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Janeese Lewis George's mayoral campaign was unlike any the nation's capital had seen.
She built a strategy around organized labor, galvanizing union workers to knock on doors. Endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, Lewis George energized the city's left. And she tailored her campaign to the age of social media, producing an Instagram video to accompany every major policy debate.
But Lewis George, projected by the Associated Press to win the Democratic primary for D.C. mayor, thinks her success came down in large part to one key focus: affordability.
"This is not a Democratic or Republican thing or a socialist or a moderate or a liberal thing," she said at a news conference Thursday. "We all want to be able to achieve the American Dream. We all want to be able to provide for our families and ourselves, and we are all finding it increasingly difficult to do that.
"So don't miss the moment to recognize right now that that's what leaders should be focused on: delivering results for residents in this city and in this country."
Because the vast majority of voters in the nation's capital are Democrats, Lewis George is now highly likely to succeed Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) as the city's next executive. Her ascendance would make her the first democratic socialist to hold the job, marking a significant political shift for a city that has spent the last 12 years with a centrist politician in charge.
Lewis George, who has represented Ward 4 on the D.C. Council since 2021, is poised to take the helm at a time when the District is confronting steep challenges to its autonomy and finances. President Donald Trump, eager to insert himself in District affairs, recently said he would "take back Washington" should she be elected. Tens of thousands of residents have been stripped of their livelihoods by mass federal job cuts. And the city's downtown is struggling with empty office buildings in the era of remote work.
Bowser deployed a more muted strategy toward Trump and leveraged her close relationships with the city's developers and business leaders to deliver on affordable housing and other economic goals. With the rise of Lewis George, the District is now preparing for a vastly different political style and coalition. Backed by nearly every major D.C. labor union, the new Democratic nominee has vowed to stand up to Trump and rebuild the city's battered economy not from the top down, but with a bottom-up focus on the working class.
"This moment is for those who refuse to surrender their hope in a government that works for all of us," she told a crowd of her supporters gathered at the Howard Theatre on Tuesday after early election results began rolling in. "Tonight belongs to the postal worker on the early-bird shift. The nurse coming off a double. The teacher buying classroom supplies out of her pocket. The child care worker who loves our babies all day but still can't make ends meet."
Lewis George emerged early as a front-runner in the seven-candidate Democratic mayoral field, along with former at-large council member Kenyan R. McDuffie - and thus ensued a bruising campaign in which she cast him as a symbol of the stale status quo, while he argued that she was too risky on issues like public safety. She was boosted by an army of door-knockers from unions and D.C.'s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, who rallied behind her on the ground.
Lewis George estimated that her campaign knocked on more than 200,000 doors. She said Thursday that she took no ward or neighborhood for granted. "You're not entitled to an office," she said. "You have to work for it."
At 38, Lewis George is poised to become the second-youngest mayor in D.C. history; former mayor Adrian Fenty was elected at 35. She rallied support among younger voters, a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found, and earned deep support in areas of the city like Ward 1 that attract newer residents.
She ultimately outperformed McDuffie in all of the city's wards, with the exception of Ward 3, with about three-quarters of the vote counted as of Thursday. She did well in majority-White, higher-income wards, such as Ward 6 in central D.C., and leads by margins of at least nine points east of the Anacostia River in Wards 7 and 8, which are both more than 80 percent Black.
McDuffie was leading only in Ward 3, the most predominantly White and highest-income ward in the city, though Lewis George trailed there by less than five points as of Thursday.
Lewis George staked her campaign on promises to deliver big on child care and housing, despite the city's tightening budgets. She said that under her plan, no household would spend more than 7 percent of its income on child care. She also set a goal of building 72,000 new units of housing in five years - a particularly ambitious promise at a time when investors lack confidence in the District. To fund her goals, she said, she would look for government inefficiency and budget savings and explore a tax on businesses whose owners live outside the city.
The promises resonated with voters who wanted to see the city's leadership prioritize the needs of working parents.
Nisa Harper, a single mother of four and a trained social worker, said that even though her children are no longer babies, she voted for Lewis George in large part because of her affordable child care policy. "I've tried to get back in the workforce like I used to, [with] 40-plus hours, and it never worked between appointments, school," she said after casting her ballot Tuesday at Union Temple Baptist Church. And "who's going to be there when there's a sickness?"
