austin

Austin

chicago

Chicago

denver

Denver

lasvegas

Las Vegas

madison

Madison

nashville

Nashville

philly

Philly

pittsburgh

Pittsburgh

portland

Portland

saltlake

Salt Lake

seattle

Seattle

twincities

Twin Cities

We make podcasts and newsletters that connect people with the cities they love.

City Cast DC

Politics

The inside scoop on local D.C politics and government.

Emma Uber

Michael Schaffer

Kenyan McDuffie has conceded the mayoral election to Janeese Lewis George, making her the Democratic nominee and – barring an unprecedented political earthquake – the overwhelmingly Democratic city’s next mayor.

In a statement Thursday morning, McDuffie said he called Lewis George to congratulate her on the victory. At the time of his concession, Lewis George held 52.9% of the first-rank vote with nearly three-quarters of ballots counted, according to the 

“While the final certification process will continue, it is clear that the voters have chosen a different path,” McDuffie said in a statement. “I want to thank every voter who participated in this election, the tens of thousands of Washingtonians who placed their faith in our campaign, and all of our volunteers, supporters, staff, family members, community leaders, and neighbors who believed in our vision for the future of our city. The campaign may be over, but the work of building a safer, more affordable, more prosperous city continues.”

The concession, on the heels of Tuesday's surprisingly strong showing by the democratic socialist, marks a dramatic reversal of fortunes for McDuffie, a longtime D.C. Councilmember who before the campaign had good relations with D.C. progressives as well as its center-left.

When Mayor Muriel Bowser announced last year that she wouldn't seek a fourth term, McDuffie surprised few people when he jumped into the race.

And yet the politics of 2026 D.C. seemed to move beyond McDuffie, as Lewis George's call for more active government — and more vocal pushback against President Donald Trump — resonated in a register that the mild-mannered McDuffie couldn't seem to access.

Lewis George’s victory was accompanied by strong showings by fellow democratic socialists and progressives in D.C. Council races that could change the balance of the council, even as the ascent of a democratic socialist mayor will end the decade-long dynamic where a pro-business mayor effectively put a break on progressive lawmakers.

In a speech at her election night party Tuesday, she said her campaign has seen success "because we gave voice to one simple truth: the status quo is unsustainable for working people in D.C."

Lewis George, 38, currently represents Ward 4 on the D.C. Council. She has hinged her campaign on affordability, making big promises on child care and affordable housing. Her unapologetically left-wing posture has energized supporters tired of the status quo, but worried business leaders. And her opposition to policing measures like teen curfews have drawn the ire of law-enforcement advocates.

Last week, President Donald Trump threatened to take over the District if she was elected. Although the president doesn’t have the power to unilaterally do that, the win will likely raise tensions with a White House that retains a lot of power over the Capital City.

In D.C.’s first ranked-choice voting election, neither of the big ticket races will rely on voters' second or third choice votes. D.C. Council member Robert White 

 colleague Brooke Pinto on Tuesday night to win the Democratic nomination for D.C. delegate.

Democratic socialist JLG is all but guaranteed to be the next D.C. mayor.

McDuffie Concedes in Mayor's Race

DC Politics

Marc Fisher

After all that, now we wait? For a week? Ten days? Janeese Lewis George has evidently won the D.C. mayoral primary election, convincingly. But no victory is convincing enough for the District’s new ranked-choice voting system, which, according to the city’s politicians, bureaucrats, and activists, requires that we be patient. 

The final results of the election – both in Lewis George’s apparent majority win and in a couple of closer Council races – will be revealed when the elections board is good and ready. Learn a little civic patience, we’re told: Trust us. Trust the system.

Um, have they read the room? There’s plenty of suspicion in the air these days. We’re gorging on frustration. But trust? Precious little of that, especially around here.

This regression to a vote-counting pace that seems like something out of the 18th century is not the result of incompetence or conspiracy. It stems, rather, from a peculiar kind of corruption – a moral rot, fueled by righteousness, and a disturbing fear of being found to be less than ideologically pure.

