A fierce critic of President Donald Trump is on track to become the next mayor of Washington, D.C.
Janeese Lewis George, a self-described democratic socialist who made resistance to Trump and his policies the core of her primary campaign to replace the current mayor, Muriel Bowser, bested a field of anti-Trump candidates in this week’s Democratic primary in the nation’s capital. g, Lewis George’s main opponent in the primary field conceded the race on Thursday while trailing by 16 percentage points.
Bowser, who has governed D.C. for nearly a dozen years, announced last November that she would not seek a fourth term, framing the move as a natural moment to step back. “It was time for me to pass the baton on to the next set of leaders who are going to take our city to the next level,” Bowser told NBC.
In an interview with POLITICO last week, Lewis George promised to “actively tell our employees to resist” attempts by Trump to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department. The 38-year-old Lewis George, who is a native of D.C., represented the district’s 4th Ward on the D.C. Council since 2021 where she became a progressive fixture, pushing for housing assistance and proposing the Green New Deal for Housing, an agency that would be dedicated to building publicly-owned, affordable housing with strict environmental and labor standards.
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On the Council, Lewis George championed violence-intervention programs over tougher sentencing, notably casting the lone vote against a 2023 anti-crime bill she said would disproportionately jail black residents pretrial. Her opponents characterized this vote as evidence she was weak on crime.
Responding to the likelihood of Lewis George’s victory, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that his administration might “take back Washington” and threatened to run the city on a federal basis. “We won’t put up with it,” Trump said. “We’re not gonna lose our businesses.”
Following her primary victory, Lewis George said she was open to working with Trump, noting that “every mayor has had to work with any president of the United States, no matter their party.” But she added that she would not “comply in advance” with federal actions she sees as undermining D.C.’s autonomy.
