Race Anatomy

WHO REALLY “RUNS” WASHINGTON?

By Stephanie Miller

With one of the most embittered elections in years this fall, it’s hard to imagine a gentle time when politicians and their staff members from both sides of the aisle meet on common ground and actually enjoy each others’ company

while frolicking in their running shorts for a few hours. The ACLI Capital Challenge, a three mile team race held in May of each year, is one of those moments. For over 40 years, Jeff Darman has managed and directed the race in Washington, DC. He finally stepped down after the 2024 event.) Although small in terms of the number of participants (the event usually attracts 500-700 entrants), it is mighty in terms of who these participants are. This year’s entrants included three Supreme Court Justices spanning the ideological spectrum (Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Amy Coney Barrett and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson), along with Congressmen, Senators, two cabinet secretaries, the White House Chief of Staff, media anchors and other high ranking Federal Agency Heads.

The race is a team race with teams drawn from the Legislative, Executive, Judicial and Media divisions. The hook is by drawing team captains from each of these divisions, they would draw leaders from the other divisions who want to mingle with them. To ensure the high-ranking individuals actually show up, the team captain (the high-ranking official) must finish the race along with all of his or her “staffers” (the teams are mixed gender) in order for the team to be scored. Team champions are declared from the legislative, executive, judicial and media divisions. The fastest team from among all these divisions wins the Richard G. Lugar award as “The Fittest Team in Washington.” (the late Senator ran the event over 30 times). There is also spirited competition for the “Best and Worst Named Teams. This year’s best team winner was News That’s Fit to Sprint, of New York Times and worst was Scrambled Legs from AARP It is the quintessential “Inside the Beltway” Washington event and it truly allows political differences to be put aside for a couple of hours on a Washington weekday morning. Darman, who has directed the event since its inception in 1981, is announced each year as the “Man Who Knows No Term Limits.”

Darman has shown his creative side and political acumen over the years with race signage that keeps both sides of the aisle chuckling. In 2012 he placed a cage with a stuffed dog on top of a car mirroring a comment made by Mitt Romney during his presidential run; porta-johns are assigned to the various divisions with instructions encouraging people to “Respect” but not “Obey” the signs. The political humor reflects the current political environment of the day.

Stephanie Miller (SM): Let’s talk about the history of the ACLI Capital Challenge – where did the inspiration come from for the race?

Jeff Darman (JD): I realized in 1981 when I was starting my own business and I had two clients. I really needed a third client to make things work financially. And in those days, I had a lot of contacts at Nike, which at the time was a smaller company and more nimble. So, I came up with a proposal utilizing my background in political campaigns, PR and running. I decided to come up with something that would put all those together. So, I wrote a proposal to Nike and sent it. And within two weeks, they responded and had me go meet with the head of their Washington, D.C. office. And they said, “let’s do it”. It was extremely quick from the time I wrote the proposal to them giving me the go-ahead; then of course I was kind of scared. I didn’t know if anybody would come. We created a registration form and sent the stuff up to the Hill and other places and kind of waited for the mail to come – it was all done in the mail! [Editor’s Note: Nike sponsored the race through 1996; the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA, now SFIA) took it over between 1997 and 2003. Current sponsor ACLI has titled the race since 2004.]

SM: Tell me how the race is governed?

JD: Until recently, I owned the event (I sold it to ACLI in 2023) and entered a contract to produce it for the title sponsor. It’s basically what I call a kind of a turnkey operation. I give them a figure, a budget, at the beginning of the year when we make the agreement, the sponsor agrees, sends me the money and I do the race.

The Honorary Race Co-chairs, which include Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Representative Earl Blumenauer, Representative Chrissy Houlahan, and Tamara Keith of NPR sign a letter, let’s call it a “Dear Colleague letter,” announcing the event, which we send to members of Congress and some executive branch people. I have them do that each year.

SM: Tell me about the operating budget.

JD: It’s low six figures – it’s different than any other race of its size with 600-700 runners because we really try to run a first-class operation and the clientele is high powered. I always go overboard with how many toilets we have, plus catered food and everything because of the nature of the people coming. So, it’s a race with many of VIPs and we treat them as if it’s a bigger deal than a normal 700 person race. Plus we have about 40 life insurance companies under ACLI’s umbrella as sponsors and Roll Call, which is a media sponsor.

SM: Who are your top media outlets?