Even though D.C.’s elections board was for decades perfectly capable of delivering election results in just a few hours, Washington voters Tuesday night got only partial numbers and now will need to wait, for two reasons:

First, it takes longer to count ranked-choice ballots because you are potentially conducting several elections in succession — and that can’t be done until every ballot arrives. Elections workers will have to process tens of thousands of ballots that were mailed-in or dropped in collection boxes. In races where no candidate has won an outright majority, such as the at-large Council election in which Oye Owolewa leads and the Ward 1 race, officials will have to conduct additional rounds of counting to add voters’ second and subsequent choices to the mix. All that just can’t physically be done in one evening, the city’s elections director, Monica Evans, said last week. The final count might take 10 days, which is longer than even California takes. “It just comes down to patience,” Elections Board chairman Gary 

Advocates for the city’s new ranked-choice voting system won over voters in the 2024 ballot initiative by arguing that this confusing method of ranking candidates would deliver a pure shot of democratic adrenaline. In fact, though, 

ranked-choice distorts the voting power of a relative handful

 of citizens – it unfairly empowers supporters of the least-popular (and sometimes most radical) candidates. (If no candidate wins a majority in the raw vote, it’s the supporters of the last-place finisher – by definition, the least appealing and most out of the mainstream candidate – whose second choices get elevated first.) It’s a system that few people understand and one that’s been extraordinarily poorly explained.

The second reason for the Great Wait is a pervasive and sad epidemic of fear that has infected the Democratic party and its various strands of liberals and lefties – a fear that if they dare to speak up for election integrity and efficient vote-counting, they will somehow be tagged as members of a MAGA mob hungry to undermine democracy.

Why would the Dems – both those who control the city government and those who want to get back in national power -- permit the idea of enhancing election security to be entirely hijacked by the venal operatives of The Trump Show? I enjoy the smalltown convenience and the trust implied by being able to vote in D.C. simply by stating my name at the registration table. But let’s be rational: In a society where you (bizarrely) can’t be seen by a doctor or gain entry to many office buildings without showing ID, there’s nothing oppressive or unfair about having to prove who you are to vote.

Similarly, imposing an earlier deadline for mail-in ballots so that they can all be tallied by Election Night would be perfectly reasonable. No one complains that the start date for early voting is chosen arbitrarily, and no one should whine if the deadline is a bit earlier than Election Day. I believe in voting in-person on Election Day, if only because stuff happens in the final days of campaigns and I want to be able to factor that into my choice of candidates. (Try it sometime: It’s one of our country’s most stirring rituals of community-building.) Those who want to vote early should pay a small price for that luxury: You need to vote a little sooner than your neighbors do, for the sake of building both efficiency and trust.

One of the many reasons D.C. voters approved ranked-choice was the failure of the No campaign in 2024 to show how the system has disappointed voters in other places that adopted it. In Maine, according to 

 Cynthia McClintock of George Washington University and Joseph Cerrone of Haverford College, voters “were very dissatisfied with a come-from-behind victory under ranked-choice voting.” That is, when a candidate who came in second in the regular voting was then elevated to the winner’s circle in the later rounds of the ranked-choice process, voters realized that the new system breaks a cardinal rule of fairness: It automatically turns winners into losers. (Runoff elections, in contrast, don’t leave that sour taste in voters’ mouths, the study found; they’re a fair and reasonable way to make sure a winner has majority support.) “To our surprise,” the study’s authors concluded, “voters were not troubled by the election of a winner without majority support under [the] plurality” voting system that most American elections use.

Other studies similarly have found that the ranked-choice system 

The fault lies not only with advocates of ranked-choice voting, though they do deserve blame for trying to fix a non-existent problem, at least in mayoral races: 

 did the winner of D.C.’s Democratic primary for mayor win less than 49 percent of the vote (Muriel Bowser in 2014, when she first won with 43 percent support in the primary.)

The city government bears some responsibility here too. Most places that use ranked-choice manage to get all the counting 

. The District this year moved aggressively to encourage mail voting, sending a ballot to every voter’s home. Now, every one of those envelopes has to be manually opened, examined and tallied.

It’s too late to fix the system for this cycle, but all is not lost. Ranked-choice voting, instituted in about 60 communities across the country, has already been repealed in places such as Burlington, Vermont (after ranked-choice voting resulted in the election of a mayor who had 

 in the first round of counting.) Seven states have voted against switching to ranked-choice and another 19 states have banned the system. After this wait is over, let’s rebuild trust. Let’s call the person who collects the most votes the winner.

Marc Fisher is a contributing columnist at City Cast. He has covered Washington for 40 years, most of them at The Washington Post, where he spent a decade as the local columnist. He was sacked from his position as op-ed columnist at The Post in 2025, when the paper's owner ordered an ideological pivot.

