About | Senator Ankit Jain

Get To Know YOUR SENATOR

meet ankit

Ankit Jain was elected to serve as Senator for Washington, DC in 2024. Senator Jain advocates for Washington, DC to become the 51st state in the Union, to protect DC Home Rule, and to advance the interests of Washington, DC’s 700,000 residents.

Since being sworn into office, Senator Jain has been hard at work protecting DC’s rights from attacks by the federal government. He is working hard to prevent local laws and Home Rule itself from being repealed, to get the federal government to engage constructively with DC on our criminal justice system to fight crime, and pushing back against the Administration’s efforts that target or have a disproportionate impact on DC.

Jain is DC’s first Asian-American official elected District-wide. He is a Ward 2 resident and grew up in Fairfax, Virginia. Growing up, Senator Jain regularly heard the story of how his parents had to sleep in line overnight outside the local immigration office to get his dad’s Green Card application processed. This began the path through which his dad obtained citizenship and the right to vote – a right Jain lost when he crossed the river into DC Jain is a voting rights attorney who currently works as an independent legal contractor for Parsons Law, a law firm that works with nonprofits that advocate for everyone to have the right to cast a meaningful vote. Prior to that, Jain worked as an independent legal contractor for 1.5 years with FairVote and worked as an attorney for four years for the Sierra Club. He was one of the lead negotiators who secured a settlement that committed the federal government to spending more than $1 billion rectifying environmental harm caused by President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Jain received his law degree from Columbia University. While there, he was one of the lead organizers of the NYC March for Our Lives for stronger gun laws, which drew over 200,000 attendees. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Chicago.

What Is A

Shadow Senator?

Because it is not a state, DC does not have full congressional representation. Instead, DC elects two “Shadow” Senators and one “Shadow” Representative. DC’s “Shadow” Senators are different from traditional Senators that represent a state – they do not hold a seat within the chamber, but rather serve as DC’s voice in the Senate and advocate for our rights. Unlike members of Congress, DC’s “Shadow” Senators are not paid for their work.

DC voters elected their first Senators, Florence Pendleton and Jesse Jackson in 1990. Since then, DC’s Senators have worked with members of Congress and leaders across the city to move DC towards statehood, to prevent congressional interference in DC affairs, and to advocate before the U.S. Senate for laws that protect DC’s interests. An effective Shadow Senator implements strong legislative messaging campaigns, drives media coverage, and forcefully advocates for DC’s interests in meetings with U.S. Senators and federal government officials. They are the difference between a statehood bill or another bill advancing DC interests passing or falling short. During his time in office, Senator Jain:

Has worked with other advocates to stop any local DC law from being repealed or rewritten. This included defeating every new anti-DC budget “rider” that House Republicans inserted into the federal budget that passed the House of Representatives

Successfully persuaded Rep. Pablo José Hernández (D-PR) to sign on as a co-sponsor to H.R.51 to make DC the 51st state.

Defeated the nomination of Interim U.S. Attorney for DC, Ed Martin. Senator Jain forcefully opposed Martin’s nomination by grilling him at town halls and encouraging the press to cover his unfitness for the office. His advocacy helped force President Trump to withdraw Martin’s nomination.

Secured the support of DC’s Mayor and the Chairman of the Council to pass a Fiscal Year 2026 budget for the New Columbia Statehood Commission that drastically increased staffing, which has made the Statehood Delegation much more effective.

Convinced the full voting membership of the Democratic National Committee to issue a historic rejection of a proposal by the DNC’s powerful Rules and Bylaws Committee that would have banned Washington DC from implementing ranked choice voting for Democratic presidential primaries.

5 Reasons To Support

DC statehood

More than 700,000 people live in Washington, DC, but they have no voting representation in the Senate or the House of Representatives. DC residents want statehood–in 2016, they passed a referendum in favor of making DC the 51st state with 86% support.
Wyoming and Vermont–states which are more than 90% white–are both less populous than DC yet have two United States Senators and one Representative. With a population just slightly larger than DC–740,000 residents–Alaska also has two Senators and one Representative in Congress. Only one state has ever been admitted into the Union with more residents than Washington DC currently has.
Washingtonians pay more in federal income tax than the residents of 22 other states, but they have no say in what their federal tax dollars are used for. This is the textbook definition of taxation without representation.
The United States is the only representative democracy in the world that does not give voting representation in the national legislature to citizens of its capital city. Instead, citizens in DC are treated more like second-class citizens or citizens of a colony.
Because DC is not a state, we do not have full self-government and can have any of our laws repealed by Congress or even have our local government abolished completely. This is not a theoretical concern–the current Congress has bills in both the House and Senate to abolish our local government.