you attended Council hearings in person you tuned in to our televised proceedings on channel 13. now you have the chance to listen to us on the radio as we demystify our work and the people who do it this is not a council hearing this is hearing the council with your host Josh Gibson thank you deep voice person with a funky BackBeat indeed this is not a council hearing this is hearing the council you can't have a government without a council so you can't have a government radio station without a council show this is it I'm Josh Gibson director of communications for the council you may also know me as at Council of DC uh the council's handle on Twitter and uh today we are joined by a brand new council member uh Ward 3's Matthew Freeman thank you so much for making time in your busy couple first weeks councilmember really delighted to be here Josh thank you yeah and I think I haven't pulled the records but I think this is the earliest I've ever interviewed a council member well I'm really trying to get out of the box fast so thank you hey I'm happy to help so uh listeners might not realize this but uh back on Christmas Eve I tested positive for covet and thankfully sorry no my symptoms were mild and I recovered quickly uh but when it happened I was thinking oh geez I hope I don't miss the swearing-in of the mayor and the council members and I know that coincidentally um because we were always masked around each other you also had covet right about the same time I did and if I was thinking oh God I hope I don't miss the swearing in you dodged a bullet because you were safely out of quarantine and that was like a life-changing moment so how did that uh realizing he had covet realizing the timeliness of the swearing-in uh how did that uh how'd that make you feel you know I gotta say that I thought it was a miracle that I went 33 months of covet and didn't get it because I was out in the world a lot oh my God you know during the campaign and I just thought you know I I at every turn I thought it would be awful if I got it but you know maybe it was adrenaline maybe it was just dumb luck I didn't get it and I was incredibly healthy for through 33 months and then boom I got it now my symptoms were not that bad I was I was genuinely sick for about a day cold fever uh not terrible but but you know in bed and then I was you know had the sniffles but essentially fine and I was uh you know crossing my fingers that I would it wouldn't be an issue for the swearing-in because you may recall niasha would say over and over again like everybody needs to be sworn in by this amount of time so you gotta be there you got to be there on time because and I don't want to know what we would do if we had a problem with that so I had my fingers pretty tightly across that I would be okay and I was and so it was great yeah because you know two years ago the swearing-in of the new members we did an abbreviated one on the steps of the Wilson building so they missed out on the convention center they missed out on the crap but they did at least get us swearing in but you you know you would have been uh if you hadn't been able to come around in time the first one ever to have to miss their own wearing in or gets sworn in Via Zoom or you know but but thankfully that that didn't come to bed that's when we avoided yes yes uh and and what was your I mean you've had I guess a week to look back on it now how that the Pomp and Circumstance of that day uh you know did it did it really sink in on Election Day did it really sink in on uh primary day did it really sink in on swearing-in day it started sinking in more on swearing in day um it's it and it has sunk in more getting settled in the role and being out there talking with different people and feeling like wow this is my job um after the primary everybody's uh you know of course you're going to be the next council member but I actually didn't allow myself to believe that I felt like I needed to campaign uh hard and earn the votes of ward 3 voters in the general election so I left it all in the field in the general election too and and I didn't have it in my mind oh I'm doing this but it doesn't matter I had it in my mind this is what you do and so I wasn't starting to think of myself as a council member then then after the general election and starting to do the transitions one of the big things I had to do was extricate myself from everything else I do so I was busy with that and it really was by the time I got to the swearing-in and started doing the job that I that it really sunk in like this is the next chapter of my life and what an opportunity it is and I will say I mean I have been saying to others the idea that I will finish my professional career doing this job for however long I do it this is the last job I'm gonna do that I expect and what a blessing and an opportunity to be able to do this I I pinch myself at my good fortune and really feel a sense of responsibility to do as good of a job as that can I mean there's got to be a bit of um when folks come up to you and say council member or you know or you walk behind the Deus where you're yeah you know it's always on a new job there's a bit of feeling like it's a bit of Make-Believe like you're playing grown up because it's it's all brand new and you're you know there's always a little bit of bluff and a new job and until you fit in and know where the bathrooms and the copiers are like but really with being a council member in particular there's got to