Socialist Janeese Lewis George Easily Wins D.C.'s Mayoral Election

The votes are still being counted, but news outlets have already called the D.C. mayor’s race for Councilmember Janeese Lewis George.

In the overwhelmingly liberal city, it’s been treated as a foregone conclusion that the Democratic nominee would easily win the election to replace three-term retiring incumbent Muriel Bowser. It’s no surprise then that, with 72 percent of the vote counted, Lewis George is leading with 84 percent of the vote.

The question now is how Lewis George, a solidly progressive voice on the D.C. Council and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, will govern.

As I covered in a recent profile of the incoming mayor, Lewis George’s primary bid was given a major boost by city residents’ anger at President Donald Trump’s meddling in the district.

After 11 Years of Muriel Bowser, D.C. Readies Itself for Its First Socialist Mayor

The Trump administration might have gotten the fountains in Meridian Hill Park working again. But he fired a lot of D.C. residents through his DOGE cuts and angered many more with his deployment of federal law enforcement officers and National Guard troops onto city streets.

Throughout all these challenges to D.C.’s conditional autonomy, Bowser has generally tried to calm public sentiment and cooperate with the feds. Lewis George promised a more confrontational approach with the current occupant of the White House—and voters, by her estimation, have rewarded her for it.

Shortly before the Democratic primary, Trump threatened to revoke D.C.’s home rule status and run the district directly if Lewis George won.

“Residents said to me, ‘If Trump doesn’t like you, I love you,’” she told a reporter on the night of the Democratic primary.

But it’s one thing to talk tough on the campaign trail and another once in office to go to war with an administration that has major leverage over the District’s local government.

Meanwhile, D.C.’s budget has been posting larger and larger fiscal gaps each year. Those, by law, need to be plugged. And a sluggish local economy leaves only so much room to use tax increases to balance the budget before residents and businesses start fleeing.

That would seem to give Lewis George little room to enact her long list of progressive spending priorities, from universal child care to city-funded “social housing” development.

At the end of the day, being a mayor of a big city isn’t a great job for a leftist to have. You’ve got to balance the budget. You can’t print money. There isn’t even any agricultural land to collectivize.

In D.C., the situation is even worse. At the drop of a hat, Donald Trump could take control of your police force.

We’ll soon see whether Janeese Lewis George groks the limits of her position or sticks to her ideological guns and goes out in a blaze of glory.

The post Socialist Janeese Lewis George Easily Wins D.C.’s Mayoral Election appeared first on Reason Magazine.