jonetta rose barras: One fresh face for the DC Council, but is there a new tradition taking root?

“I’m waiting to see the day when we’ll be at home and pull up the computer and start voting right from there,” Rip Preston told me Tuesday as he worked the polls for at-large Councilmember Robert White outside Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in Ward 5. 

In past elections, places like Turkey Thicket would have been a gauntlet, with voters having to pass through parallel lines of campaign workers distributing reams of literature from an array of candidates for local and federal offices. Now it and other centers seem to have been ghosted by voters.

Preston’s comment was an acknowledgment of the visible change in voting patterns DC has witnessed since 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic led the council to mandate that every registered voter receive an absentee ballot, permitting widespread voting by mail. That was also the year the city began the use of ballot drop boxes in an effort to safeguard a democratic process for which many District residents had fought hard while also hoping to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. Mail-in balloting during that election cycle was riddled with problems, the least of which was that not every person received their ballot.

Since then, there has been steady, though incremental, progress with mail-in balloting. Tuesday’s primary provided evidence that what initially had been considered a temporary response to an unprecedented event is taking root, becoming a new tradition of sorts, albeit with some disconcerting results. The growing use of a mail-in system means, for me, a decline in the civic and communal culture that accompanies traditional in-person voting at polls or vote centers. Anyone who has visited Turkey Thicket at election time has seen the camaraderie even among opposing candidates; they’ve heard neighbors conversing about community issues or simply sharing stories about children or parents. Losing all of that for the efficiency of mail-in voting can be disheartening.

By primary day, more than 46,000 people affiliated with one of the city’s three registered political parties — Democrats, Republicans, Statehood Green — had already cast their ballots either through the U.S. Postal Service or via drop boxes scattered throughout the city. In-person early and election day voting accounted for 27,534 additional votes, while the total number of mail-in and special ballots has risen to 64,783, according to the unofficial election results posted Thursday night by the DC Board of Elections (BOE) on its website. The BOE will continue to post updated tallies through next Thursday as mail-in ballots postmarked by June 4 arrive and are processed.

“Look at what we have right now. Two-thirds of the voters returned their ballots through the mail or they put it in the drop box,” said political consultant Chuck Thies, noting that the process is “slowly helping people get involved.” 

“But what it’s not doing is getting people who typically don’t get involved, get involved,” added Thies, who spoke to me as an individual and not as a staffer in Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray’s office.

Though political leaders may be satisfied with the growing use of mail-in ballots, there is no reason to celebrate the overall voter turnout, which was less than 25% of eligible primary voters as of the latest tally. The presence of younger people willing to run for office may be the biggest bright spot, including Wendell Felder’s narrow win in Ward 7. It certainly was a noteworthy aspect for Preston, who saluted Robert White, another member of the younger set.

“He’s done a great job. We have watched him grow,” said Preston, seated under his tent with White political paraphernalia on the table before him. “I’m a firm believer in crawl-walk-run philosophy.”

Preston said he’s hoping that White runs again for mayor. A voter at the Cleveland Park Library in Ward 3 shared that sentiment; the weekend before the primary, he told me that “White is playing well over here. People are getting Muriel fatigue.”

Like all of the council incumbents on Tuesday’s ballot, White won his party’s nomination, receiving 69,162 votes, which is 82.16% of the ballots cast in the at-large race as of the latest count. 

However, his numbers are down from 2020 when he ran in the at-large race unopposed and 93,264 ballots were cast for him. The decline in White’s total from four years ago isn’t exclusively because he had an opponent, Robert “Red” Grant, in this year’s primary. After all, Grant won only 14,271 votes or 16.95% of the total ballots cast, according to the BOE. Neither is it solely attributable to lower turnout.

In the Democratic primary, 5,091 primary voters opted not to vote in the at-large race. Should White interpret that as a message of dissatisfaction from the voters? 

The Republican Party did not field a candidate for an at-large seat in its primary. However, Darryl Moch won the Statehood Green Party’s nomination with 370 votes (80.09%). Two at-large seats — including the one held by at-large Councilmember Christina Henderson, an independent who has announced her intention to seek reelection — will be on the general election ballot in November.

Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George ran an aggressive, well-resourced primary campaign. Her two opponents, Lisa Gore and Paul Johnson, challenged her mostly around her positions on public safety and complaints in the community about the poor quality of her constituent services. 

Gore and Johnson, under-resourced and without skilled ground teams to match the incumbent, could not leverage that dissatisfaction. Gore received 4,288 votes (28.05%) and Johnson a meager 805 (5.27%).

Lewis George prevailed, capturing 10,142 votes or 66.34% of the ballots cast in the Ward 4 race. 

“She overwhelmingly crushed her opposition,” said Thies. He said there were several problems with the challengers: “For four years no one hung crime like an albatross around Lewis George’s neck.” Further, “none of the opponents had a clear message,” including emphasizing that “her politics are not in lockstep with most of the ward.”

Despite the victory, it doesn’t appear Lewis George’s final vote total will differ very much from the 10,965 votes she garnered in 2020 against then-incumbent Brandon Todd. In my view, the goal of every politician during the course of each term should be to expand the voter base by reaching those individuals who may not have provided support in the past but who over time could be encouraged to join the team after seeing tangible evidence of progress in their community. In other words, Lewis George’s electoral performance isn’t as strong as it might seem.

