When President Obama and his family move to Kalorama next January, they’ll have neighbors for the first time in eight years. Northwest DC, of course, has long harbored former Presidents—William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Hoover lived there after leaving the White House. Former POTUSes, though, will always be outnumbered in upscale Kalorama by lobbyists, political hands, and other DC operators who will no doubt do everything they can to make a retired pol feel at home. Here’s a look at some of the folks Obama might run into while walking Bo and Sunny around the block.
Tony Podesta
The Democratic lobbyist and fundraiser lives in an art-filled Kalorama home. His brother, John, is a former White House counselor and chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Justin Smith
Bloomberg Media’s 46-year-old CEO, who previously worked for the Week and the Atlantic, is a new-media executive in an old-money neighborhood.
Lois Romano
The onetime Washington Post Reliable Source columnist will be back-yard neighbors with the Obamas in the home she shares with her husband, KPMG exec and former federal judge Sven Holmes.
Rajiv Madan
A partner in Skadden’s tax-controversy-and-litigation practice, Madan and his wife, Emily, will share a back fence with the Obamas.
Chris and Lorraine Wallace
It took the Fox News host eight years to land an interview with Obama. We hope it won’t be that long before the Obamas are invited for one of his post-show soups.
Bart and Leslie Gordon
The only other former elected official nearby is Bart Gordon, a 13-term Democratic representative from Tennessee. His wife is a headhunter.
Ellen Miller
The former Senate staffer is best known as cofounder of the pro-open-government Sunlight Foundation and the Center for Responsive Politics.
Paul and Rose Carter
The fiftysomething software exec and his wife are among the next generation of DC philanthropists, with seats on the boards of Shakespeare Theatre and the Washington Project for the Arts.
James Wolfensohn
Wolfensohn, alas, is about to be aced out as Kalorama’s most prominent ex-president: He used to run the World Bank.
Joe and Alma Gildenhorn
A former ambassador to Switzerland, Joe Gildenhorn is known best to Washingtonians as the “G” in the JBG Companies, the development firm that recently merged with New York REIT to create an $8.4 billion company.
Michael R. Klein
The chairman and co-founder of CoStar, a real-estate information company, Klein also heads the boards of the Sunlight Foundation and the Shakespeare Theatre Company and is a director at several other non-profits.
This article appears in our July 2016 issue of Washingtonian.
Benjamin Freed joined Washingtonian in August 2013 and covers politics, business, and media. He was previously the editor of DCist and has also written for Washington City Paper, the New York Times, the New Republic, Slate, and BuzzFeed. He lives in Adams Morgan.
