jonetta rose barras: Is the proverbial fat lady warming up to sing in the mayoral race?

That’s the question many people were initially asking after The Washington Post released poll results that seemed to be a two-step takedown of incumbent Mayor Muriel Bowser. After all, 74% of the 904 people surveyed between Feb. 2 and Feb. 14 backed the mandate that required certain businesses to check the vaccination status of individuals before allowing them entry — the same mandate she had just lifted by the time the poll results came out. 

Two days later, on Feb. 17, The Post ran a story indicating that Bowser’s overall approval rating had dropped to 58% from a high of 67% in 2019.

Interestingly, Marion Barry ran and won multiple elections with a favorability rating that rarely exceeded 50% — except in 1995 when it was 58%, according to The Post. Coincidentally, in November 2015 — a year after Bowser won her first mayoral race — her approval was at 58%. 

Still, some people have deemed her recent approval numbers as proof that she is politically weak. Seven individuals — Malachi Aaron Black, James Butler, Michael Campbell, Leland Andre Core, Andre Davis, at-large DC Council member Robert White and Ward 8 Council member Trayon White — have taken out nominating petitions to run against her in the Democratic primary, according to the DC Board of Elections. The two Whites are considered Bowser’s strongest challengers. Undoubtedly all of them — and their supporters — are hoping there is some truth to the analysis that her support is waning.

“There is still time for [Robert] to turn things around,” said Keith Ivey, a political observer and operative who is supporting Robert White. Ivey is a member of DC for Democracy, a grassroots organization that, according to its website, promotes progressive issues and candidates; the group has endorsed White.

“Anything can happen,” admitted Terry Lynch, a Ward 1 resident who has been actively involved in DC politics for decades and is putting his support behind Bowser. 

“Lightning can strike, but it’s unlikely,” Lynch added, echoing comments of other political observers and operatives with whom I spoke privately during the past week. 

“The results of this poll should come as no surprise to anyone,” said Chuck Thies, who has been involved in DC political affairs for decades. “At this point in the mayoral election, there have been no skirmishes [and] no fireworks. So, the status quo remains.”

The Democratic primary is June 21. There could be a fight or two to heat things up, especially since there are multiple issues where Bowser received poor performance ratings. An adroit politician, she has moved within the past few months to minimize any vulnerabilities, spreading money and visiting important constituents. Under the current conditions, both Whites have a steep hill to climb in order to declare victory.

Consider, for example, that 579 of the folks surveyed indicated they were registered Democratic voters; of that number, 67% said they are “certain” to vote in the June primary. Among those individuals, Bowser’s favorability was 61%, according to the poll results.

It appears her support stretches across all age groups, genders, classes and wards — although she has only a 53% approval rating among Black respondents, compared with 66% among whites and 64% among Asians and Hispanics. Still, those numbers are better than Robert White’s; only 22% of Blacks had a favorable impression of him. Among Blacks, Trayon White had a 46% favorability rating.

Among registered Democrats participating in the poll, only 29% had a favorable impression of Robert White while 30% had a favorable impression of Trayon White. The results for both council members were offset by the fact that 61% of them said they didn’t know enough about Robert White to have an opinion while 47% didn’t know Trayon White.

That lack in familiarity is itself a problem months after they each announced their mayoral candidacies.

“I know [Robert] must be hoping that Trayon does not make the ballot so there are not two Whites on the ballot,” said Lynch.

“If I’m Trayon, I am calling on Robert to drop out of the race,” said one political observer who requested anonymity. 

The sizable number of respondents who claim to be registered voters and who do not know either of the Whites or DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson was shocking. Robert White ran unopposed in the 2020 Democratic primary, pulling in 93,264 votes to win reelection to his at-large council seat; of course, that was in the midst of a hotly contested presidential primary. Trayon White won 5,063 votes in his Ward 8 reelection contest in that same election. 