Column: D.C.’s Disastrous Election Wait 

Janeese Lewis George appears on the cusp of becoming D.C.’s next mayor, holding a majority of 52% of the first-rank vote in Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary with nearly two-thirds of ballots counted. Even if that number falls as the rest of the votes come in, she looks very likely to cross the 50% threshold once ranked-choice votes are tabulated.

The results represent a sweeping triumph for Lewis George, who led by smaller margins in pre-election polls.

As of early Wednesday morning, she led her main rival, Kenyan McDuffie, in seven of the District’s eight wards, trailing only in wealthy Ward 3. Though her strongest support came from younger, newer Washingtonians, Lewis George also led McDuffie in historically Black Wards 7 and 8, as well as in McDuffie’s own Ward 5. She has not declared victory, but the math is strongly in her favor.

A win would make the 38-year-old democratic socialist the Democratic nominee in a city that has never elected a non-Democratic mayor, and where the November general election is usually a coronation for whoever the party nominates.

It would also mark an emphatic end to the decades-long run of centrist mayors who presided as Washington became a richer, more dynamic, and much more unequal city.

Even as Lewis George ran up surprisingly strong numbers, fellow left-wing candidates took strong leads in several D.C. Council races: democratic socialist Oye Owolewa for an open at-large seat, democratic socialist Aparna Raj for a Ward 1 seat, and former Councilmember Elissa Silverman, the onetime anchor of the council’s progressive bloc, in a special election for McDuffie’s former at-large seat. (Owolewa and Raj were both below 50 percent, so ranked-choice voting will determine whether they win.)

"Tonight belongs to the postal worker on the early route, the nurse coming home from a double, the teacher who buys supplies out of her pocket, the childcare worker who loves on our babies all day but still can’t make ends meet,” Lewis George, clad in her signature lilac purple, said from the stage at her watch party at the Howard Theater. “This moment is for those who refuse to surrender their hope.”

In fact, Lewis George’s apparent victory is a final product of the very same business-friendly political era she may bring to a close — in some obvious ways, and some ironic ones.

As a candidate, the two-term D.C. councilmember channeled the frustrations of residents who felt priced out of an increasingly unaffordable Washington, frustrations she credited for her strong showing in a post-election conversation with reporters. She ran on an agenda that promised to use city government to do things like build housing and subsidize childcare. It’s a strikingly ambitious stance in a city where recent mayors have focused more closely on bond ratings than redistributing wealth.

”Let's show them what government can do,” Lewis George said in her speech.

But pre-election polls and election day returns suggest Lewis George benefitted from another trend of the past few decades: massive population growth that transformed “Chocolate City.”

Though she herself grew up in pre-gentrification D.C. and sang campaign-trail hosannas to organized labor, her strongest support came from the newcomers — disproportionately college-educated, white and privileged — who drove the demographic change that has roiled old Washington. Her strongest showing in the early returns came from Ward 1, an epicenter of D.C.’s transformation.

The contrast between the election-night parties of the two leading candidates reflected that. At McDuffie’s party at the swank Park on 14th restaurant, the crowd was older and predominantly Black, filled with veterans of city politics. At Lewis George’s much larger event, the crowd was much whiter and hipper, even as the candidate took to the stage surrounded by family members and labor-movement allies.

In addition to taking over a city reeling from federal job cuts that have spiked unemployment and sent the regional economy into the doldrums, Lewis George will also be dealing with a White House led by Donald Trump. The president has a history of singling out Black women — and has already threatened to take control of D.C. if the socialist candidate won.

Late on election night, as political supporters including Councilmembers Charles Allen and Zachary Parker began to trickle out of the party just before midnight, Lewis George sat down with a group of reporters. Asked about Trump’s comments, she said she thought they helped her on election day. “It motivated people to get to the polls,” she said. “Some people who weren’t paying attention to this race, when they heard Trump’s comments, they were like, ‘I need to pay attention.’”

In her remarks, Lewis George promised to stand up to Trump. And while the president doesn’t actually have the power to take over D.C. without an act of Congress, he has many other forms of leverage over whoever is mayor.

It may well be that Trump wants Lewis George as a foil. Already, national conservative media have begun to seize on Lewis George as a bogeyman, with the Murdoch-owned 

 to her million-dollar home and the radical online presence of a key supporter.

Councilmember Christina Henderson, who showed up at Lewis George’s party to congratulate her colleague, also credited the election results to Trump — but suggested his impact began well before his comments of last Thursday. “I think tonight's results sort of reflect the sentiment of a lot of D.C. residents who are very angered by everything that has been for the last few years,” she said. “I do think that the Trump effect definitely played out in these elections.”

