Council member Bowser becomes Democratic nominee for DC mayor

ballscout1

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Councilwoman Bowser defeats incumbent Gray in D.C. mayoral primary​





Muriel E. Bowser, a low-key but politically canny District lawmaker, won the Democratic mayoral nomination Tuesday, emerging from a pack of challengers in a low-turnout primary to deny scandal-tarnished incumbent Vincent C. Gray a second term.

The 41-year-old D.C. Council member triumphed in the latest in a string of District elections to reveal a city unsettled over the shape of its future. Bowser’s win heralds many more months of uncertainty as she faces a substantial general-election challenger while a lame-duck Gray is left to steer the city amid the threat of federal indictment.


Bowser beats incumbent Gray to become the Democratic nominee for D.C. mayor: Muriel Bowser, the seven-year D.C. Council member, won the Democratic nomination for mayor Tuesday, vanquishing incumbent Vincent C. Gray, whose quest for reelection was crippled by a federal investigation into his victorious campaign four years ago.

Bowser (D-Ward 4) moved deftly to capitalize on public doubts about Gray’s trustworthiness fueled by the still-unresolved federal corruption investigation into his 2010 campaign. Alone among seven Democratic challengers, she amassed a coalition that crossed demographic and geographic lines allowing her to outpoll Gray’s shrunken but steady base of African American voters.

The outcome of the race remained in doubt for four hours after the 8 p.m. closing of polling places as elections officials struggled with an unusually late and messy tabulation process.

For much of the evening, the campaigns and the public watched results trickle in and wondered what was going wrong at city elections headquarters downtown. Officials blamed the slow pace on poor training of election workers in the use of electronic voting machines. And the campaigns waited impatiently to know who had won.

Tamara Robinson, a spokeswoman for the city Board of Elections, said vote counters noticed inconsistent numbers reported in several precincts, so they stopped releasing tallies until they could examine them more closely. They found that five or six machines had not been shut down correctly by poll workers, who may have been overwhelmed by the larger number of electronic machines at precincts this year.

With 89 percent of precincts reporting shortly before midnight, Bowser led Gray 44 percent to 33 percent — prompting a concession speech from the incumbent.

Gray said he intended to keep working, and “by the way, we have nine more months.”

In her subsequent victory remarks, Bowser struck a conciliatory note, reaching out to her rivals’ supporters in an appeal for party unity during a seven-month general-election campaign to come.

“It’s our job to let them know that I’ll be their mayor, too,” she said. “We’re going to earn their support. We’re going to hear their vision, and we’re going to work with them.”

The anti-Gray candidate

Election returns and voter interviews indicated that Bowser’s greatest strength may have been in attracting the anti-Gray vote. She had emerged from a field of seven challengers to run even with Gray in the most recent public polls.

While Gray, as expected, won solid majorities in the eastern half of the city, Bowser ran strongly in the western half and held her own in her home ward — where Gray sealed his victory against Adrian M. Fenty four years ago.

Voting at Shepherd Elementary School, traditionally a bellwether precinct, Phyllis Caudle-Green, 59, said she voted for Gray over Fenty but instead supported Bowser this time.

Bowser, she said, struck her as “capable and competent” and represented a rare opportunity to put a black woman in the city’s top office.

“We’re at a crossroads,” the retired investment banker said. “I just think it’s time to go in a new direction.”

Caudle-Green said she settled on Bowser only in recent weeks, after new corruption allegations were aired against Gray. “I don’t necessarily think the mayor is guilty,” she said. “I just don’t think we need that distraction.”

A historically small swath of the city decided the race, with Tuesday’s turnout appearing to rival elections in 1986 and 1998 for the lowest in a mayoral primary in 40 years of District home rule.

In part, the lower turnout reflected a new, earlier schedule for the city primaries, dictated by a federal law mandating more time between primary and general elections to expand absentee balloting.

