austin

Austin

chicago

Chicago

denver

Denver

lasvegas

Las Vegas

madison

Madison

nashville

Nashville

philly

Philly

pittsburgh

Pittsburgh

portland

Portland

saltlake

Salt Lake

seattle

Seattle

twincities

Twin Cities

We make podcasts and newsletters that connect people with the cities they love.

City Cast DC

Politics

 takes you inside local D.C politics and government.

City Cast DC staff

City Cast DC is conducting interviews with the front-running candidates in the D.C. primary election this year. 

Here’s the transcript from the interview that executive editor and co-host Michael Schaffer did with D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, who is running for mayor. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity. You can also 

Janeese Lewis George, thank you so much for coming in to talk.

So you're a D.C. native, as am I. And you know, you have talked movingly about growing up on Kennedy Street, going across the park to Alice Deal. Seeing how different and unequal D.C. was, I wanna just set the table. Do you think a child growing up on Kennedy Street today, like you, has a better chance of good outcomes in life? Worse chance? How has D.C. changed for that child?

I honestly think that they have a significantly great chance of success. We have more young people going to their neighborhood schools in our community in Ward 4, where I grew up and Whittier has been a blue ribbon school every year. Coolidge and Roosevelt are doing amazing. Our Coolidge students are graduating with associate's degrees from Trinity University before they even walk across the stage and get a high school diploma. We have Ida B. Wells and McFarland, and so I just think we have more opportunities for young people to go to school in their community. Right? Trusdale is doing well. Our elementary schools have just excelled significantly. 

My old elementary school was Rudolph Elementary, which ended up closing, and so I'm excited that so many of our community are going to our neighborhood schools. I'm excited because of the opportunities that now exist at our neighborhood schools. Like, Whittier's a STEM school and you have Powell Elementary, you have all these options. And middle school as well. We have all these programs, the NAF Academy. 

We finally, I think, are at a space where our schools are continuing to just grow significantly in the options and the opportunity, which is really how I ended up going to Deal for junior high school. 

My grandmother actually had served as a lunch lady there for a number of years with all the principals there, and she saw something different. My grandmother didn't graduate from high school but she saw the quality of schooling that students were getting. I think she wanted her grandkids to have that access to good education. And then it wasn't, "Oh, do we have the opportunity to have that good education in the neighborhood that we're in?" And I think the answer to that today is, "yes, we do."

It's interesting 'cause you're painting a picture and a lot of stats bear this out of D.C. on a sort of upward trajectory. Certainly, the murder rate the year you were born was a lot higher than it is now.

It is. That's right. I experienced that too.

The District of Columbia Housing Authority was a disaster. Employees would scoff at residents who had complaints about heating and stuff. But you are now positioned as the candidate of change, the candidate of, “hey, government's not been delivering for people.” Explain the distinction there.

Yeah. You know, I think a lot of the things that we had when I was a young person, are a lot of the things we need to just reinvest back in. A lot of things I think we moved away from, right? 

We're seeing in this moment a lot of things happening with young people. And when I think about a student like me, education and opportunity was my pathway to success, right? My parents are Cardozo High School sweethearts but neither one of them went to college. I'm a first generation college student. And what really set me apart was that I had access to different opportunities, not just in my schools, but I'm an original D.C. SCORES kid. Right? 

I remember D.C. SCORES' original year. I learned about poetry and Black poets, and I had got a chance to play soccer and learn not just soccer skills, but teamwork skills. I remember we won the championship against Marie Reed. It's a feeling as a young person, you never forget, but sports teaches you so much more than just, you know, winning or losing. It teaches you so many skills. As a student, we did higher achievement, which helped with homework and support. I had Upward Bound, which is for students who are first-generation college students. Every summer, I stayed on campus at Trinity University for five days and did education, did group therapy work, took classes, and had a summer youth employment job. I remember summer youth employment, standing in line on H Street and signing up.

I am running on putting people first and I do think, I remember as a city the ways in which government showed up for young people, showed up for Black D.C. residents, created opportunity. When I say "show up," I mean create opportunity. We had robust arts and music and culture within our schools, within our communities, and so a lot of what I'm talking about is, I don't have to make up a lot of new things, actually. We just have to get back to the good things that really were integral parts of helping people in our city grow and giving them the opportunities they need.

