jonetta rose barras: The political battle in DC continues

Someone should have warned DC residents at the start of this political season to “fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night,” as Margo Channing did in the movie All About Eve. The District’s primary, or more precisely the Democratic primary, certainly fits that description. 

There are concerns about the management of the June 21 primary election, including why the ballot-tracking system didn’t work for some mail-in voters. By Wednesday afternoon there were growing questions about why more than 27,000 ballots placed in drop boxes had yet to be counted; Thursday evening, the Elections Board said updated results would be posted “as soon as possible,” citing the need to process “a very large number” of such ballots. A partial update came early Friday morning, when the board reported a total of 108,051 ballots counted, up from 91,963 ballots in the election night tally. That amounts to a turnout of 26.37%, although that percentage will increase further. A substantial number of ballots remain uncounted, three days after the primary.

Houston, we have a problem.

On election day, some people I spoke with asked about the logic of mailing approximately 400,000 ballots when some individuals on the voter rolls no longer live in DC or have died, as was the case with one woman’s daughter; she said she has repeatedly informed the DC Board of Elections of that fact, but the agency continues to send materials. Further, some residents have called for an investigation of how taxpayers’ dollars provided through the Fair Elections Act were spent by candidates who didn’t make it on the ballot or who voluntarily dropped out of their races. 

Equally important, the rough ride can be attributed to the evolving political dynamics between  center-left and far-left elected officials in the executive and legislative branches who continue to  debate, skirmish and outright fight — not necessarily about what issues are most important but rather over the approach to resolving them. During this local primary season, much of the discourse became coarse, duplicating the tone and texture being exhibited across the country. That’s not surprising since some of the divisions have been sparked by national events, programs, initiatives or ideologies that many center-left disciples see as out of sync with their view of the District — its residents, its values or its future aspirations.

Battle lines have already been drawn around ranked choice voting, the future of charter school expansion, repeal of mayoral control of public education, and expansion of the DC police department to 4,000 officers. An economic recession could instigate conflicts over whether to cut services or levy yet another tax hike on the income of wealthy District residents. 

Looking to strengthen their hand, far-left pols and their supporters have been systematically and aggressively pushing their way to the control room, mounting challenges against incumbents or pouncing when positions become vacant. Muriel Bowser has long been on their short list. 

Robert White was their candidate for mayor in this week’s Democratic primary. Bowser expertly and decisively dispatched him despite his plethora of endorsements, including an early one from DC Attorney General Karl Racine. Other candidates Racine backed fared better: Brian Schwalb won the Democratic nomination for attorney general with 45.56% of the votes; Zachary Parker is the presumptive Ward 5 council nominee; Brianne Nadeau was renominated to the Ward 1 seat; and Matt Frumin is poised to get the Ward 3 nomination, according to the preliminary results released by the Board of Elections.

In the final weeks of the primary season, White released an internal poll that suggested he was just four percentage points behind Bowser, enough for a statistical tie based on the margin of error. Undoubtedly, he had hoped that such news could sway enough undecided voters to his corner, helping him to bring down Bowser, a political powerhouse who has yet to lose an election. 

White lost his bid by a significant margin: 39.61% to Bowser’s 49.53%, according to the Elections Board’s most recent count. Bowser won seven of the city’s eight wards — a decisive victory by any standard. 

Given those numbers White may want to demand a refund from his favorite pollster. 

Still, don’t expect him to hide out in some dark room. He still holds his at-large seat on the DC Council, where his outsize ambitions and far-left leanings along with the need to stay relevant and in the press could ignite clashes with incumbent Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who prevailed in his race for a third full term.

“Phil is going to have a rough time balancing the needs of progressive voices,” David Meadows told me Tuesday night. The former director of the DC Democratic State Committee, he was elected this week as Ward 8 Democratic Committeeman, becoming the first white person to hold that position. 

“The mayor may [also] have a hard time with them. But the city is sending a message for a mature, moderate voice. The people have faith in Phil,” added Meadows. 

That may be true. However, political consultant Chuck Thies told me Wednesday during an extended conversation about primary results that “The left is trending upward.” 

Further, said Thies, the leftward trending is more apparent in the mayoral rather than presidential cycle, when there’s generally a larger turnout. “Centrists in the city have to begin to unite to maintain control after 2026.”  

Mendelson, who described himself as one of the city’s original progressives during his primary campaign, won his bid for renomination as council chair with 54.09% of the votes against challenger Erin Palmer, who had 45.48% as of the most recent tally. An ethics attorney and Ward 4 advisory neighborhood commissioner, she fared substantially better than Ed Lazere, who carried the progressive banner in a 2018 run against Mendelson; Lazere won only 36.48% of the votes cast. 

While Palmer may have performed better than Lazere, the results in the Democratic primary suggest that candidates who identify with the far-left wing of the party have yet to break the citywide juggernaut of moderates. 

“We’ll have to let the dust settle,” Mendelson told me Tuesday night at his victory party at Sudhouse on U Street NW, dismissing concerns about the toxic political mix he may have to manage for the next four years. 

“I can work with anybody,” he said. 

There has been tangible evidence, however, that not everyone in the legislature wants to collaborate fully with him. He and Nadeau, for instance, have clashed often.

She won 6,521 votes (47.81%) in the Democratic primary. Notwithstanding her current 16-point margin, it was a tough race; a path to victory came only after she and her supporters — including LIUNA, the Laborers’ International Union of North America, Local 11 — launched a blistering attack on her key challenger, Salah Czapary, a former DC police officer. The assault was designed to impugn his character and reputation. While some voters abandoned his campaign, they didn’t necessarily race to Nadeau; it appears they shifted their support to Sabel Harris, another opponent.