be uh like is this real are they talking I mean it's so funny that you say that just last night I said to my wife that you know I walk around the building and people are coming in or coming out and people see me and they and they say and I guess it's part of the protocol of how you know people behave that they they say hey council member or they and they call me council member and and all good wishes right like all people saying congratulations council member welcome council member I was saying she might need to start calling the council member my wife good good luck with that yeah that's that's unlikely yes and I and I don't I should know this and I don't do you in your non-council member life go by Matt or Matthew uh you know it's it'll seem bizarre but it actually has been a thing about which I've gone back and forth um after the OJ trial so my name uh I I went by Matt Freeman and uh people would turn it into Mike and Freeman and Froman and all different kinds of things and then after the OJ trial like turning on a dime it always went to Mark Furman oh Jesus Matt frumin to Mark Fuhrman Hotel operators Airline people like it was it it was everywhere it was amazing the impact that that had on people's Consciousness so I thought I can't have this so I made an effort to go by Matthew and when I started to go try to go by Matthew it occurred to me that my mother I was supposedly math here and so but then during the camp but people have always called me back and I guess I gave up on the day-to-day being called Matthew and going and and go by Matt at this point and my fingers are crossed and it won't turn into my that there's enough time that it won't turn into mark from right or is one of the war three businesses uh helpfully pointed out during the campaign it could turn into a probing the sausage of Chicago from uh Ferris Bueller's Day Off right right I thought that was a clever reference obscure the correct degree that you're talking about yeah crackdaggery exactly David did posters which was impressed uh so let's um oh and one more name question I have that's again an obscure question from my my deep dive on your bio one of your daughters names is jophie and I don't think I've heard that before well well it's actually that's my son oh I'm sorry but so jophie jophie was born Joseph and his uh his older sister called him joffice uh and joffas turned into jophie and then we all stuck with jophie and he still goes by jophiel though I don't know in his professional life he might start going start going by Joe Joseph but that's that's a sibling mingling of a name turning into an affectionate name gotcha that is a cool name so let's go a little bit back into your bio this for listeners of the show you know the first interview we tend to do Deep dive and kind of obscurities of of biography and then move on to more policy related stuff than later shows uh but so I was interested to see that you did spend a good chunk of time at the state department and in my just personal experience a lot of folks are either local government oriented and have no clue what's going on in the world or they know who the city council they can Name the members of the city council of Tashkent and but they couldn't for a million dollars tell you who their ANC commissioner was so to see someone transition from the international world to the local world I think is kind of interesting and distinctive so talk to me about your time at the state department first so well by the time the state department grew out of my activism on International and National political things so I I had been as a as a young lawyer I got involved in pro bono projects working on elections around the world and so I was an election observer in Nicaragua and Mongolia in the kurdish-controlled regions of Northern Iraq over time in Morocco and Egypt and in all around the world sometimes as a pro bono lawyer working with an organization the international human rights law group or the national Democratic Institute and for a period working at the national Democratic Institute for international Affairs and I had also been very very involved in National political things there was a thing called the saxophone club that was created when Bill Clinton first ran you might remember he went on The Arsenio Hall Show and played his saxophone right um uh are you maybe too young to remember that but but he did and it was the ability to do different uh that there was a group of young professionals that created a fundraising um vehicle for for Clinton and then for the DNC and I was very active in that and um and then I was always active in National political things and and that was the case for a number of years and then when uh in in 1998 I had the opportunity because of all of that work that I've done both substantive work in the human rights and elections area and then political work I had the opportunity to be appointed to a position in the state department which was really an eye-opening experience to me um it was very exciting to work on all the issues that that I worked on but I I've often joked that if you had asked me to describe how decisions were made in the state department before I went there I wouldn't have hit the bullseye on the target I might not have hit the target I might not have hit the wall that the target was on so it's and that's sobering because you know mastering processes and mastering the processes here or is going to be a challenge but it's not my first rodeo for that so so I had