Florence Pendleton

Florence H. Pendleton (born c. 1926) is a former shadow senator from the District of Columbia. As the first shadow senator of the District of Columbia, her main goal was to promote the efforts of the District to gain full voting rights, alongside her counterpart in Seat 2. She was inaugurated as the first ever shadow senator on January 3, 1991.

She defended her seat in 2000, cruising to victory in the general election over Janet Helms, beating her 84%-14%.

Her re-election bid in 2006 failed when Philip Pannell successfully challenged that she failed to have 2,000 valid signatures to get onto the ballot, having only 1,559. She ran as a write-in candidate, but only won 1,363 votes as Michael Donald Brown cruised to victory with 62,415 votes over her and Pannell's 21,552 votes to win the Democratic Primary. Her last day in office was on January 3, 2007.

She graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science and she was a doctoral student at Virginia Tech.

1990

In the general election, the top two vote getters were elected as Shadow senators of each seat, with Pendleton taking Seat 1 and Jackson taking Seat 2.

1994

2000

2006

• November 6, 1990 — elected shadow senator when office was created
• November 8, 1994 — reelected shadow senator
• November 7, 2000 — reelected shadow senator
• 2006 — filed to run for reelection but was knocked off the primary ballot when her opponent Phil Pannell challenged the signatures on her petition