get heated.”

Hoffman, who identifies as white and lives on Staples street, is a bartender at Café Filí near Union Station and an Executive Vice President with the DC Bar and Restaurant Workers Alliance. Because of his experience in food service, Hoffman is interested in the ANC’s small business licensing responsibilities. Hoffman is concerned about the many independent restaurants in and around Union Market, in Ivy City and along Bladensburg Road (as well as those outside the ANC) that have been hit hard by the pandemic and economic decline. “I would also like to see the ANC pass resolutions and lobby the Council to support local businesses,” says Hoffman.

Hoffman wants the Florida Ave cycle track to be repaired and maintained and to add bus shelters to the D8 and D4 bus stops on Montello Ave. “I think I have the relationship-building and coalition-building abilities to get it done,” he says. For housing, Hoffman acknowledges that “more development is coming,” but he is promising a hard line on the construction of affordable housing in 5D06: “I will not support anyone doing [only] the minimum threshold of affordable housing. That doesn’t get us to the 36,000 units the mayor’s calling for in any meaningful way.”

Covid-19’s impact on Trinidad is one of Hoffman’s top public safety concerns. Trinidad and its surroundings consistently ranks as one of the areas with the highest number of positive cases within the city. “It makes being here more dangerous,” says Hoffman. Hoffman also supports the violence interrupters at work in Trinidad, “We can make the community safer without needing increased policing which traditionally has not made us more safe,” he says.

Hoffman says that his competitors, Marina Budimir and Michael Lussier, are “fine people and great neighbors” but that “there’s a difference between wanting to do something and having the ability to do it.” He takes issue with Budimir’s assertion that she is more progressive because she supported Initiative 77.

“I would remind Marina that thousands of bar and restaurant workers were against Initiative 77 and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous,” says Hoffman. “It was clear that workers did not want that initiative. There is no opinion that matters more, than that of the workers who were affected, in my opinion.”

Photo courtesy of Zachary Hoffman. Chart via D.C. Coronavirus page.