Polonne Sunflower Garden
Co-founded the garden on Wisconsin Avenue and helps keep it going.
About
Meet Connor
Connor arrived in DC in 2012 to start his undergraduate career at American University, where he studied International Relations. Not one for time off, he spent half his summers in college biking across America to raise money for affordable housing. After graduation, he followed his lifelong call to service to Ukraine where he taught high school English as a proud Peace Corps volunteer. After his service, he returned stateside for graduate school at Johns Hopkins SAIS back in DC. Today he works for a charity that leads humanitarian aid convoys into Ukraine — which in practice means driving toward a war rather than away from it. He shares the neighborhood with his fiancée, Lindsey.
His journey is less a career than a habit: turn up, do the part nobody photographs, come back the next day. A commission seat asks for that same habit at a local scale, whether it’s reading the zoning cases, sitting through the meetings, or making the third phone call after the first two went nowhere. If elected, he’ll bring that same commitment home — showing up for 3C08 with the same tenacity he’s shown everywhere else.
Before the ballot
He didn’t wait
Wisconsin Avenue
Across the district
Last winter
He didn’t wait
to be elected
None of this required a title, a budget, or anyone’s permission.
Adopt-a-block cleanups
Got neighbors to take on their own blocks, then showed up and did the work alongside them.
Winter weather support
When it snowed, he started a group chat matching neighbors who needed a walk cleared with neighbors who had a shovel and a free hour.
The plan
What he’ll do
What he’ll do
for your block
A commissioner advises, licenses, and unsticks. Here is what Connor would use those three powers for.
Streets you can cross safely
Reno Road reform and speed humps top the list, along with real benches at bus stops, sidewalks that are safe to walk, and a city that works for people on bikes.
Reno Road · Speed humps · Bus stops · Bike lanesHomes families can afford
Sensible development and affordable housing that follow Ward 3’s historic development patterns instead of ignoring them.
Zoning cases · New homes · Ward 3 patternsA neighborhood that sustains itself
Thriving small businesses along Wisconsin and Connecticut Avenues, fewer vacant storefronts, and real improvements to Bryce Park and the other spaces we share.
Small business · Vacant storefronts · Bryce Park
How he’ll serve
Answers on the
Answers on the
first call
Two thousand residents, one seat, and a monthly meeting most people can’t attend. Connor’s promise is to be an active champion rather than a passive one: semi-regular office hours at a real place and time, zero tolerance for conflicts of interest, and an answer on the first call rather than the fifth.
Beyond 3C08, he wants to lead city-wide reform of the ANC system itself — making commissions across DC more proactive and more empowered, so the layer of government closest to residents is also the most useful one.
That starts with listening. This plan should change as he knocks doors, so if your block has a problem that isn’t on it, that’s worth an email.
