LaRuby Zinea MayDistrict of Columbia Register Volume 54 - No.1 (download PDF) (born December 28, 1975)United States Public Records, 1970-2009 (Florida, Washington DC, 1994-2009) is an American politician and African American lawyer who formerly represented Ward 8 on the Council of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. She won the Ward 8 special election on May 10, 2015, succeeding Marion Barry, who died in office on November 23, 2014. May, who was sworn into office on May 14, 2015, served out the remainder of Barry's term, which ended on December 31, 2016. During her first council term, she was active on the issues of crime and violence, marijuana policy, assisted suicide, and improvements to Advisory Neighborhood Commissions. She criticized the city's emergency medical services department, opposed the creation of a public electrical utility, and applauded the construction of a sports arena in her ward. She was one of the few council members to support the mayor during the FreshPAC scandal, and although she asked Congress to end its school voucher program she also supported a political action committee which supports an expanded voucher and charter school program in the District. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
She announced in January 2016 that she would campaign for election to a full, four-year term on the district council. She lost the June 2016 Democratic Party primary nomination election to Trayon White. As of 2018, she is chairperson of United Medical Center.
Life and career
Early life and education LaRuby May was born about 1975 in Pensacola, Florida, to Reverend Theophalis May and his wife, Mary. Her father owned a building firm, May's Construction Company, and was widely known in Pensacola for saving and restoring historic buildings. He was also pastor of Friendship Missionary Baptist Church.
May received a Bachelor of Arts degree in human development and family studies from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 1997. She then enrolled at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she received a master's degree in community counseling and psychotherapy. She obtained her JD degree in 2006 from the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia. She was admitted to the District of Columbia Bar and The Florida Bar.
Early career work May moved to Ward 8 in 2002. While in law school, May took a position as the executive director of the Gift Family Resource Center, a program of Garden Memorial Presbyterian Church which provided after-school and summer educational and enrichment programs for children in elementary and middle school. She left the position in 2003. In 2005 and 2006, May served as a legislative intern and then as Director of Constituent Services in D.C. Council member Marion Barry's office.
May joined Vision of Victory Community Development Corporation in 2007. May served as a project consultant for the nonprofit, which taught workplace skills to at-risk teens and young adults and engaged in low-income housing development. Councilmember Marion Barry helped the program win funding from the District of Columbia Department of Employment Services. May was appointed executive director of the program in May 2008. She continued to hold the position even as she served on the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia Housing Authority, and was serving in the position at the time of her D.C. District Council special election.
May was appointed to the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia Housing Authority in April 2009 after being nominated by Council Member Marion Barry. Her appointment was confirmed by the D.C. District Council on April 30, 2009. In November of the year, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty fired Bill Slover, chair of the Board of Commissioners, and replaced him with May. Mayor Fenty had transferred millions of dollars in capital funds from the District of Columbia Department of Parks and Recreation to the housing authority, and ordered the housing authority to build several new city parks and recreation centers. Contracts for the new parks were awarded to Banneker Ventures, a firm owned by a friend of Mayor Fenty's. May not only continued to implement the parks construction scheme,; she added another $50 million to the effort from housing authority funds. As May's term as board chairperson neared completion on July 12, 2010, May took over as head of the search committee seeking a new chairperson. She then replaced existing search committee member Ken Grossinger (who represented the Metropolitan Washington AFL-CIO) with Valerie Santos, Fenty's deputy mayor for planning and economic development. According to The Washington Post, this upset Fenty opponents, who saw it as yet another example of a power-grab by the mayor.
May's work on the Board of Commissioners of the D.C. Housing Authority left her closely associated with Fenty.
At some point in her career, May also worked for Capitol Services Management, a firm which provided management services to D.C. public housing buildings.
Relationship with Muriel Bowser In 2012, May co-founded the Community College Preparatory Academy, the first adult charter school in Ward 8, and served as the founding chairperson of its board of trustees.
That same year, May joined the election campaign of Muriel Bowser, a Fenty protégé who was running for a seat on the District Council from Ward 4. May had first met Bowser in 2010, when they both worked on Fenty's unsuccessful campaign to win renomination as the D.C. Democratic Party's candidate for mayor. May and Bowser's relationship continued over the next three years. In January 2013, May spotted Bowser at an awards ceremony in the Congress Heights neighborhood, and offered her support. When Vision of Victory opened Roundtree Residences, a 91-unit affordable-housing community, May invited Bowser to attend to give the mayoral candidate more visibility in Ward 8. May quickly became part of a very tight inner circle of Bowser supporters. Bowser named May her Ward 8 field coordinator when Bowser ran for the Democratic Party's mayoral nomination in 2013. According to The Washington Post, May pledged to help Bowser win the Ward 8 Democratic Party straw poll. Bowser upset then-incumbent D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray. Gray's loss in the straw poll was a turning point in the Democratic nomination, Bowser defeated Gray in the Democratic primary on April 1, 2014, then easily won the mayoralty in the general election in November 2014.