been doing all of that National and international work and at some point people came to me and said there's an opening on the ANC and uh why don't you go for it and at the same time people came to me and said there's there's a project to renovate what was then called Wilson High School now Jackson Reed High School why don't you get involved in that and just because of where I was in my life I was able to do both of those things and I turned on a dime I got involved in local issues that I had not been involved in before so you if my world it's not I'm not a Renaissance person who does both of the things at the same time I did the national and international stuff for one chapter and then got involved in local things and never looked back because I I had the feeling doing the local work that I could really make an impact um really help people in a tangible way and fell in love with the District of Columbia in a different way than I had been in love with it before and all parts of the district with Columbia I represent Ward three but I've been engaged everywhere in the District of Columbia and really feel like it's a special place that I can make a tangible difference and it's almost a month you know one month I was doing National and international stuff and about 15 years ago 16 years ago uh I pivoted entirely and became completely low now before we leave the international chapter what were your favorite destinations what were the coolest places you went or places you want to return to or would recommend others a visit some of my favorite places to go you can't go to right now um and Yemen I spend a decent amount of time in Yemen and Yemen is a beautiful fascinating historic place I'm not sure that it's a tourism destination right at the moment um I spent a decent amount of time in Morocco and that's that's a fascinating wonderful place I I spent a fair amount of time in um in Palestine uh and in Israel and Jerusalem and going back and forth into with Palestinian areas uh I mean if you're a traveler if you're interested in things being in that place and feeling all of that history it's oh it's really something [Music] um I did a I did a project in Slovakia once that I thought was super interesting and I thought it was a a an interesting place to visit and there's a million places to visit I I like that the the election work that I did was another place where you know I just felt incredibly fortunate because you go into a country and you're talking to people about what's on their mind and you're talking to all different kinds of people about what's going on in the country that's the kind of Tourism that really excites me I love to go to the beach but when you have the opportunity to do something and learn so much about what's going on around you that's pretty exciting yeah I would agree with that uh now quick question that I noticed was that uh you if I have this right graduated from GW law in 1988. now Mary Che started teaching at GW earlier than I thought in 1979. so you could have been in her classes my question is were you I I was not in her classes I think and I talked to Mary about this just the other day um I think she took a sabbatical at some point but she was back when I was there she was there um and she was you know the great constitutional law teacher at the time I had a I had an excellent constitutional law teacher it just didn't happen to be her but I knew her by reputation when I was at GW I did I wasn't in her class she it just amazed me because I I was born in 72 so the thought that she's been teaching at GW law since 79 with sabbaticals yeah yeah um is just remarkable she's so she's so vibrant that I never really so 79 what does that mean so 40 plus years she's been teaching it to you yeah yeah yeah and isn't that that's nuts that's amazing uh now another a distinguishing characteristic in your your bio is I believe you are the first former Congressional candidate that interviewed and that it's front and center under your Wikipedia page you know so it's not very history but it was the first I had seen of it right um and what I appreciated was if the story is true that your father tried to convince you to run for Congress you said I've got stuff going on why don't you do it so he did and then the next cycle you did this is in Michigan this is that roughly accurate yeah I mean that's that's that's accurate a little bit of tweaks I mean my my father called me up in um 1995. and I was a young lawyer an active you know on National political things and he said that the Republican Party the the place where I grew up was viewed as a safely Republican District forever and he said but the Republican party and this is after the Gingrich Revolution the Republican party has changed and the district has changed and the Democrat can win here and you should come back here and run and I'm sitting at my desk even we had two small children and a third on the way and I thought like what so so like to get off of the phone I said well Dad you know if you think it's such a great idea I don't think it works for me but why don't why don't you do it and that was really just to get off the phone he was a 75 year old retired psychiatrist at the time and so I didn't I did not imagine that that was going to actually happen um and then but the thing about the call was it was my father's way of saying to me think of yourself as a person who could be a congressman which as a father-son thing was a really lovely thing for him to have done