Czapary received 4,312 votes (31.61%) and Harris, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, received 2,772 (20.32%). As in the 2018 contest, more Ward 1 residents voted against Nadeau than voted for her.

Thies and other political operatives believe that, should an independent campaign be mounted against Nadeau, she would be “vulnerable.” The same has been said of at-large member Elissa Silverman, who acts as one of the unabashed leaders of the far-left-leaning crew and who is on my list for political contrarian of the year award. 

Silverman may have produced the greatest turbulence in the June 21 primary after she used the results from an internal poll — paid for by her campaign, which is receiving public matching funds — to persuade one of the leading candidates in Ward 3 race, Tricia Duncan, to drop out because there was evidence that Matt Frumin had a better chance of defeating Eric Goulet. A longtime government employee and legislative director for the council’s Committee on Health, Goulet appeared a heavy favorite to replace the departing Mary Cheh.

Were it not for that maneuver, Goulet would quite likely have been the person giving a victory speech on election night. Instead, Tuesday night’s last tally had Frumin with 38% of the vote and Goulet with 31.01%; only 911 votes separated them at the time. With Friday morning’s update incorporating late mail-in votes, Frumin’s lead grew to 1,723 votes; he has 40.93% of the vote, with Goulet’s share down to 30.28%.

Goulet has conceded the race; he did not return my telephone call requesting a comment about whether that action may be premature, especially with thousands of Ward 3 votes not yet counted. On Thursday, Goulet tweeted that he was removing signs and thinking about his next career move. He promised to be even more engaged in Ward 3 activities and offered this: “One thing I will be speaking more about involves @tweetelissa’s use of taxpayer funds to pay for a poll to influence a race in which she was not competing. This was unethical, and possibly illegal conduct, falsely disguised as progressive politics.”

In response to earlier questions about the poll, Silverman told DCist/WAMU that she properly reported the spending on her campaign finance reports and did not share specific information in violation of campaign finance rules, instead describing the results only in broad terms.

For his part, Frumin said on Wednesday that it was premature to declare victory with so many votes still to be counted.

“You haven’t seen a statement issued from me,” Frumin told me. “I want to see the final count.”

Frumin acknowledges holding progressive positions on some issues. However, he added this: “The idea that I might be characterized in any way as an ideologue is comical to me.” 

He said he found the depth of division he has witnessed nationally and locally “unnecessary and counterproductive.”

“I have a long record of being able to find a path of common ground,” continued Frumin, who indicated that if he is elected, he expects to focus on education, particularly overcrowding in Ward 3 schools; increasing access to affordable housing; and working with seniors.

“Public safety is very important to make sure people are [safe] and feel safe,” he added.

Final victories won’t be sealed until after the Nov. 2 general election. Six individuals — Rodney Red Grant, Joe Green, Fred Hill, Stacie Jameson, Carolyn E. O’Connor and Frank Sewell — have signed up as independents to challenge Bowser. John Cheeks has likewise registered to run against Mendelson. Meanwhile, Stacia R. Hall and Nate Derenge are the Republican nominees for the respective offices, having run uncontested in their party’s primary.

Good luck with that.

Independents and Republicans may have a better opportunity for success in the at-large council race, where voters will be able to pick two members. Anita Bonds, who won the Democratic Party nomination with 37.04% in a four-person race, will appear on the ballot; however, with the majority of her own party’s voters having chosen one of Bonds’ opponents and the large undervote, she may be the most vulnerable Democratic nominee heading into the general election. Silverman also is expected to be on the ballot as she seeks a third term. Independents Joe Little, Karima Marshall and Graham McLaughlin have thrown their hats in the ring, according to the DCBOE website. 

The Elections Board began making qualifying petitions available to candidates on June 17. The forms must be returned by Aug. 10. So, there is still time for others to jump in.

No one has signed up yet to run as an independent in Ward 5, where Democrat Zachary Parker won the primary with 42.54%, significantly outperforming his nearest competitor, Faith Gibson Hubbard, who received 23.92% of the vote. A former DC State Board of Education president who came out as gay during the election, Parker is fully in the far-left camp, securing endorsements from the political action committee DC for Democracy, Racine, and democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George, who represents Ward 4 on the council.

Frumin, assuming his increasingly strong lead holds, will face Republican David Krucoff. No independent has yet to register in that contest. 

Given the dominance of the Democratic Party among the District electorate, its nominees traditionally have won the November election. That means Parker and Frumin are expected to join a contingent of other self-described progressives who also won reelection or who are already ensconced in the John A. Wilson Building. In Ward 6, Charles Allen ran unopposed in the Democratic primary but pulled in only 11,024 votes; more than 1,000 voters from his community cast their ballots but failed to vote for him, with another 438 writing in someone’s name. (In fact, there was an extremely high number of so-called “under votes” in several contests: 7,745 in the at-large council race, 4,856 in the chairman’s race, and 3,522 in the DC delegate race.)

Mendelson will have to find seven dependable council votes if he wants to advance an aggressive social agenda that is also fiscally responsible. Six members seem to be predictably far-left on most issues: Silverman, Lewis George, Allen, Nadeau, Robert White and Ward 8 Council member Trayon White. The others — at-large Council members Christina Henderson and Bonds, Ward 7’s Vincent Gray, and Ward 2’s Brooke Pinto — are either in the center-left or at least a tad more flexible; so, too, are departing Mary Cheh of Ward 3 and Kenyan McDuffie of Ward 5. Of the two likely newcomers, Parker is clearly in the first camp; Frumin appears to fit into the latter grouping.

Oh, yes. We all better heed Channing’s advice. Beginning January 2023, we are in for the bumpiest of times. 

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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.