It may be the only job of its kind in the country: a political position, elected by the people, with no actual political power. In this office, there’s no voting. No executive decisionmaking. No budget, no committee assignments, no hand in making legislation. It’s also completely unpaid.

The position is D.C. shadow senator, part of a delegation to Congress that serves as a consolation prize for the nearly 700,000 residents who have no actual representation in the Capitol. Unlike the D.C. nonvoting delegate in the House—since 1991, Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton—the district’s two shadow senators and one shadow representative cannot serve on committees or speak on the floor of the House or Senate. Instead, they’re elected to lobby actual senators and members of Congress on behalf of D.C.’s interests.

One of D.C.’s two shadow senator slots is up for election this year. Voting rights lawyer Ankit Jain won the Democratic primary in June, which in D.C. is the real battle. He’ll all but certainly win Tuesday’s vote. Previously an environmental litigator at the Sierra Club, Jain currently works as an attorney at FairVote, a job he’ll keep if elected.

Jain has been involved in the movement for D.C. statehood for several years, but he decided to run for this position only after seeing his predecessor exhibit what he calls “a failure of leadership” when Congress moved to overturn a law passed by the D.C. Council in early 2023. It was supposed to be the city’s new criminal code, revised in a painstaking 16-year process for the first time in a century, then passed by the council. Instead of mounting an aggressive campaign to defend D.C.’s self-governance in the face of congressional meddlers, current shadow Sen. Michael D. Brown—who is retiring after 17 years in the role—sat back and blamed the D.C. Council for the Republican-led attacks.

If he wins, Jain says, he’ll make a stronger, more strategic case for D.C.’s right to make its own laws. We talked about what a Trump presidency could do to shackle the D.C. government, the near-term likelihood of D.C. statehood, and how Jain intends to influence legislators with no material leverage. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Christina Cauterucci: What is a shadow senator? What’s your elevator pitch for what you’re going to be doing?

Ankit Jain: We’re D.C.’s main advocate for statehood and against congressional efforts to attack our local laws and meddle in our local affairs—basically, our elected lobbyist for our rights and our issues before Congress and the U.S. Senate.

I’ll just give you one example. Donald Trump keeps on saying he’s going to do a federal takeover of D.C. if he’s elected. Unfortunately, legally he can do that if he gets the bill passed through Congress. If unfortunately that does come to pass, which hopefully it does not, my job will be to organize the messaging, strategy, and campaign to stop that law from passing Congress. I’ll take the meetings with senators and their staff to get them to vote no on something like that.

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