Other candidates collectively held 11 percent of the vote, with no candidate having garnered more than 3%. In the event Lewis George doesn’t clear 50%, those ballots will now be reallocated under D.C.’s new ranked-choice voting system.

Of course, the very fact that Lewis George is so controversial, and not just among MAGA devotees, may make the next few months more interesting than the typical D.C. general election season.

When Marion Barry won the Democratic nomination in 1994 after serving a prison sentence, he was toxic to enough D.C. voters that the November election became a real fight, with more than 40% of votes going to Republican Carol Schwartz. And in 2014, independent David Catania looked like a real threat if scandal-damaged mayor Vince Gray had been renominated (Catania wound up getting 34% against Bowser).

So far, no D.C. notables have announced plans to make an independent run in November — and her surprisingly strong citywide showing makes it a daunting prospect. The deadline to register is August 5.

Henderson also predicted that some of the fears about Lewis George may prove overwrought.

“People campaign one way, and they have to govern in a different way,” she said. “You have the reality when you look under the rug and see where all the bodies are buried. The same administration has been running this government for 12 years. So there's a lot of things that even us on the council aren't necessarily privy to. When you step into that role… You may not be able to deliver on all the things that you campaign on. And so, I think that is going to be an interesting conversation. “

Lewis George, for her part, devoted a large chunk of her election-night speech to promising to be a mayor for all, including people who voted against her — and those who ran against her.

She said her campaign plans to wait for more of the votes to come in to declare victory, but said she wasn't sure exactly what percent of votes she’d like to see counted before declaring.

Although there won't be a traditional concession phone call between candidates tonight, she said she hoped to speak with McDuffie. She said voters approached her at the polls to tell her, “after this we want to be one D.C.”

“And that starts with me and Kenyan,” she said.

As of early Wednesday morning, she led her main rival, Kenyan McDuffie, in seven of the District’s eight wards, trailing only in wealthy Ward 3. 

Janeese Lewis George Looks Very Likely to Win D.C. Mayoral Primary

Ben Brasch

Jaclyn Peiser

Bridget Todd

D.C. residents cast their ballots in Tuesday’s primary election, where the city voted to select a new mayor for the first time in 12 years and a new D.C. delegate for the first time in 35.

Neither Mayor Muriel Bowser nor Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is seeking reelection, meaning this election is a consequential one for the District and its autonomy as it faces a political sea change under President Donald Trump. The winners will still need to compete against token opposition in November, but in deep-blue D.C., winning the Democratic primary is tantamount to winning the election.

This election also marks D.C.’s first foray into ranked-choice voting, where voters can rank up to five candidates for each race in order of preference. The first candidate to receive more than 50% of the vote is declared the winner. Election officials have warned that D.C. 

Despite this year’s high stakes, early voting numbers remain low. Before polls opened Tuesday, the Board of Elections had received 68,603 ballots from early voting, mail and drop boxes, which accounts for less than 15 percent of D.C.’s registered voters. Polls opened at 7 a.m. and closed at 8 p.m.

Mayoral front-runner Janeese Lewis George was among those early voters, casting her vote last week on U Street NW. Her primary opponent, Kenyan McDuffie, cast his ballot Tuesday morning at Turkey Thicket Recreation Center.

The two have grown increasingly hostile toward each other in the run-up to Election Day. Lewis George has cast McDuffie as an unambitious establishment pawn and Trump-like grifter, while McDuffie has called Lewis George’s ideas unrealistic and a threat to public safety. But when the two candidates crossed paths at Hillcrest Recreation Center in Southeast on Tuesday, they were the most collegial they’d been in months and shook hands, according to 

The détente did not last long. Around 3 p.m., the chair of Lewis George’s campaign 

 appearing to show a D.C. government truck delivering tables for McDuffie’s campaign. The D.C. Department of Public Works said it is investigating alleged misuse of a city vehicle and has placed the employee on administrative leave. “The misuse of government resources for campaign purposes will not be tolerated,” the department said in an 

. McDuffie’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s not the city’s only investigation in the mayoral race. Last week, the Office of Campaign Finance fined Lewis Geroge’s campaign $16,000 after investigators concluded her team improperly coordinated with labor unions and an independent expenditure committee — allegations the campaign has emphatically denied.