Mendelson has been a political fixture in the city for three decades. He last ran in 2018 against Ed Lazere, a popular progressive Democrat. Mendelson received 48,848 votes (63.02%) while Lazere came in at 28,280 votes (36.48%), according to results posted on the Elections Board website.

Mendelson and his colleagues may be suffering the COVID-19 political blur, which has elevated — for bad or good — the executives in local, state and federal governments rather than legislators. Consider the press conferences from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Maryland’s Larry Hogan and, yes, Bowser that aired nationally early in the pandemic.

DC Council members basically gave Bowser free rein, approving a public health emergency that allowed her to set restrictions and rules related to mask-wearing, testing and vaccinations. They approved additional pandemic spending to help rescue certain residents. However, the public perceived the mayor and her team as the bankers, despite the fact that legislators on several occasions were the ones pushing the executive to more quickly provide needed services. 

Despite her decision to drop a vaccination mandate that proved to be politically popular, 72% of those surveyed by The Post said Bowser has been doing an excellent to good job responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Abt Associates — which conducted The Post’s poll — surveyed half the total sample in rating the mayor’s performance on six issues, including handling the pandemic. 

Her scores around other issues weren’t so good.

The poll revealed that 73% of respondents said Bowser was doing a “not good” to “poor” job reducing crime; it topped the list of concerns for 36% of those surveyed. Not since 2015 has crime taken such prominence, when 34% of District residents rated it among their most important issues. 

In the recent poll, 64% also said the mayor was not doing a good job reducing homelessness and 65% had the same response about her efforts to create or maintain affordable housing. A strong majority — 75% — backed the mayor’s pilot project to clear encampments after offering housing to some of those affected.

If Bowser’s recent spending announcements are any indication, she may have been doing some polling of her own. Over the past three to six months, she has presented significant initiatives in each of those areas, including the administration’s attempts to move people experiencing homelessness off the street and into temporary or permanent housing and the decision to spend more money on affordable housing including in Ward 3.

In other words, there are multiple places where Bowser’s opponents could take the fight. But on the big issue of crime, Robert White and Trayon White have likely rendered themselves irrelevant in the minds of many voters. 

Trayon White has not offered any major policy plans of his own, and his public safety approach echoes that of Robert White.

Robert White’s public safety plan, which he released earlier this month, turns away from a law-and-order focus, relying heavily on violence interrupters or Cure the Street intervention programs to help quell the rising violence and carjackings in the city. “If police spending alone stopped violence, DC would be one of the safest cities in the world. But we’re not,” he wrote.

“It’s clear our current approach to criminal justice and public safety is not turning the tide on violent crime, and we cannot continue to put more and more taxpayer money into the same systems, hoping for different outcomes,” he added.

A growing number of residents believe those are viable upstream efforts, but they do not stanch the daily flow of blood on District streets. “It’s like if your roof is leaking and you don’t have the money to replace it. What do you do? You patch it,” explained one political observer. 

“District residents want a patch — now,” added the political observer.

Last week, Bowser and a phalanx of federal and local law enforcement officials along with the director of the city’s Department of Behavioral Health took over a street corner in Ward 8 to announce a yearlong partnership aimed at reducing crime in DC. While expressing support for incorporating a public health approach in the city’s efforts, Bowser seemed to throw down the gauntlet, making clear that she intends to place a sufficient amount of money in her fiscal year 2023 budget to return the Metropolitan Police Department to 4,000 officers.

The only way Robert White or Trayon White might be able to overshadow Bowser’s law-and-order advocacy, which doesn’t reject violence interrupters but rather demands more police presence, is for them to come at her from the right, said one political observer. To do that both would have to betray their base as well as their prior stances. 

At this moment, Bowser appears to have her opponents in a political vise. Undoubtedly that is just where she wants them. But can she keep them there through the election? 

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jonetta rose barras is an author and freelance journalist, covering national and local issues including politics, childhood trauma, public education, economic development and urban public policies. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.