um so a couple months later he calls me up and he says uh the parties endorse me I'm going to be the candidate and it's another time where I sort of fell off my chair because I thought it worried me the idea of my father out there what my father my father was a brilliant brilliant man and his observation about the district was the thing that you've seen in the transformation of American politics since 2000 where the suburbs have flipped and are now Democratic whereas they had been Republican he saw it immediately well so I went back to run his campaign and to make sure that you know it went as well as possible and when I did it a lot of people there said you know you it's great he's doing it but you should do it I didn't go back the next cycle because I had the got the opportunity at the state department but by 2000 I thought if I'm ever going to do it I need to do it and so I I went back and did it and I did the best of any Democrat since 1960. and my performance in 2000 woke up the local party uh the and the state party I didn't I decided this was at my home here in Washington DC so I didn't try it again but bigger players then got into it and eventually Gary Peters who's not a senator um ran and won and turned this word and I saw that you're coincidentally your uh result in the general election in 2000 for Congress and your result in the primary uh for Ward 3 was almost identical it was 41 something and 42 point something so uh well I didn't notice that but the 42 the 42 something was much better than the 41 in 2006. oh absolutely and I saw also there was a great quote from your dad that um uh the quote was uh I've never persuaded anybody of anything in an argument and I had to read it twice because I would say well if you that's not something to brag on that you've never persuaded any word of anything but then I realized in the argument piece that right if you're at you know coming to blows you're not gonna intellectually persuade someone to change their opinion so I like that flavor that you need to um stay friendly with your opponents if you have any chance of actually changing their their mindset it really was it was a big thing for me when he said that to me and we were sitting we were sitting outside on a fall afternoon just chatting and we made that observation he's 75 years old at the time right you know it well into his 70s and and I think that that's probably your experience too once you get to where that adrenaline is running and people are you know angry that the ability to move somebody becomes you don't have anything nobody has the ability to lose somebody so it's it's always there's a reason why uh Aretha sings about it because respect is so important it's showing respect for for people whether they agree with you or not from trying to figure out where there's Common Ground so that you can move people in the direction that you think makes sense of being open to being moved um it's the key to actually getting things done it was a great lesson for another yeah I mean because when you're arguing and once tempers get heated then you're cutting off your nose despite your face and you're just going for a victory for the sake of Victory and you're you're brain is not the decision maker at that point so logic and persuasion Play No role it's exactly right and it's why I mean Congress is the way Congress is now I think there's so little recent thought and only vitriol and uh spite at play I mean it happens everywhere you see people who who take a position and then they they demonize up the other side and then they have to win and and then it's about winning as opposed to getting to a sensible and successful result and I I think it's actually fortunate that I'm having this opportunity at this stage of life because I am the least likely at this point to fall into traps like that than at any other point in my life um so I think it I I have the greatest Prospect to be effective because of because I I won't fall into that on us against them trap yeah well words to live by uh I want to come back there's one other chapter of your elective politics experience we didn't touch on and that was uh back in 2013 running for uh at large Council um and and coming in fourth and the vast majority of our council member well I don't know it's the vast majority but a great number of our council members run and lose and have to come back and run again um and uh I just I guess my question is how do you do that because I think if I had so much invested in something my whole family was behind me and I'm going to 25 breakfasts and meet and greets and it just takes all your energy you get to election day and then it I know you have an active professional and family life personally there's other things in life but then to dip and then to have to rev it up again and do it all over again and hope it comes out differently to talk to me and they've all done it I mean the chairman you know any number of them Robert White you know I'm forgetting others who have run and uh lost and had to come back but how do you do that from an energy and an emotion standpoint so well it's a great question so I had I joked at the end of this campaign that it was either threes the charm or three strikes and you're out because I had run for Congress I had run at large and now I'm running this time and so it was an open question whether it was threes to charm or three strikes in your own uh in I love it I I loved campaigning all three times and I'm not going to kid you