As for the delegate race, D.C. Council colleagues Brooke Pinto and Robert White are facing off to become the third person in history to serve as D.C.’s nonvoting representative in the U.S. House. Other races include the at-large seat on the city council, council members for Wards 1, 3, 5 and 6, council chair, attorney general and a special election for a separate at-large council seat.

At the West End Library on Tuesday, far more voters seemed to be dropping off their mail-in ballots than going inside to cast their vote in person. Some D.C. residents said this was a result of their first time voting with ranked choice: if they were going to rank up to five candidates, they wanted to research each one as they voted.

Others, like 79-year-old Phoebe Peacock, voted in person but bypassed the ranked-choice voting system altogether, instead opting to rank their first choice and no one else. The Foggy Bottom resident and fifth-generation Washingtonian said she voted for Lewis George and Pinto because she and her family had been represented by both women at different points during their time living in D.C. and were satisfied with their leadership.

“I just feel like I didn’t know enough about all of them to be fair,” she said of not ranking other candidates.

Mackenzie Walter, 30, woke up in her Adams Morgan home Tuesday still undecided. She knew she was voting for Ward 1 council candidate Aparna Raj for D.C. Council because campaign volunteers had knocked on her door a couple of times, but she wasn’t sure about her choice for mayor or D.C. delegate.

When she cast her ballot at Marie Reed Elementary School around 5 p.m., she voted for Lewis George and White, won over by their “progressive values.”

The D.C. resident of five years said she didn’t want to rank for McDuffie because some of the things she read had left a bad taste in her mouth, though she declined to specify.

“Not that the smear campaign worked — well maybe it did — but I heard some not great things,” she said.

At the polling center in Eastern Market, a 50-person line had wrapped around the corner by midafternoon.

Ryan Greene, 31, and Marie Rush, 29, both voted for Robert White in the delegate race, saying they supported his previous mayoral bid. Rush said he thought White had a better sense of the reality of the position than Pinto, as the delegate race is not an extension of the city council. Both Greene and Rush agreed that the primary results, whenever they come, will be vital.

“The choice we make today will have an impact for the next 10 years,” Greene said.

By 6 p.m., a line of roughly 50 people had formed inside Marie Reed Elementary School. Volunteers for Lewis George and at-large council candidate Doni Crawford handed out flyers, while council candidate Raj asked incoming voters to rank her first. Parents and students hosted a bake sale for the school as the song “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” blared.

Sammy Ledermann, 44, brought his 6-year-old daughter to vote with him. At her behest, he ranked Jackie Reyes Yanes first for Ward 1 councilmember. His daughter had met Yanes at a bus stop months ago and encouraged him to vote for her since.

A Swiss citizen, Ledermann ranked Lewis George first, but couldn’t vote for D.C. delegate because non-U.S. citizens can’t vote in elections for federal seats.

He was not alone. Registered independents, like 36-year-old Genevieve Cowan, could vote in the special election for D.C. council but not in the mayoral or delegate races.

“I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t get the chance to do that,” said Cowan.

Despite the potential delay in results, both mayoral candidates hosted election night parties — McDuffie's at The Park at 14th and Lewis George's at the Howard Theatre, where she launched her campaign. 

Energized McDuffie supporters crammed into the third and fourth floors at The Park after polls closed. Amid the crowd of mostly Black and middle-aged voters were ministers, developers, city officials and lobbyists.

The crowd roared when McDuffie took the podium around 9:30 p.m. Along with thanking his team and stressing the need for a mayor who can stand up to Trump and keep city dwellers safe, he addressed the fact that ranked-choice voting meant a delay in results. 

"The reality is, it’s going to take a while before we know the results of the election,” McDuffie said, referring to the expected delay because of ranked-choice voting. “We respect this process and we will see it through all the way to the end and ensure every vote is counted.”

Jianni Woodson-Brooks, 23, said he believed McDuffie was the best candidate to unite the city. A D.C. native living in Ward 5, Woodson-Brooks has seen the District change over the years. 


“The main issue we have as a community … is different groups of people don’t understand each other,” he said as McDuffie’s party wound down for the night.

Regardless of who wins, though, Woodson-Brooks is hopeful the next mayor will usher the city forward toward positive change. “It’s not one side versus the other,” he said. “When I think about maximizing ourself as a city or a community, we have to move forward as a unit regardless of who wins.”

