As this election cycle finally draws to a close, all eyes inside the Beltway will undoubtedly be glued to their phones watching “the most important battleground seat,” as Paul Strauss put it: the District of Columbia’s shadow senator.
Strauss was joking, even though he takes his (unpaid) job as one of Washington’s two shadow senators pretty seriously. As shadow senator, he is an elected official tasked with advocating D.C. statehood, a position he has held since 1997.
“They don’t really take you seriously in the Senate until you’ve been there a few decades,” said Strauss, who’s next up for election in 2026. “I was sent there to do a job that’s taking longer than I hoped it would … but I’m not going to give up.”
