Residents of Washington, DC are casting their votes Tuesday to choose party nominees for mayor and the district’s seat in Congress — an election happening at a time when the nation’s capital is experiencing dramatic shifts under President Donald Trump’s administration.
It’s a historic moment for the district: for the first time in a generation, DC voters are choosing both a new mayor and a new congressional delegate in the same election cycle. Because Washington is a heavily Democratic city, whoever wins the Democratic primary is broadly expected to win the general election this November.
The mayoral race is drawing the most attention. Current Mayor Muriel Bowser, first elected in 2014, chose not to run for a fourth term, leaving the door open for Democratic front-runners Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie to compete for the city’s top job.
On the congressional side, longtime delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is stepping down after serving 18 terms. The leading Democratic candidates to succeed her are council member Brooke Pinto and at-large council member Robert White Jr. On the Republican side, immigration attorney Denise Rosado is running without opposition.
Tuesday’s primary will also introduce rank-choice voting to DC elections for the first time. Election officials have cautioned that this new system could push back the announcement of final results by several days.
Running through every campaign is the complicated and increasingly tense relationship between Washington and the Trump administration. The district operates with limited self-governance, and the federal government holds considerable authority over local matters — including the ability to approve or reject the city’s budget and legislation passed by the DC Council.
That already constrained independence has been squeezed further under Trump. His administration launched a federal law enforcement surge in the city last summer and deployed the National Guard on an open-ended basis. Thousands of residents lost their jobs as a result of Trump’s federal workforce reduction efforts. The president has also been physically remaking the city, removing or renovating well-known landmarks and attaching his name or image to buildings.
Just last week, Trump raised the prospect of a federal takeover of Washington when asked how he might respond if Lewis George — a democratic socialist — were to win the mayor’s race.