At the Howard Theatre, where Lewis George held her election night party, the mood was hopeful and jubilant among a multiracial crowd that skewed younger. Though D.C. election officials have warned that results could take up to 10 days, that did nothing to stifle the optimism. One woman in a purple Lewis George shirt exclaimed: “I’m hoping we get a result tonight!”

Lewis George took the stage for the first time shortly before 11 p.m. to thunderous applause. The crowd erupted when she announced preliminary results, which had her leading the race with over 52 percent of the vote. 

Standing on stage in her signature lilac purple with campaign staff, family and labor union officials behind her, she addressed the crowd: "Tonight belongs to the postal worker on the early route, the nurse coming home from a double, the teacher who buys supplies out of her pocket, the childcare worker who loves on our babies all day but still can’t make ends meet,” she said. “This moment is for those who refuse to surrender their hope.”

As supporters including council members Charles Allen and Zachary Parker began to trickle out of The Howard Theatre just before midnight, Lewis George sat down with a group of reporters. She credited her focus on affordability, government services and standing up to Trump for her success. She said her campaign plans to wait for more of the votes to come in to declare victory, but said she wasn't sure exactly what percent of votes she’d like to see counted before declaring. 

This is the first time in over a decade that Muriel Bowser and Eleanor Holmes Norton are not on the ballot. 

D.C. Heads to the Polls in High-Stakes Primary 

One way or the other, the winner of today’s D.C. mayoral election will break precedent.

Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie, the two leading candidates, both embody familiar mayoral-wannabe archetypes. McDuffie is Mr. Next-in-Line, the candidate with the long record of service who seems due for a promotion. And Lewis George is Ms. True Believer, the candidate who vows to yank D.C.’s government back to the side of justice.

Over the city’s half-century of mayoral elections, we’ve seen examples of each — and neither one tends to win.

McDuffie follows in the footsteps of former Councilmembers Linda Cropp, John Ray, and Sterling Tucker, all of whom seemed to deserve the job. Lewis George’s campaign channels some of the spirit that animated candidates like her D.C. Council colleague Robert White and the Rev. Willie Wilson, both sharply critical of Washington’s unequal status quo.

Instead of picking these folks, D.C. voters at moments of transition have a habit of turning to candidates of fuzzy ideological definition — but a sense of newness and personal energy to get the city moving again: Adrian Fenty, Anthony Williams, Sharon Pratt, and the late Marion Barry.

None of them was the best-known in their race, nor the most ideological. But, as different as they were, and as different as their mayoral fortunes turned out to be, each managed to sell themself as the person of the moment.

As the underwhelming 2026 campaign reaches its end, it’s pretty clear that neither of the leading candidates has done that. And yet, unless the polls are wildly wrong, one of them will win.

McDuffie’s low-energy campaign has struggled to look like anything other than a fourth term for Mayor Muriel Bowser — or a 

 term of the centrism that has held sway since D.C.’s Barry-era insolvency. In the last weeks, McDuffie also resorted to red-baiting his democratic socialist rival and monomaniacally focusing on teen curfews, something that was never a big part of his political identity before now.

Lewis George’s campaign, meanwhile, has reflected the strident style of the college-educated, new-to-D.C. progressives who are her most ardent supporters. The campaign casts McDuffie as a corporate stooge whose 1990s priorities are useless in today’s overpriced Washington. But Lewis George often talks as if the city’s main industry weren’t contracting and its builders weren’t fleeing — which also seems pretty detached from the District of 2026.

The drag of it is that there’s actually a number of huge issues that await the next mayor — and explain why other District political heavyweights opted against running.

For one, there’s the regional economy, which has been sent into a tailspin by drastic cuts to the federal workforce. The DMV lost 103,900 jobs in the first year of the Trump administration, 43 percent of them in D.C. A 

 found that eleven percent of Washingtonians, and 15 percent of Black Washingtonians, had someone in their household who lost a job as a result of Trump’s cuts. It’s a moment that invites a conversation about what new industries the city might lure in order to create some new jobs for. But we didn’t hear much of that during the campaign.

Another set of recent headlines has focused on something the candidates have spent a lot of time talking about: housing. Construction in D.C. is in a deep freeze. Operators of subsidized housing are fleeing because, they say, residents’ chronic non-payment of rent means there’s no way to stay in business. And builders of regular condos are staying away because the lousy regional economy has put a damper on would-be buyers. Yet the candidates kept on talking about whose target number of new housing units — 12,000 for McDuffie, 72,000 for Lewis George — was better.

One of them is going to have to face down these problems, and others, soon enough. And when they do, they will likely need to look beyond their basic political bases for answers.

