Although the District of Columbia’s mayoral race is more than a year away, Councilman Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) has already announced his intention to run for the city’s highest office.

Evans, who represents the Georgetown area in city council, has not yet filed any official paperwork but iterated to The Hoya that he would be a candidate for the Nov. 4, 2014 election.

The councilman is a mainstay in city government, having served on the D.C. Council since 1991. This Monday, he became the District’s longest-serving councilmember.

But throughout his lengthy career in local politics, Evans has only run for mayor on one other occasion, in 1998. Although he was ultimately unsuccessful in his 1998 bid — placing third in the Democratic primary behind eventual Mayor Anthony Williams and former Councilman Kevin Chavous (D-Ward 7) — Evans said he has learned valuable lessons from that campaign.

“A mayor’s race is a long marathon, and it’s time consuming and very tiring,” Evans said. “You have to be prepared and ready for it and just go out and be honest and truthful with the voters. If you can do that, you can have a good chance of success.”

Since 1998, Evans has seen his popularity grow, receiving 65 percent or more of the vote in each of his city council elections since then. Last year he easily won reelection, running unopposed in the primary and general election.

“People know who I am, and I have a long — and I think very good — record,” Evans said. “Some people would disagree with some of the positions I’ve taken, and I recognize that going in [to the race].”

In the fifteen years since his last run, however, the political campaign season has gotten longer. In 1998, Evans waited until May of the election year to announce his candidacy. This time around, Evans began to lay the groundwork for his campaign more than two years beforehand and began talking to potential financial backers in summer 2012.

The change is in part because of a new federal requirement that moved the primary up from September to April, lengthening the campaign by five months. According to WRC-TV, NBC’s Washington affiliate, petitions to be on the primary ballot could be available as early as this December.

The early mayoral bid announcements also come after alleged campaign corruption in Mayor Vincent Gray’s 2010 run for D.C.’s highest position. Shortly after accusations of finance misdeeds surfaced in 2011-2012, several councilmembers, including Evans, were rumored by The Washington Post to be considering throwing their hats into the mayoral ring. While Evans was critical of Gray in 2011, his opinion has changed since then.

“I’ve known him 30 years,” Evans said of Gray. “I think he’s doing a good job as mayor. He’s somebody I work with closely, and so I have a lot of respect for him.”

The councilman faced controversy himself when he was accused Nov. 2011 by fellow Ward 2 candidate Fiona Greig of intimidating her to drop out of the city council race.

In the mayoral race, however, Evans is not alone in his ambition for the city’s top office. One of his potential opponents, Councilman Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), announced Feb. 4 that he is forming an exploratory committee to examine a mayoral bid.

One thing that has not changed since 1998 is that if Evans wins, he will be the District’s first white mayor.

“City’s changed. Country’s changed. Attitudes have changed,” Evans said. “I think people are more interested in someone who’s a qualified, good mayor — someone that they believe can get things done, who has a good track record — than what color they are.”

As representative of an area that includes both Georgetown and The George Washington University, Evans recognizes the importance of interacting with the two universities.

“I make it a routine of speaking at Georgetown and George Washington at least once or twice a year, whenever there’s an opportunity to do something,” Evans said. “We just ran an April [democratic primary] election when I ran for reelection last year, and reaching out to the students was one of the things I did then and will continue to do now.”

However, Evans has previously cancelled commitments to come and speak at Georgetown, such as when he cancelled a planned appearance in 2011.

After this cancellation, Georgetown University College Democrats struggled to get in touch with his office to reschedule.

“Historically, we have had a difficult time scheduling with his office,” GUCD President Trevor Tezel (SFS ’15) said.

After not receiving any contact from Evans’s office, Tezel said he heard back months later after sending the councilman a tweet.

“Some of his statements that he has made in the past regarding students have been unfortunate,” Tezel said. “He seems to have a general interest in the concerns of students in D.C., but I think we need to see more from him in his campaign before there’s any kind of organized support for him [from college students].”

Evans was also critical of Georgetown’s campus plan in a January 2011 column from local paper The Georgetowner, writing that the university needed to house all of its students on campus.

“Even if students who live off campus in our neighborhood are well-behaved, it is too much of a strain on residents,” Evans wrote. “When you have houses and tenants that are not well-behaved, the burden becomes impossible.”

However, Evans said he does not foresee any change in his priorities for the Georgetown area if he were to be elected mayor.

“Picking up the trash, trimming the trees, making sure the street lights work, fixing the potholes, sidewalks — basic services that every person in the city wants,” Evans said. “They want to make sure that the neighborhood is safe during the day and night, that there’s enough of a police presence — all of that. Those are the basic issues, and then beyond that, much of Georgetown has been taken care of.”