In December of 2016, as Democrats across the country were still reeling from President Donald Trump’s election the month before, progressives in the District of Columbia got some welcome news. The DC Council passed legislation guaranteeing private-sector workers up to eight weeks of paid family leave.
The Washington Post described the new policy as “some of the nation’s most generous family and medical leave benefits.” The National Partnership for Women & Families called it “historic.” Vox even hailed it as a “model for state-level progressives under Trump.”
Yet this model, set to be fully implemented by 2020, was stridently opposed by the District’s business establishment and its top Democrat, Mayor Muriel Bowser, who let the policy become law without her signature. Bowser criticized the imposition of a $250 million annual tax on employers, arguing the law mostly benefited workers living in Maryland and Virginia. In a statement, she said it was “wrong to raise District taxes to fund a costly, new government program that sends 66 percent of the benefits outside of the city.”
Today these criticisms are animating a campaign against one of the paid-leave law’s chief architects — at-large DC Council member Elissa Silverman, an independent who is running for a second term this year. Silverman’s most formidable challenger in the November election will likely be independent S. Kathryn Allen, a small-business owner who served as a banking commissioner under former DC Mayor Anthony Williams. Both Williams and former Council member David Catania are supporting Allen, who told The DC Line that the paid-leave issue “pushed me over the edge” to enter the race.
“To have this law now,” she said, “with the highest tax increase in the history of the District on the backs of small businesses that are the core of this city, and then have two-thirds of the money going to Maryland and Virginia residents — it’s just bad judgment.”
With Bowser facing no meaningful opposition to her own re-election bid, this at-large council race is shaping up to be the year’s marquee local contest — a referendum on an ambitious progressive incumbent and a chance for the business community to gain an ally on an increasingly left-leaning council. “This is a fight I’m happy to take on,” Silverman told The DC Line. “If S. Kathryn Allen thinks that big-money special interests don’t have enough of a voice at the WIlson Building, I think District voters disagree.”
There are actually two at-large council seats up this November, but Democratic incumbent Anita Bonds is heavily favored to keep her own. Bonds, who chairs the local Democratic State Committee, is her party’s nominee in a city where 76 percent of registered voters are Democrats, and she easily dispatched several primary challengers in June. Bonds told The DC Line she plans to continue focusing on affordable housing and preventing homelessness, assuming she returns to the Wilson Building.
The real question is whether voters will also re-elect Silverman, or opt for one of the seven non-Democratic candidates in the race.
Dionne Reeder, who owns the cafe Cheers at the Big Chair in Anacostia, is also running as an independent. She’s pledging to focus on workforce development that prepares young people for “21st-century trades” like customer service, cybersecurity and data coding. She told The DC Line that too many government programs are “keeping people stagnated where they are,” adding, “I’m not interested in having poor people remain poor.”
Reeder previously led youth violence prevention efforts for the District, served as a neighborhood services coordinator in Ward 8 under Mayor Williams, and worked for the Far Southeast Family Strengthening Collaborative. She describes opening her cafe in a food desert — and directly employing members of the surrounding community — as “one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done, and one of the most rewarding.”
Another independent candidate this year is Rustin Lewis, a professor of advocacy, policy and nonprofit management at the University of the District of Columbia. He’s running on equity in education, housing and job opportunities, stressing his nonprofit background. According to his campaign website, Lewis was previously CEO of DC’s College Bound, regional executive director for College Summit, president of National CARES, manager for the DC Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, and chief operating officer of the DC Promise Neighborhood Initiative.
The most left-wing candidate in the race undoubtedly is the Statehood Green Party’s David Schwartzman, a professor emeritus at Howard University. Schwartzman told The DC Line he’s running as “an open socialist and an eco-socialist” who wants to raise DC’s income tax on individuals earning more than $200,000 a year. The goal would be to recoup the money wealthy Washingtonians get from Trump’s tax cut and, in Schwartzman’s words, enact “a break from trickle-down economics by actually tapping into the tax base we have, both by curbing public deals and subsidies going to gentrification and displacement.” He would put the revenue toward fighting homelessness and child poverty.
There’s generally not much appetite for conservatism in District politics, but right-wing voters do have two options in this contest: Libertarian Denise Hicks, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Republican Ralph J. Chittams Sr. “Our current group of politicians have never met a tax they couldn’t or wouldn’t support,” Chittams told The DC Line. “The residents of the District of Columbia are being taxed into submission.” Describing what he sees as government overreach, he criticized the District’s recent tax hike on ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, intended to help fund Metro.
“That’s absurd,” said Chittams, who was selected by the DC Republican Party as its nominee after no one ran in the June primary. “I’m sure there are operational inefficiencies to save at Metro. … I’m sure that, if Metro wanted to, they could find the money.”
As much as any race features a diverse set of issues, Silverman’s fate may hinge on whether voters buy her defense of the paid-leave law — and resent the concerted effort to undermine it. Silverman is emphatic that the law is pro-worker and pro-business, telling the Afro-American that “many small businesses, including restaurants, say they want to provide this benefit to retain their workers and keep them healthy but can’t afford to pay it out of pocket.” She casts opponents of the law as doing the bidding of special interests.
Allen insists she believes in paid leave, but says government should mandate or incentivize businesses to provide the benefit “instead of creating a $40 million bureaucracy to implement it.” (Critics argue employer mandates end up with loopholes, leaving many workers without benefits.)
Was Silverman’s signature legislative accomplishment too burdensome for business? “This is not radical,” she told The DC Line. “It’s not experimental. This is what most of the world does.”
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