Lewis George also said she believes in "sewer socialism" - the idea that delivering on basic municipal services like trash pickup is key to enacting broader political change. She has pledged, for example, to improve the city's embattled 911 system and touted her focus as a council member on issues like trash collection and school facilities repairs.
"Over time, failing public services eroded people's faith in government as a force of good in their lives," Lewis George told supporters Tuesday. "As mayor, I will be relentlessly focused on delivering reliable public services to every D.C. neighborhood."
Along the way, her message was amplified by labor unions and by environmental groups like the Sierra Club, which combined to pour significant funds into the election through independent expenditure committees that pushed an anti-McDuffie message. In particular, they hit him hard on the issue of utilities; they sought to blame him for spiking electric bills, accusing him of failing to properly oversee utility regulators while chair of the council's business committee. McDuffie railed against the attacks, accusing the groups and the Lewis George campaign of mischaracterizing his record.
Leonard Steinhorn, an American University professor who studies political communication, said the Lewis George campaign captured "a real discontent with the status quo" that also came through in Zohran Mamdani's successful campaign for New York mayor last year.
"By portraying McDuffie as beholden to special interests, she was able to caricature him and frame herself as one of us," he said.
Meanwhile, McDuffie, who attacked Lewis George on the issue of crime, "wanted to come off as that more moderate, adult-in-the-room politician," Steinhorn said. "That did appeal to the predominantly White upper-middle-class community in Ward 3, but it may have made it more difficult for him to seize some of that populist ethos that Lewis George was able to channel."
While Lewis George's union ties boosted her run for mayor, they also elicited scrutiny: The city's campaign finance office fined her campaign late last week, after the agency found that her committee lacked adequate fire walls to prevent coordination with labor-backed independent expenditure committees. Lewis George vowed to fight the ruling.
As the workers coalesced behind Lewis George, the "bosses" - like developers and contractors - lined up behind McDuffie, who was backed by many of the business interests that have supported Bowser during her political career. They, too, attacked Lewis George on the issue of public safety, where the Post-Schar School poll indicated she was weaker among voters than her opponent, and argued that she lacked the credibility to work with developers to reach her ambitious housing goals.
In the end, however, Lewis George's relative strength among voters on cost-of-living issues may have helped her sail to victory.
"I've lived in D.C. for 10 years, and we need something completely different," said Ward 8 resident Portia Obeng. "A lot of investment has been in big businesses and contracts coming in. We need the people to have groceries and housing, and I think she's going to be able to provide that."
After an acrimonious, at times divisive campaign season, Lewis George struck a note of unity in her speeches this week, thanking her opponents in the race for stepping up to run for public office and promising to work with them to improve the city.
"No matter who you voted for, no matter your political party, no matter your belief system, you belong here," she said Tuesday. "When we talk about putting people first in our government, that includes you and your family. In this new chapter in D.C.'s history, let us leave behind the tribal politics that get in the way of good governance."
She also nodded to the concerns of some of her critics, who worried during the campaign season that her platform was not fiscally feasible and that she would not be as practical as Bowser in steering the city's finances. Lewis George said her team was already examining agencies for possible budget savings.
"The last time we lost our autonomy [it] was because our finances were not where they need to be," she said Thursday, referring to the time in the 1990s when Congress appointed a control board to oversee the city's spending. "I am going to be prudent and thoughtful and strategic about our city funding and budget, and also be innovative and thoughtful about how we continue to grow the city's budget."
Ahead of a vote next week on the city's budget, some D.C. Council members are considering a tax increase on wealthy residents. When asked about the issue Thursday, Lewis George did not jump to support the tax hike. She instead said she was looking forward to a hearing in the fall where the council would holistically evaluate possible tax changes.
"We want to hear from the public about how those ideas can be implemented, how those ideas could hurt residents or hurt small businesses or hurt businesses in the District," she said. "And we want take a balanced and strategic approach to it."
Lewis George also said she was seeking a meeting with the police union, which has criticized her fiercely for her past support of defunding police and her advocacy for police reforms (Lewis George has walked back her rhetoric on defunding police).
"At this point, the primary is over," she said. "It's time for us to be one D.C., united."
As for whether she would meet with Trump, Lewis George said she would for now continue to defer to Bowser, who will remain mayor until January, and outgoing Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton in Congress, who also did not seek reelection.
But Lewis George echoed a sentiment frequently expressed by Bowser.
"I want to make sure that the president understands that I am willing to work with anyone to the benefit of D.C. residents," she said.
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