Washington DC is ready to try the Mamdani model

The U.S. capital is about to enter a new era. Janeese Lewis George, a 38-year-old member of the city council, won the Democratic mayoral primary. The newsworthy element of this is that the former prosecutor belongs to the party’s most progressive wing and is all but certain to succeed Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who declined to seek re-election after three terms. Her political rise pushes to the left a city that is not the nation’s largest but one of its most influential.

Lewis George, a democratic socialist, represents the latent shift within the Democratic Party in recent years embodied by Zohran Mamdani, the left-wing mayor of New York, who defied expectations in last November’s election by riding a wave of dissatisfaction with traditional policies and championing a platform focused on affordability and working-class struggles.

Her primary rival, Councilmember Kenyan R. McDuffie, who represented the party’s centrist, more moderate wing, conceded defeat on Thursday, clearing the way for Lewis George to become mayor next November.

If her victory in November is confirmed, Lewis George would become the first democratic socialist mayor of a city with a long Democratic tradition. Her run in the party primaries has served as a testing ground for the bigger test the Democratic Party will face beginning next year, when the race to choose a 2028 presidential candidate opens.

The seed of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez

Lewis George follows the political trail sown by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the standard-bearers of democratic socialism. That political current is defined as “a system in which ordinary people have a voice and a vote in our workplaces, neighborhoods and society,” according to its website. “We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few,” explains the website.

Lewis George joined the movement in 2016, inspired by Sanders’ campaign. Although the Vermont senator lost his party’s primary to the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton, he planted the seed of a new kind of socialism that has spread across the country. The Democratic mayoral hopeful for Washington recalls that in 2018 she attended a democratic socialist rally for the first time. One speaker at that meeting told attendees: “We will not be able to win nationally unless we start winning locally.”

Eight years later, the political current is one step away from leading three of the largest U.S. cities. California councilmember Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist, is challenging Los Angeles’s Democratic mayor for the party nomination in November.

A city in crisis

Lewis George will not have it easy. If she becomes Washington’s mayor, she will inherit a city in deep economic crisis caused by cuts during the Trump administration. The city also faces a large public deficit and serious housing and public-safety problems. Above all, she will have to confront the president of the United States, who last week threatened to intervene in the city if she became mayor. “Maybe we’d take back Washington, run it on the federal basis. We won’t put up with it,” Donald Trump said last week from the Oval Office in response to reporters. “We’re not going to lose our businesses,” he added.

The Democratic contender, who earned her law degree at the prestigious Howard University in the capital, has been one of the leading opponents of Trump’s maneuvers to control the city. She was among the most forceful voices opposing temporary federal control of the city police department last summer.

She did not hesitate to answer the occupant of the White House’s threats on her social media account on X: “We are not going to get ICE off our streets or protect Home Rule by fearing this President. Threatening DC because you do not like how our residents vote is an attack on democracy itself. The people of DC elect the Mayor of DC. And they want someone who will stand up to Trump.”

The former prosecutor, who comes from a family that’s lived in Washington for three generations, will have to confront the city’s convoluted division of powers, where the federal government is responsible for monumental areas and the surroundings of federal buildings and has the ability to exercise temporary control over the police. Congress can influence municipal budgets and has the final say on some urban-planning matters, while the city council handles other tasks, such as sanitation and social policies.

Lewis George likes to recall that her political commitment began in her youth. She often tells the story of her maternal great-grandmother, who raised 13 children while working as a domestic worker, or of her mother, a postal carrier who was unionized and used to bring her daughter to meetings to defend postal workers’ rights.

She is proud of her roots. She grew up in northwest Washington during the 1990s, a time of particular turmoil in the city, with frequent episodes of violence and decline linked to drugs.

She runs on a simple but radical program. She aims to transform the city’s governance model by raising more revenue from corporations and interest groups to fund her social policies, which are built on two pillars: more resources for child care and construction of 72,000 public housing units in five years.

In November, if current forecasts hold, Lewis George will become the first democratic socialist mayor of the capital of the world’s leading power, which currently has a nationalist, populist and ultra-conservative president in office.

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