When I ran into Lewis George at Emery Recreation Center on Georgia Avenue NW during the early hours of the primary, she told me, “I feel good that so many people are showing up.” She wasn’t prepared then to predict the outcome, offering that “Whatever is God’s will” is what would happen.

Responding to my question about what she may have learned during the campaign that might serve her well in a second term, she acknowledged that crime is the “overall issue” where she has received the most feedback. “Of course, every councilmember is getting that.” She said there were complaints about the DC Department of Transportation and the Department of Buildings, as well as demands for more enforcement around blighted properties.

“Better communications” is also an area Lewis George suggested she wants to improve. Multiple Ward 4 residents I interviewed before election day complained about not receiving responses to their email or telephone requests for services from her or her office; Lewis George’s comment may bring them some peace of mind. It’s too soon to know how that will play out, however.

Kumbaya moment or not, there is a lot of political work to be done — as might be expected of a councilmember who serves as a figurative head of the ward organization, just as the president does for the national party. 

With a fairly educated population of middle-class and high-earning residents, Ward 4 voters are the demographic considered likely to effectively use mail-in voting. However, the number of Democrats there who participated in the Ward 4 race specifically, and the primary in general, exemplifies an anemic political party desperately in need of a revitalization.

Consider that as of May 31, there were 46,686 registered Democrats in Ward 4 — second only to Ward 5, according to the BOE’s data. So, who’s satisfied with a meager 15,235 total votes for the three Ward 4 primary candidates? You can add in the 54 voters who wrote in someone else’s name and the 278 who did not vote in the race. 

Any way you look at it, someone should place democracy and civic engagement on their agenda.

That’s also true in the other races. In Ward 8, incumbent Trayon White wouldn’t have been allowed to even run for office if officials were running an ethical operation, in my view. He currently owes the District thousands of dollars in fines and fees related to campaign finance violations. 

I am neither a Ward 8 resident nor a Democrat. But as a resident of this city who believes that what adults do sets a standard for our youth, I am appalled that there was no effort to terminate his campaign.

White won his race with 3,642 votes or 51.51% of the ballots cast in the Ward 8 race. Not unlike Robert White, Trayon White posted substantially lower numbers than in 2020, when he earned 5,063 votes. 

In my pre-election day column about the Ward 8 race, I asked whether voters there would choose change over the popular and familiar. The combined numbers for challengers Rahman Branch (1,412 votes, or 19.97%) and Salim Adofo (1,977 votes, or 27.96%) suggest it was a reasonably close question. While Branch, a former high school principal, and Adofo, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, are somewhat known, their profiles paled in comparison to the incumbent — regardless of their record of service in Ward 8.

The Republican Party’s Nate Derenge, who participated in several Ward 8 candidate forums, won his nomination with 113 votes (79.02%); there was no candidate from the Statehood Green Party.

With election returns like these across all party primaries, I look at the number of votes candidates received, rather than just their shares of the total vote. Actual votes tell the true story. 

Still as some might argue, a win is a win — even if there’s only a one-vote difference.

The only incumbent to see significant growth in her numbers was Brooke Pinto, which may not mean that much considering they were fairly low in 2020, when what seemed to be a small army of candidates sought to fill the seat left vacant by Ward 2’s longtime representative Jack Evans.

Running unopposed this year, Pinto pulled in 7,180 votes (92.39%). In 2020, she prevailed in a crowded field with 3,142 ballots cast for her in the Democratic primary and 4,554 in the special election a few weeks later.

There is no comparison to be made in Ward 7, where 10 candidates sought to replace Gray, who, after battling health issues since 2021, decided to retire at the end of his term rather than seek reelection. In my column on that race, I quoted political observers and ward leaders as predicting that the top five would include Wendell Felder, Ebony Payne, Eboni-Rose Thompson, Kelvin Brown and Veda Rasheed. 

Near the end of the campaign, Felder received what could be considered the trifecta of endorsements: Gray came out in support of his candidacy, as did The Washington Post editorial board and former Mayor Anthony Williams, who was actually drafted into office by several civic leaders in the Hillcrest neighborhood of Ward 7.

“That got him over the finish line,” said Thies.

Felder pulled off the win with 2,763 votes (23.52%); he was closely followed by Payne, who received 2,365 (20.13%) votes, and Thompson, who garnered 2,358 (20.07%). It appears the vote spread is too wide to close given the number of ballots likely to arrive in the next week.

On Tuesday, before the polls closed, I saw Felder at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Southeast chatting up voters, pleading for their support and promising to bring what is needed to the ward. 

“I think we’re going to pull this off,” he told me. Offering that “I’m a first-generation everything,” he said he grew up in a single-parent household, with his father incarcerated for a time. “I had to go get it.”

Responding to my questions about how he would describe himself — far-left progressive or moderate — he answered, “I’m a moderate all day long.”

Whew! 

That loud sigh of relief you may have heard came from the office of Council Chair Phil Mendelson.

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jonetta rose barras is an author and DC-based freelance journalist, covering national and local issues. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.