JD: We advertise with our media sponsor Roll Call, which is a newspaper as well as a website. They have breaking news websites and they have just a standard website, so we run ads there too. And we’re in there, we run three full page ads at different times, three full page color ads. And then the other publicity is media releases and things like that that. It is all very targeted at Congressional or Washington D.C. type publications as opposed to broad publications – we try to target Politico or Axios, for example.

SM: The entry fee – how has that changed over time?

JD: I don’t remember what it was like when we first started. It’s never been a lot; we’ve always kept it fairly reasonable. And I’ll be honest, the entry fee now hasn’t changed in the last several years. The real income has come from the sponsors. All the entry fees, every penny, goes to the charity…None of it goes towards race expenses; those are included in my contract. I think it was $150 per [five member] team.

SM: Can you break down the award structure?

JD: There are both individual and team awards. The individual awards include the first Senator, first Congressman, first Agency Head first overall, first man, first woman, first executive branch, first sub cabinet, and media division. There are 16 divisions for individuals. And then for the teams, it’s the top two in the four divisions [Legislative, Executive, Media and Judicial]. And then we have the Best and the Worst team names award. And that was sort of a unique thing we came up with – best and worst team names. We didn’t start with that. The best and worst was something we added when we realized people were really thinking up interesting names. So, a lot of them were getting t-shirts with their names and stuff like that. So, we decided to do awards for people who weren’t going to win, be the fastest or whatever but reward them for doing something – hence best and worst names.

SM: The race had national TV coverage in the 90s, for example when the Today Show’s Willard Scott did live weather reports? What about TV coverage now?

JD: Some of the teams do bring their crews. WUSA usually does. And Fox has done it a few times. Sometimes they’ll do it, tape it and then show it later. It depends on what else is going on in the world. But in the olden days it was more because they had bigger budgets so they could do remotes and stuff like that. The stations don’t do it as much because of their tighter budgets.

SM: In the first year, in 1981, how many runners did you have?

JD: We had about 300 or so including several members of Congress. Nike had facilities in Maine and Oregon, so they got some of their senators and congressmen and convinced them to come out and run. But we did quite well from the first year. And we were very unsophisticated. I go back and look at some of the stuff we sent out. It was rudimentary.

SM: The race is run on federal park land – how hard was it to get approval to run it on US park land?

JD: In the beginning, some of the Park Service people were a pain in the butt to work with and some were okay. But in terms of the course, because it was run a weekday, we had to push a little hard. We did it for years in East Potomac Park. But Anacostia Park is so much better now. You can’t close the city on a weekday, so we were limited as to where we could do the race with parking and it being on a weekday. Now it’s improved since we moved there. So, I liked the idea of going there just to sort of teach people to go over the bridge [Anacostia Park is in a less accessible part of the city, but serves as a superior staging area with minimal impact on rush hour traffic.).

SM: Who else helped you get the Capital Challenge going?

JD: I drew on a corp group of my “All stars” who worked on the other races that I was involved in. At one time I was directing three at the same time. The Challenge, the Cherry blossom and the Nike women’s race.

SM: In the beginning, was it difficult to get the Legislative VIPs to participate?

JD: It worked easier than I thought. People kind of got into it and so it kind of took on its own life. I really worked with the Hill staff. Sometimes the key is getting the staff excited because then they get their boss out. It’s always been a team race and it has always been five people. But when we started, there were five people (on a team), but only the top three counted. We changed that quickly because we realized that if we just limited it to the top three, then the boss often would not count. We wanted the boss to finish for the team to count. So, we changed it so that all five finishers on a team count.

SM: Which charities have you helped?

JD: We started with Special Olympics (National) because Nike was very involved with them. And then we switched to DC Special Olympics. Then Wounded Warriors, Fidelco, and then Junior Achievement. The charities over the years have been chosen by the sponsor so I might have some influence or whatever, but pretty much it’s really what they want.

SM: How much was raised the very first year vs this year?

JD: In the first year it was $8,000 to $10,000 because it was entry fees and then Nike gave another little extra contribution. This year was over $200,000. And most of that improvement is because ACLI, as a trade association for the life insurance industry, brings on 40 member life insurance companies as sponsors now. The funds these individual companies contribute get poured back into Junior Achievement.

SM: Two major incidents that effected road racing were 9/11 and then the Pandemic.