Bowser named May to the Economic Development and Jobs Committee of her mayoral transition team.
2015 D.C. Council special election Ward 8 Council Member Marion Barry died in office on November 23, 2014. Two weeks later, May filed to run for Barry's council seat in the 2015 special election. At the time, the leading candidate to replace Barry, The Washington Post said, was Marion Christopher Barry, the late council member's 34-year-old son. Brianne Nadeau, Ward 1 Council Member, was one of May's earliest supporters, publicly endorsing her in late January and fundraising for her.
By February 3, 2015, 14 other candidates had joined May in the crowded Ward 8 special election. May proved to be a fund-raising powerhouse, however. By January 30, she had raised $177,405 and had spent almost nothing. Her closest competitor was Sheila Bunn, who had raised $51,692 by the same date. Far back in the pack was Trayon White, a former D.C. Board of Education member who had raised a mere $2,562. The Washington Post asserted that May's fund-raising advantage was critical in raising her name awareness in Ward 8, where she was little known, and allowing her to stand out in the crowded election field. Most of May's 535 contributors were corporations, nearly all of whom had donated $500 (the maximum amount permitted under D.C. election law). Local political columnist Jonetta Rose Barras argued that this might actually prove a handicap to May's election, as she would have few places to turn for major donations later in the campaign. Both radio station WAMU and the Washington City Paper criticized May for taking advantage of the "LLC loophole" in city election finance law.
By late February, however, Barry had stumbled badly in the Ward 8 race, and May was seen by Mike DeBonis at The Washington Post as the front-runner in the election. May raised another $66,000 between January 30 and March 1, most of which came from real estate developers and construction firms. May had $130,000 on hand to spend during the last six weeks of the race, about four times as much money as her nearest competitor. May's fund-raising efforts were led by now-Mayor Muriel Bowser, who headlined several fund-raising meetings for her. Trayon White, meanwhile, raised just over $10,000 and $12,000 in his campaign coffere.
May received another boost in the crowded field of candidates when the D.C. Board of Elections randomly chose her name to appear second on the list of candidates. May's fundraising reached $239,621 as of March 10.
On April 3, May easily won a Ward 8 Democratic party straw poll, confirming her lead in the Ward 8 race. May received 177 votes, followed by Trayon White with 79 votes, Natalie Williams with 77 votes, Sheila Bunn with 53 votes, and Eugene Kinlow with 30 votes. (All others received fewer than 30 votes.) Will Sommer, writer of the influential "Loose Lips" political column for the Washington City Paper observed that May's win may have indicated trouble for her campaign: May paid for a free barbecue for all comers just two blocks from where the straw vote was held, and Mayor Muriel Bowser stood on a nearby street waving a May campaign sign. Yet, May could only muster fewer than 200 votes.
May was endorsed by the editorial board of The Washington Post on April 12. She had also won the endorsement of former Ward 8 Council Member Sandy Allen and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club (a caucus of LGBT individuals affiliated with the D.C. Democratic Party). Bowser's support for May proved to be one of her critical assets, as Bowser turned a portion of her campaign organization over to May—providing her with hundreds of experienced volunteers and up-to-date voter lists. May also benefited from a close association with Phinis Jones, owner of Capitol Services Management. Although mayors are expected to campaign for candidates they endorse, other candidates in the Ward 8 race felt Bowser went far beyond all previous efforts.
In April 2015, Candidate Stuart Anderson dropped out of the race and urged voters to support Trayon White. Candidate Eugene D. Kinlow mailed a flyer to residents accusing May of favoring the interests of big business and developers outside Ward 8 to those of the residents of Ward 8. A Kinlow press release claimed that the charter public school May led was failing its students.
In an interview published on March 9, 2011, May told independent alternative newsweekly Inweekly, "If there were opportunities for me, I would love to return to Pensacola. ... I would appreciate the opportunity to serve the community which helped me to become the person that I am. But I am also practical and understand that I have greater access to resources away from Pensacola than I do in Pensacola."
In summer 2014, Jones was accused of gross mismanagement of and diversion of funds at the city-owned low-income Park Southern Apartments, leading to a fraud investigation by the D.C. Inspector General. May defended her relationship with Jones, saying, "Mr. Jones is a supporter, more importantly he is a Ward 8 voter. He invited some of his neighbors and friends to come in and hear me. Any opportunity to talk to Ward 8 voters is one that I accept." Other candidates and citizens who opposed May began to call her "a big-money 'outsider'," and called her a pawn of Bowser, the corporations, and the labor unions which had endorsed her.