Former City Councilman Kenyan McDuffie, who ran as a tough-on-crime centrist, has conceded the Democratic mayoral primary in Washington, D.C., to Janeese Lewis George, a democratic socialist and D.C. councilwoman.
The Associated Press has yet to call the race, but Ms. Lewis George currently has around 53 percent of the vote, enough to give her an outright victory without tabulating the ranked choices in the election. In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, she would almost certainly win the general election in November.
“While the final certification process will continue, it is clear that the voters have chosen a different path,” Mr. McDuffie said in a statement Thursday morning.
Ms. Lewis George’s victory would continue a winning streak for left-wing voters, who have now elected democratic socialists to lead New York City, Seattle and, Mr. McDuffie said, the nation’s capital. America’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, will be the next showdown, when the incumbent Democrat, Karen Bass, faces another democratic socialist, Nithya Raman, in November.
The first open seat mayoral primary in Washington in two decades featured seven candidates. But the two front-runners, Ms. Lewis George and Mr. McDuffie, dominated it and echoed ideological and stylistic themes that also shaped the mayoral races in New York and Seattle and are beginning to define divisions in the Democratic Party between center-left and farther-left candidates.
The difference is Washington’s status as the nation’s capital, where the federal government retains some control over the National Guard and budget. The Trump administration’s Guard deployment and heavy hand loomed over the race. During a recent White House interview, Mr. Trump threatened to tighten his grip on the city if Ms. Lewis George wins.
“Maybe we take back Washington and run it on a federal basis,” he said, alluding to how the district was run before Congress gave it considerable autonomy. “We won’t put up with it.”
Ms. Lewis George told reporters on election night Tuesday that the president’s words motivated Washingtonians to pay attention to the race and ultimately to vote. She said voters had told her, “If Trump doesn’t like you, I love you.”
Ms. Lewis George has said, if elected, she would rescind the Metropolitan Police Department order that permits officers to work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, share information with ICE and transfer detainees to ICE custody.
The first election in which Washington used ranked choice voting was expected to be a protracted process that could have taken weeks, as election officials tallied first and second choices. Instead, Ms. Lewis George seems headed to an outright majority, which under the rules, nullified second choices.
The mayoral campaign revolved around a few major themes: public safety, cost of living and who could best “stand up” to Mr. Trump.
Ms. Lewis George, running well to Mr. McDuffie’s left, stressed affordability. She promoted an ambitious plan to build 72,000 homes in five years, and criticized her rival’s housing plan as timid.
For his part, Mr. McDuffie staged a news conference outside a Chipotle restaurant after videos of a brawl there circulated on social media this month. He tied the incident to the larger “teen takeover” phenomenon and excoriated the District of Columbia Council, including Ms. Lewis George, for not backing stricter youth curfews.
“What we saw from Janeese Lewis George is a failure to act,” Mr. McDuffie said.
Ms. Lewis George was expected to be preferred by younger white residents who’ve lived in Washington less than 10 years, according to a recent Washington Post-Schar School survey. She held large leads among those who described themselves as “very liberal,” while Mr. McDuffie, 50, did better with older Black residents, and those who identify as moderate or conservative and say crime is the city’s largest problem, according to the same poll.
But in the vote count so far, Ms. Lewis George has performed strongly in every ward of the city except the whitest and wealthiest, on Washington’s Northwest side.
Mr. McDuffie had received the backing of the former D.C. mayors Sharon Pratt and Anthony Williams, as well as Obama administration officials such as former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Labor Secretary Tom Perez.
Ms. Lewis George was supported by several labor unions and current council members.
Last November, Muriel E. Bowser, the city’s three-term mayor, announced that she would not seek a fourth term. In her retirement video, she recounted her effort to bring the Washington Commanders football team back within city limits, but much of her final two years were defined by her dealing with Mr. Trump.
Critics accused her of being too accommodating, while she emphasized the vulnerability of the city, which could lose its limited autonomy with a single act of Congress.
In a heavily Democratic city like Washington, winning the party’s primary is tantamount to winning the office.