JD: For 2001, obviously there wasn’t much notice because we were scheduled to race Sept 12, the day after the terrorist attacks. We were working at that time, at the RRCA club offices in Alexandria, VA. But I remember I was staying at the Residence Inn in Arlington, VA across from the Pentagon when the first plane went into the World Trade Center. And then, the second one flew into the second Tower, and then I headed to our office right away. When the third one hit the Pentagon, we knew it was over. And this was before you had the luxury of the internet. So, we started making calls and we couldn’t reach people. I thought we should cancel, but I couldn’t reach the people I needed to ask. I was able to reach Senator Lugar’s staff and they just said, “Jeff, you’ll make the right decision”. So, we decided quickly that morning to cancel and my recollection is we started calling offices, although my guess is most people wouldn’t have shown up anyhow. So we canceled and we mailed the t-shirts and out to people. We rescheduled it to May 2002 because we didn’t want to wait an entire year. The late spring date has worked well with regard to when Congress is in session.

SM: Was race security heightened after 9/11?

JD: I think it was but back then, you didn’t even pay for police or anything. I think that the year after the race came back, it wasn’t really all that different, because even though it was 9/11, there wasn’t a loop course like today. Now you have judges being threatened in their homes, etc. security seems more pervasive than after 9-11. Today we have trucks blocking the roadway into Anacostia Park which is actually more of an asset because it is kind of removed from the rest of the city and not that accessible unless you really want to come and make trouble. It’s an ideal location from a security point of view. And also, there’s a police substation there.

SM: How has that relationship been with the US Park Police over the years?

JD: It’s good. During the race, the motorcycle I ride on is with an ex-park policeman. During the early days when I was on the motorcycle. They used to have sidecars, so I rode in the sidecar with the policeman!

SM: And how did COVID affect your race in 2020?

JD: We postponed it till the following fall and then postponed it again.

SM: After the race came back, did you see a change in entry numbers?

JD: The first year we came back, it was lower. We were not anywhere near the numbers we had the preceding year. People were still skittish about COVID, and we had masks. So, the first year was tough, as with most races. But the second year, it snapped right back.

SM: Tell me about your celebrity whistle blowers who lead your race?

JD: I can’t remember if it was the first year we had one, but it was very early because when Nike was a sponsor, we used to just get Nike athletes including Joan Samuelson, Kim Jones and Lynn Jennings. Once Nike stopped, we had John Hancock, which was a sponsor, provide athletes because they were then a sponsor of the Boston Marathon and had many of the world’s top runners under contract as part of their elite team. But for the last probably 6-7 years, I’ve handled it. (Recent Official Whistlebowers have included Shalane Flanagan, Meb Keflezighi, and Keira D’Amato)

SM: You’ve managed this special race for over 40 years. What’s the been the drive for you?

JD: It was my baby when I started. One year I went back and found the memo that I wrote to say what I thought would happen, and about 95% of what I wrote happened.

SM: Really? And do you still have that memo?

JD: I probably have it somewhere. A lot of people really make it a point to let me know that they love the race. For some people, it’s the only race they do every year. A lot of the people are runners, but they don’t do a lot of racing. So, it really has its own special niche, and after the race, within a month or two, I get emails from people and media outlets saying, “What’s the date for the next year?” And I’ve made a lot of friends, including a lot of [Capitol Hill] staffers just because they’ve done the race a lot of times.

SM: The logo is hilarious – who designed the logo?

JD: The logo, featuring George Washington and Abe Lincoln running abreast in running gear, was designed by a guy named Herb Parsons, who was s a very good artist. He was a runner, and I knew him through running from way, way, way back. The logo has remained unchanged over the years except in a bow to fashion, we lengthened the running shorts on the figures a few years ago (with only the of the American flag added after 9-11); only the color of the t-shirt changes each year

SM: What are the top reasons that the race remains successful?

JD: I think the team aspect and that the staff can’t do it without the boss. They are interested in the staff having this thing, so they come out and they really get into the spirit of things. Now a lot of people bring out more than just the team like families, other coworkers, friends. We have guest runners now, too. The people really make it as an office thing now. And to this day, we still have some of the Lugar staff volunteer! And it’s a team race and it’s not just for the fastest runners – I think doing the Best and Worst awards caught on a lot. People really get excited coming up with team names and then I get a lot of feedback and people will send in a team name, and then they’ll change it. So, I think that aspect for this race is important.