Mamdani-Style Democratic Socialist Leads Mayoral Race at Washington, D.C.

A Washington, D.C., councilmember running a mayoral campaign modeled on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s playbook, Janeese Lewis George, has drawn national attention — and a threat from President Donald Trump — as she leads the field ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary.Mr. Trump raised the stakes last week when a reporter asked how he would feel about a victory by Ms. George, a self-described democratic socialist. “Well, I wouldn’t like it, and maybe we’d take back Washington and run it on the federal basis,” the president said from the Oval Office. “We won’t put up with it. We’re not going to lose our businesses.”Ms. George fired back, saying the threat amounted to an assault on D.C.’s self-governance. “Threatening Home Rule because you do not like how residents vote is an attack on democracy itself,” she said in a statement. “The people of DC elect the mayor of DC. And they want someone who will stand up to Donald Trump.”Mr. Trump cannot unilaterally revoke Home Rule — only Congress has that authority — though Republicans currently control both chambers.A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in late May shows Ms. George leading a former council member, Kenyan McDuffie, 36 percent to 25 percent among likely Democratic primary voters. Because three-quarters of Washington’s voters are registered Democrats, the winner of the primary will almost certainly prevail in November.The same poll shows Ms. George holds double-digit advantages on housing affordability, cost of living, and public schools, as well as a 20-point edge on “honesty.” Mr. McDuffie leads by eight points on crime and public safety.Ms. George’s campaign has been explicitly modeled on Mr. Mamdani’s insurgent run at New York. Her advisers discussed enlisting 5,000-plus volunteers, hiring a digital strategist from the Mamdani camp, and targeting young voters on TikTok, according to an Axios report.Her housing platform — dubbed “Home For All” — pledges to build up to 72,000 new dwellings over five years, many of them multi-family units. She has proposed leveraging city pension funds to help foot the bill, drawing criticism from the D.C. Police Union.Ms. George lives in D.C.’s tree-lined Manor Park neighborhood, a rehabilitated residential neighborhood on the Northwest-Northeast corridor. She reportedly purchased a $1.2 million single-family home on April 17 — just 15 days after publishing an op-ed condemning “exclusionary zoning” as a tool of segregation. The property sits in a zone that actively discourages multi-household development.Ms. George has also come under fire for her response to a string of violent “teen takeovers” in the Navy Yard neighborhood, including a brawl at a Chipotle restaurant that went viral.“Right now, using the curfew as a tool for our young people is dangerous. It is dangerous because we have federal troops who are in our city, masked ICE agents who are in our city, and these are the people enforcing this law and our young people, and these are not individuals who are trained in de-escalation; they are not accountable to D.C. residents,” she said.Mr. McDuffie has sought to position himself as the more pragmatic choice, promising to “fight tooth and nail to protect Home Rule” while keeping the city safe.Charles Fain Lehman, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News that Ms. George has it backward. “Public acting out is not the result of insufficient services or alternative opportunities. It’s what happens when the system fails to consistently and clearly enforce rules about public conduct,” he said, adding, “It’s exactly backwards to say that what they need is more lenience.”Mr. Lehman said candidates such as Ms. George and Mr. Mamdani have been drawing support because of “the welcome decline in violence in major cities over the past several years,” which has “created an opening for candidates who prioritize the very real challenge of affordability.”But he added, “I don’t think their preferred solutions — building only publicly funded housing, e.g., or city-run grocery stores — are likely to work.”

Mamdani-Style Democratic Socialist Leads Mayoral Race at Washington, D.C.

Mamdani-Style Democratic Socialist Leads Mayoral Race at Washington, D.C.

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