the letdown after you don't win is significant like you know you go from being fully engaged and touching lots of people and all kinds of energy to not and thinking that you're gonna have the prospect of having making a big impact and then feeling like well it's not gonna I may but not in the way that I was thinking about it so the fall off is real but all of the people who you're thinking about who ran a second time the morning after they lost and this includes me they felt like I want to get back up on that horse I want to try it again because they're the kind of people who Thrive from that sort of interaction and I I had a a thing on the campaign this time where I I would I went everywhere and including in the general and one time one afternoon I was handing a flyer to a guy and he said dude this is the third time I've seen you today and so if you if you're that kind of person where you really you know you that the energy comes up um then it's a lot of fun to do the fear of the fall off is real so that when when I learned and I had thought since 2013 if the right opportunity arose that I would want to run again it would have to fit with where I was in my life and where everything was and um and it just didn't happen so I had actually thought well I'm not going to have the opportunity to do this and that's okay and then Mary dropped out and and uh and I got the text from Mary saying that she was dropping out and could I help her unwind things and I went upstairs and I talked to my wife you know dude covered we were working out of the house and you could see her golf like for me there was no question for her she thought okay you know this could be great but what if he runs and loses him what will the disappointment be like she experienced that on my behalf I didn't really experience that and happily came out turned out to be greasy charm but I mean I would think that most of the people who run and don't make it the first time are come out of it thinking if I get another chance I'm going to want to do this again even though they lost yeah the funny quote that this was from a city paper article from 2013. it said uh frumin bristles at the suggestion that he ran at large in 2013 to set up the challenge to marry Che in 2014. and I'm like the jokes on them because you are setting yourself for not the next year for a decade later I know you weren't doing it on purpose but and the um yeah I didn't know what I was setting myself up for but um and it certainly didn't it certainly wasn't a challenge to Mary Che which was never a thing that I ever really that I have a period contemplated um but it was it was an interesting narrative and it was brilliant um because that's peace people said that and not you know I I think I know where that narrative came from but it was genius because it diminished my candidacy right so it tied me to Ward three like I don't care about the city I only care about Ward 3 this isn't a serious thing and Lee Atwater had the idea of like you know part of it was I've been so active in my community and would have been thought of as a natural successor to marriage even then and to use that against me uh was was genius it wasn't determining like I don't want to overplay it but that taking a person's strength and turning it into a weakness is part of politics right and also to your point about if you run and lose the next day you start thinking you know can I do this again is there another opportunity that gets built into the narrative that when people run unlikely campaigns people are like oh they're just getting try and increase their name ID you know kind of go through the motions learn the system so that when the campaign they really want to win comes they'll be all set but I can't imagine given the tortures of the campaign that people would ever run for a campaign they were almost certain they were going to lose yeah I don't think that I don't think that's how it happens I think people think see a path right and and you see a way in which they could win a race and they get in it and they pursue it and then they fall in love with it and even though that time didn't work that you know the Pepe thought they saw it happens in football or running back sees an opening and goes for it and then the opening closes somehow that doesn't mean they don't want to run again they want to get that football again and run again and so I don't think it's oh I'm gonna do this and then four years six years two years I'm gonna run again it's that they do it and then they think wow if I ever had the chance to do that again and try to I've learned so much and I that I'm going to want to do it if an opportunity came up um I will ask you I'm going to ask you one more question I'm going to ask you one policy question um and then we go we have a sort of humorous closeout round that's okay uh but the policy question is um some would argue um that your experience uh or the experience of the ward 3 primary had a bit of a ranked Choice voting analog flavor to it um where do you come down on ranked Choice voting if it were to come back before the council yeah I like the idea of Greg Chase learning um I think that I think the way the elections and I worked on elections all around the world and all different seeing different permutations of different kinds of systems I actually think that the argument for any choice voting is only getting stronger and the reason is with our Fair election system and the relatively low thresholds to qualify as