District of Columbia mayor’s race reflects a Democratic dilemma over policing
WASHINGTON — Mayor Muriel Bowser cruised to reelection in the nation’s capital four years ago without serious opposition, and as the city enjoyed prosperous times, the main criticism of her policies was that Washington was growing too quickly, driving up housing costs and pricing out Black residents in an uncontrolled gentrification wave.
One tumultuous term later, and with homicide and violent crime rates spiraling, Bowser finds herself in a reelection fight, fending off two challengers from the District of Columbia Council who accuse her of mishandling public safety issues and criticize her push to hire more police officers.
Against the backdrop of mass shootings around the country, the mayoral campaign reflects a wider dynamic playing out in longtime Democratic strongholds, with progressives facing off against party traditionalists over crime.
“Call it sky blue vs. Tar Heel blue,” said Michael Fauntroy, an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University. “People have an anxiousness around crime. There’s no question about that.”
This ideological push-pull is taking place under the watchful eye of Republican politicians eager to claim that Democrats cannot control or protect their own cities. The winner of Tuesday’s primary is the prohibitive favorite in the November general election.
Crime and public safety have dominated the campaign. Homicides have risen for four years straight, and the 2021 murder count of 227 was the highest since 2003. In January, a candidate for the D.C. Council, Nate Fleming, was carjacked at gunpoint.
Still, Bowser’s challengers question whether adding more police is the answer.
“I don’t think the police are the end-all solution for reducing crime,” Councilman Trayon White said during a June 1 debate. “During the height of the crack epidemic, D.C. had 5,000-plus police officers, and it never decreased any crime.”
Councilman Robert White also criticized Bowser’s crime prevention proposals: “I haven’t heard the short-term (solution), and I haven’t heard a plan, either.”
Bowser is campaigning on her experience and leadership as the city emerges from the pandemic and on her history as one of the faces of Washington’s ongoing quest for statehood. She blames the D.C. Council, including her challengers, of hamstringing her efforts to rein in crime.
“I’ve never been to a community where they said they didn’t want the police. Never,” Bowser, 49, said in a radio debate last month. “We need the police that we need.”
Chuck Thies, a longtime district political consultant, identifies a turning point as the wave of protest and upheaval in the summer of 2020 after George Floyd’s death in police custody. Some mass protests in Washington and elsewhere turned destructive, while calls to defund the police became more vocal in Democratic circles.
Thies, who is not affiliated with any of the mayoral candidates, said the public safety debate “is going to continue to play out. For Democrats, it’s quite awkward.”
A Washington Post poll from February found that 30 percent of city residents said they did not feel safe from crime in their neighborhood, compared with 22 percent in 2019, and the highest percentage in two decades of polling.