For the first time in a generation, the heat of the Democratic mayoral race took place during the frigid winter months. Previous primary campaigns concluded in the early weeks of September, amid late-summer heat. This year, snow fell during early voting, and incessant rain soaked the final campaign weekend. But weather was not an excuse for the low turnout Tuesday, the most temperate day the city had seen in months.

“When you have an election coming out of the winter, that was odd and it wasn’t just that our voters didn’t come out, voters didn’t come out,” Gray said during his concession.

Tuesday night’s returns showed that Gray’s level of support eroded precipitously over four years. In his home, Ward 7, in 2010, Gray won 82 percent of the vote. This time, according to early returns, he could muster only 60 percent. Bowser racked up big margins west of Rock Creek Park and showed strength, if not dominance, in gentrifying areas of the city.

Many who voted Tuesday said Bowser might not have been their first choice, but they decided late in the race to vote for her as the best option to defeat Gray.




Abe Newman, 40, voted at Mount Bethel Baptist Church in the gentrifying Bloomingdale neighborhood, his 5-month-old daughter Sadie strapped to his chest.

The professor of international relations at Georgetown University said he been disappointed with what he called Gray’s “half-baked apologies” for the corruption scandal.

D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), Newman said, hewed most closely to his own views. “But I don’t think he had a chance of beating Gray. I don’t find him to be that charismatic.”

Newman said Bowser impressed him with her performance in a debate broadcast by WAMU (88.5 FM), and subsequent polls and endorsements cemented his vote.

Controversy takes a toll

Gray becomes the second consecutive D.C. mayor to lose his job after a single term, following in the footsteps of Fenty — the sharp-elbowed reformer who plucked Bowser from obscurity seven years ago, backing her to fill the D.C. Council seat he once held.

The erosion of Gray’s political support began in the earliest months of his mayoralty. A former rival candidate in 2010, Sulaimon Brown, was given a patronage job in Gray’s administration, only to be fired after questions arose about his qualifications and background. Brown then revealed he had been secretly paid by the Gray campaign to levy verbal attacks against Fenty in apparent violation of campaign finance laws.

Gray was able to keep the allegations of wrongdoing at arm’s length until July 2012, when it became clear that Brown’s revelations had opened a window into a much larger corruption scheme.

Federal prosecutors revealed that Gray, 71, had benefited from more than $650,000 of secret spending — again, in apparent violation of campaign finance laws — from businessman Jeffrey E. Thompson, the city’s largest contractor, whose health-care firm did more than $300 million of business with the city each year.

For a year and a half, the allegations did not touch Gray directly, and the mayor maintained he did nothing wrong as he went about his duties, touting rising school test scores, a declining unemployment rate and a proliferation of construction cranes.




For months last year, he declined to say whether he would seek a second term — surprising many political observers and the handful of candidates who had emerged when he entered the race just after Thanksgiving, weeks before a petition deadline.

Bowser modeled her campaign on Fenty’s 2006 playbook: getting an early start by becoming the first to formally launch her campaign and putting a premium on direct voter contact through neighborhood canvassing and intimate meet-and-greets. Her campaign pitch, like Fenty’s, was rooted more in energy and responsiveness than specific policy proposals or blockbuster projects.

Her campaign team also looked familiar — sharing a campaign chairman, chief strategist and key fundraisers with Fenty’s mayoral bids. They embarked on a plan to position Bowser as the inevitable alternative to Gray, the candidate with the broadest appeal and best chance to unseat the wounded incumbent — an impression Bowser built through dominant fundraising, strong showings in closely watched straw polls and an anodyne platform palatable to a broad swath of voters.

With Gray’s defeat, the city embarks on an unprecedented nine-month period of political transition.

On Thursday, a newly lame-duck Gray is set to propose a city budget that will be hammered out by a D.C. Council that almost certainly includes the future mayor in its ranks. Left unclear are the fates of major Gray initiatives such as a $150 million city investment in a professional soccer stadium and a new $300 million city-built hospital in Ward 8.

Also complicating the coming months: The probability of a highly pitched general-election campaign.