McDuffie, who is largely supported by corporate interests and political veterans, will be reckoning with the fact that the pro-business politics of the past generation really do seem played out to a lot of Washingtonians. They brought the city back from the brink, spurred amazing population growth, and made the District more dynamic — but also turned it into a much more unequal, unaffordable place.

Lewis George, riding a wave of support from people who weren’t here for the bad old days, wants to address the affordability problems by marshaling government to do things like underwrite daycare and build housing. But the fact that the government even has the resources to do that is a function of the fiscal prudence of Muriel Bowser and the other old-line pols they disdain. There’s also no guarantee that the city’s population boom won’t go into reverse, something worth remembering as allies push for tax hikes.

Finally, there’s the Trump of it all. The president’s 11th-hour decision to inject himself into the campaign, threatening to take over D.C. if the socialist wins, seemed like a big favor for Lewis George, who within hours had produced a digital ad vowing to fight back. But the reality is that both are going to have to deal with the president and his administration. And the dealing is going to involve some stuff other than just resistance. In a city that doesn’t hold many cards, it’s going to also involve charming or cajoling or manipulating the president — and messaging the broader American public in ways that help the cause.

In other words, they’ll need to do some of the things they’ve been doing on the campaign trail, too. Sometime soon, when the ranked-choice votes are finally counted, we’ll find out who did it better.

The city doesn’t usually pick candidates like Janeese Lewis George or Kenyan McDuffie. For better or worse, that will change this year. 

Column: D.C.’s Disappointing Mayoral Campaign Ends Today

Robert White won the Democratic nomination to become D.C.’s nonvoting member of Congress on Tuesday, succeeding his one-time boss, Eleanor Holmes Norton, who served as the District’s “warrior on the hill” for 35 years.

The 42-year-old D.C. councilmember received 63.16% of the first-rank votes as of Tuesday at 11:45 p.m. ET. In deeply blue D.C., the Democratic primary is paramount to the November election, where he will face Republican Denise Rosado and Kymone Freeman of the D.C. Statehood Green Party.

White triumphed over a crowded field, besting four other candidates, including D.C. Council colleague Brooke Pinto. A spokesperson for White confirmed that Pinto conceded the race. 

“I’m excited and humbled," White told City Cast DC. "I’ll be presumptively the third ever person in D.C. that’s sent to Congress and they are sending me at a time when we’re under attack and they need somebody who is ready to fight for D.C., defend D.C. and make life better for everyday people who keep getting left behind.”

“I’m still digesting it," he added. "It’s surreal as a native Washingtonian who had no clear path to a position like this, but I’m excited tonight.”

It was a competitive, expensive and at times nasty fight over a seat with relatively little power. The D.C. delegate can sit on and vote in congressional committees, as well as introduce legislation and debate on the House floor – but they can’t vote on legislation before the full House. 

The role of the nonvoting delegate has been largely defined by Norton, who in her 18 consecutive terms became the face of the fight for D.C. statehood for a generation of Washingtonians. The seat has been essentially uncompetitive since Norton won in 1991, and the 89-year-old lawmaker originally planned to run for re-election. But she ended her campaign in January after months of 

 from some of her closest confidantes to step aside. White, who worked as legislative counsel in Norton’s office for five years, has called her a mentor.

This race marked the most expensive on record for D.C. delegates, with candidates collectively raising almost $3.3 million as of May 27, according to 

. White’s campaign had the third-most funds, behind Kinney Zalesne and Pinto.

White – who has served on the D.C. Council since 2016 – challenged Mayor Muriel Bowser for mayor in 2022, losing with 40% of the primary vote to Bowser’s 49%. He had planned to run for mayor again, 

, but said the escalating encroachments to D.C.’s autonomy led him to pursue Congress instead. He announced his campaign in September, days after the end of the 30-day crime emergency declared by President Donald Trump and amid surging concerns about D.C. police’s cooperation with immigration enforcement.

“I was planning to run for mayor but, last year, especially by late last summer, it became clear that D.C.’s home rule is under real threat,” White said. “Like we might wake up one day and no longer have a council or mayor.”

Throughout the campaign, he posited himself as a counterweight to Trump – though so did his primary opponent, Pinto. On their faces, the two candidates’ campaign priorities were not all that different. However, their time on the D.C. Council paints a clearer picture of where the two diverge. White has consistently aligned with progressives on the council and endorsed democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George for mayor, while Pinto often takes a more moderate stance.