a candidate and to have enough money to to run as a very serious candidate so fair elections in award election I I think you get like if you have 200 donors from the district and you qualified and that say they're 50 donors and that's ten thousand dollars and then you get the 40 uh the fifty thousand dollars in matching amount of that sixty thousand dollars and then you get the Forty thousand as your base payments you got a hundred thousand dollars 200 contributors and you have a hundred thousand dollars to spend on a campaign more and more people are gonna think I'm gonna throw my hat in that ring and I'm gonna be able to run a very you know full campaign so then you have lots of candidates on the bell and a challenge for people in the ward 3 election was we had nine candidates I I obviously think that I was the best choice to be the ward 3 council member foreign there were eight other great choices you know those the people who were in that race they you know each one of them had something really special that they brought a lot of talented people so I didn't Envy the voters who had to choose amongst us and ranked Choice voting would have given them the ability to uh to express Express their preferences and make them count in a very crowded field of able people so so I I I support them yeah I mean it's a little bit like if you went in a restaurant and you ordered the you know a side salad it's your dinner and they were at a side salad so you just had to take whatever the next dish up was instead of saying well if you don't have the side salad I'll take uh you know another vegetarian dish or something at least if you can rank things it makes sense that even if you don't get your Top Choice you you know can at least um work your way through a progression and and you can cast your vote for your top choice I mean often there are situations where people say well you know that person might be a great candidate but they have no chance to win but they're the person who you really believe in and you want to show your support for them scaring people away from casting their the vote their vote of choice because it's not practical um to the extent ranked Choice voting helps on that I think it's important yeah and also the fact that I mean you're you know you're getting a 41 42 percent in a heavily contested race is a very high number but in a lot of contested races we have council members some of our best council members came on the council having gotten at least in their primary a very small uh percent of the vote and at least with ranked choice you know at least in the ultimate round you have someone who has the majority of voices behind them and it's interesting um so speaking of uh choices where unfortunately we're at a time so we're moving on to our our humorous closeout round and speaking of menu choices um this is something I've done at dinner parties for years and every single council member who has been around since I started uh about 10 years ago has answered this question um these are different desserts dates and candy cookies ice cream and Pie and I'd like you to rank them from your most favorite to your least favorite ranking all five all right well Pie's my favorite ice cream is my second Cookie's third cake four and Candy five but I would like ice cream and Pie together if that's a possibility okay it is interesting I keep it I keep a chart I would have to quickly check and see if you matched with anybody um but it's interesting to see how people answer because many people ask questions about well what about chocolate or what if what you know and but it's some it's funny some people answer right away and I I admire that um that Pro that I I guess I envisioned each one like I tell you I pictured blueberry pie I didn't ask about it and chocolate chip cookies and uh the the chairman uh also I believe put pie first and I think he volunteered that either rhubarb or strawberry rhubarb pie was his favorite um but maybe you guys can build a uh some sort of a pie Coalition so you know the chairman is I believe the Chairman's originally from Cleveland and I'm from Detroit and rhubarb is the Midwest thing so that would make sense so maybe maybe that's where it comes from I think of rhubarb as a Midwestern thing do you think it's around here have you had it have you ever seen it here uh yeah I've seen I've seen at the farmers markets and stuff like that I don't see a lot of rhubarb pie on menus but that could just be um common sense for lack of a better word um but uh but anyway thank you uh we're sadly we're out of time a little overtime actually but um this has been a lot of fun and uh I hope you come back uh we like I said do policy uh but also try to keep it light and fun in the future interviews I I would I would love to do that um next time I won't bring up the OJ trial then yeah that's I think is another first but a really good well thought out reason to to uh determine which version of your name to use um well uh anyway I'll be grateful to have you back uh as soon as you'd like uh but uh thank you uh very much for being with us today listeners uh remember to subscribe to our podcast on Soundcloud or wherever you get your podcasts just search under hearing the council thanks again for joining us tune in next time we're on DC radio at 96.3 on your fm hd4 dial or at dcradio.gov I'm Josh Gibson this is not a council hearing this is here in the council thank you councilmember take care thank you very much Josh all right bye-bye