Bowser’s victory in the Nov. 4 general election is probable but not assured. The highest-profile entrant so far, fellow council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), trailed Bowser by more than 30 percentage points among registered voters surveyed by The Washington Post earlier last month.

Catania, who was tied in a theoretical matchup with Gray, said after that he had no plans to abandon his mayoral run should Bowser or another Democrat prevail.
 

bunn

Potential Star
BGOL Investor
There is no one else.... The best of the worst.
 
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TheBigOne

Master Tittay Poster
Platinum Member
Where this muhfuhkah here is poised to become the first white mayor in D.C.'s history. Openly gay to boot.
David_Catania_insert_c_Washington_Blade_by_Michael_Key.jpg


He is David Cantania. A former Republican, now Independent, who has been an at large councilmember for 12 years, elected citywide. Heeeeyyyy!!
 

ballscout1

Rising Star
BGOL Investor
Where this muhfuhkah here is poised to become the first white mayor in D.C.'s history. Openly gay to boot.
David_Catania_insert_c_Washington_Blade_by_Michael_Key.jpg

cause the mofokrs in DC ain't showing up to vote..

That dude will win with less than 30 % of registered voters casting a ballot

fukkem.....you deserve what your apathy brings you
 

Amajorfucup

Rising Star
Platinum Member
Who stands out to you among the current council (or candidates to replace them) as particularly good or especially bad?
The white ones stand out as particularly bad. Their ultimate goal is the continue to push the city to look more like them and less like me. Additionally, none (perhaps maybe one) are native born.
 

Rembrandt Brown

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Registered
The white ones stand out as particularly bad. Their ultimate goal is the continue to push the city to look more like them and less like me. Additionally, none (perhaps maybe one) are native born.

I've heard very good things about Elissa Silverman. I don't know anything about the other white members but I didn't know they were such a strong majority. Of the black ones, I've heard good things about both Whites (ironically) and very bad things about Brandon Todd, who has a high caliber opponent in Janeese Lewis George.
 

Amajorfucup

Rising Star
Platinum Member
I've heard very good things about Elissa Silverman. I don't know anything about the other white members but I didn't know they were such a strong majority. Of the black ones, I've heard good things about both Whites (ironically) and very bad things about Brandon Todd, who has a high caliber opponent in Janeese Lewis George.
Yea.. i just tend not to trust any very much. But Elissa has a pretty decent reputation. Not sure what you mean by "strong majority", i believe there are 5 non blacks to 7 blacks. Im fine with Janeese replacing Todd. Shes homegrown.
 

Rembrandt Brown

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Registered
Yea.. i just tend not to trust any very much. But Elissa has a pretty decent reputation. Not sure what you mean by "strong majority", i believe there are 5 non blacks to 7 blacks. Im fine with Janeese replacing Todd. Shes homegrown.

I count 6 whites currently: Mendelson, Grosso, Silverman, Nadeau, Cheh, Allen. Jack Evans would make 7 but he's out now. 7-6 isn't a strong majority but I didn't think it was majority white.

Janeese more than just homegrown, which Todd also is. She is taking no corporate money at all-- Has anyone ever been elected to the council that way? Strong on housing rights, health care, supports the paid family leave that Todd voted against. She's actually "for the people" and exemplifies the type of person needed in DC government.
 
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Rembrandt Brown

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Registered
Fuck is your new found interest in The District based in? You finally relocated to a real city?

I've lived in nothing but real cities, including previous stints in D.C. It looks like that's where I'll be settling down though.

Ummm Yes. Id even say dam near everyone prior to 2000 YP.

What changed in 2000? That's certainly not the case now.


 

Amajorfucup

Rising Star
Platinum Member
What changed in 2000? That's certainly not the case now.
Alot. Demographics and campaign funding trends and laws and new influx of big corporate and development interest. And let me clarify, im speaking toward significant big corporate funding as opposed to small business support and donation which have always been prevalent. Its also not that huge of a deal to forego that assistance going forward with new legislation in place to provide city funding to finance campaigns. Good for her tho.. its certainly a good move aesthetically.
 
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