White told City Cast DC he plans to raise the D.C. delegate’s national profile, build relationships and seize upon the national conversation around redistricting to strategically lobby for statehood.

 at times, most notably when Pinto posted to her website a 67-page dossier of opposition research on White, including his home address and information about his family. In response, White called on Pinto to drop out of the race, calling it “beyond the pale.” Pinto’s campaign later removed the dossier and posted another version without information about White’s family.

“We need folks who are ready for the fight that we are in… but understand that, even in war, there are lines that you don’t cross and frankly family is one of them,” White said of the dossier.

Later that month, it was White’s turn to take down something he’d posted. Hours after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’s Association Dinner, he posted on X, using the shooting to rip on youth curfews: “Looks like we need a curfew on the Correspondents Dinner. It’s clear we need to hold the parents responsible.”

He later removed the post and apologized: “I’ve deleted an earlier tweet. It was inappropriate and insensitive. I should not have tried to make a point by referring to an incident of gun violence.” (White has been one of the five councilmembers to repeatedly vote against targeted youth curfew zones.)

Leo Nyberg and Peter Kumar contributed to this report.

White, who beat his council colleague Brooke Pinto, would become just the third person in history to represent D.C. in Congress.

Robert White Wins Democratic Primary to Represent D.C. in Congress

City Cast DC staff

Washingtonians will head to the polls on June 16 for a primary election that includes races for mayor, D.C. House Delegate, and an at-large seat on the city council — along with a special election for a separate at-large council seat. 

City Cast DC sent a questionnaire to each candidate asking about their campaign platforms and what they see as top priorities for the city. We also included some multiple choice questions on how they would prioritize certain issues. 

Here are the responses we received for council races in Wards 1, 5, and 6, as well as for the at-large seat and special election. (Council chairman Phil Mendelson and Ward 3 councilmember Matthew Frumin are running unopposed in the Democratic primary.) 

Note: Some candidates chose not to answer particular questions, which we left blank. Candidates with no responses did not reply to our questionnaire despite multiple attempts to reach them. 

You can also check out our other guides for the 

At-Large Councilmember (Special Election)

Peter Kumar and Leo Nyberg compiled this report.

City Cast DC sent questionnaires to candidates asking about their campaign platforms and what they see as top priorities for the city.

D.C. Voter Guide 2026: Council Races and Special Election

Voter Guide: Council Races and Special Election

D.C. may not know the winner of the mayoral race for up to 10 days after the primary election, setting residents up for at least a week of uncertainty as they await results.

The District’s first foray into ranked-choice voting, paired with its policy of sending mail-in ballots to all registered voters, has the city preparing for delays. Election officials expect the first ranked-choice voting tabulation in the June 16 primary to be released by June 21, but D.C. law requires that mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day continue to be counted until June 26.

“If we have to wait, we’re just going to wait and that’s how it goes with ranked choice voting,” said Gary Thompson, chair of the D.C. Board of Elections. “We’ll get to a reliable result as efficiently and quickly as possible without compromising on accuracy.”

But could this open the door to attacks from critics in Congress and the White House? The question is on people’s minds as the long delay in counting ballots from last week’s California elections has led to conspiracy theories about fraud, amplified by President Donald Trump and other top conservatives.

“Here we go with very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS,” Trump said in a Truth Social post last week.

That’s not a good sign for the District, which accepts ballots for even longer than California and where two-thirds of people voted by mail in the last mayoral primary. (Plus, everything from crime statistics manipulation to a viral Chipotle brawl has become fodder for Republicans to 

question whether the District can rule itself

 have posted about receiving other people’s ballots in the mail, pointing to it as a sign of potential fraud. (I also received two mail-in ballots addressed to other people, presumably the former tenants of my apartment.)

Here’s what else you need to know about ranked choice voting.

DC Politics

McDuffie Concedes in Mayor's Race

Column: D.C.’s Disastrous Election Wait

Janeese Lewis George Looks Very Likely to Win D.C. Mayoral Primary

Latest articles

D.C. Heads to the Polls in High-Stakes Primary

Column: D.C.’s Disappointing Mayoral Campaign Ends Today

Robert White Wins Democratic Primary to Represent D.C. in Congress

Voter Guide: Council Races and Special Election

When Will D.C. Know Its Next Mayor? Later Than You Might Think.

Voter Guide: The Delegate Race

Voter Guide: The D.C. Mayor's Race