It's interesting 'cause you're saying that, in so many ways, a child growing up as you did has a much better situation now. But you're also saying we've gotten away from something where government showed up for people. Aren't those two things at odds with each other?

No, they're not. And I think that's the problem. I think we thought these two things are at odds and we are in a conversation in a city where everyone keeps talking about what government can't do in this moment. But I don't think that's the question of this moment. I don't think that's the question in D.C. or across this country.

People are tired of hearing about what government can't do. People wanna hear about what government can do. And I know that government can do much more because I remember what government did for me and my family.

Has it stopped doing those things that it did for you?

I think it did stop investing in youth. I think it did stop creating spaces for young people. I think it did go away from understanding how important it is to have equity in not only education, but in economic justice and, just so many ways in which, how do we support our seniors? How do we support our young people? And I also think government functioning well, I think we got to a space where we were growing, growing, growing, but we were not making sure we were efficiently doing things, right? I always say this: D.C. is resource-rich. We're coordination-poor.

One of the reasons I'm running is because I think we can coordinate better as a government. I think we could spend and leverage our dollars better as a government. And we know how to do it, right? And we have the talent in our city. 

That's the other thing growing up here, I know how much talent we have in our city. We have some of the best thinkers around policies from education to public safety. Like, D.C. is a city that has all this robust talent. We have all these strong things that we get to leverage, right? Universities and hospitals and sports teams and arts and music and culture, right? So this moment is about, how do we lean into the things that make D.C. great? How do we lean in and leverage those things to grow our economy, to strengthen our community, and to make D.C. a more affordable place for D.C. residents?

So now you're in the middle of a mayor's race. We did a poll this week. It showed you up slightly, but not with majority yet. And we've got ranked choice voting, which is all just to say there's still a race on and I know you're working hard at it. 

I was struck in our poll by the coalitions that both candidates have. The old line in D.C. was that race was the dividing line of everything. In fact, both of you guys have multiracial basis of support according to what we found. I was surprised at the age gap in it. Younger voters are really strongly for you. People who've been in D.C. for less than 10 years are really strongly for you. D.C. natives and older people are really strongly for your opponent. 

How does that make you feel and what do you gotta do to communicate with the folks you do have, and what do you think you're doing that is working with the younger and newer voters?

I think this moment is about: D.C. is gonna go through a change. And I think the question is, what does the change in government look like and what kind of leadership do we want in this moment? 

That's why I always tell people the greater question here is like, who do you trust to show up in this moment and fight for all D.C. residents? And I've been proud of the broad coalition that I've been able to have supporting me from Free D.C. to Karl Racine to organizations like Sierra Club and, you know, just so many people — over 22 union organizations. And so I'm really proud of the coalition we've built.

What is it about your campaign that makes it so attractive to people who've recently moved to Washington?

I think they're experiencing what I've been talking about, the piece of this that is we can make government work better for D.C. residents. I think they are experiencing that. Earlier today I was at Cardozo and Ballou because the HVAC was broken and the students weren't in school. Things like picking up trash, right? 

A lot of my legislation has been around basic government services. CLEAN Collections was about making sure our trash and the trash was getting picked up at buildings, right? And Safe Routes to School was traffic safety around our schools.

So you're saying new people come to town and they're like, "Why isn't my trash being picked up well enough?"

I think they're thinking why are basic government services not working well here? And who is actually showing up to deal with the bigger issues? The smaller issues that make a big difference. And then, who has the vision to look ahead and say, what does the next 50 years of D.C. look like? 

I think many people are excited about leadership that is ready to put people first. And believes that government can do more and do better for residents. Maintaining the status quo is not all we can hope for. We can expect better, we can expect more, and actually government can deliver more.

We found a pretty significant divide by income and education too. Where people who make more money, have more education support you pretty strongly. You're a DSA member. I'm curious how that makes you feel? That the place where your numbers aren't as good is lower down the economic scale. What do you gotta say to change that?

You know, I am shocked. Only because I have been a working families fighter on the council since I got there. Like, everything I do is actually about closing income equality gaps, education gaps. The reason I stepped up to run initially is because I felt like D.C. residents were being left behind.

I remember what it was like as a child and my mom's a US postal worker, right? And I always think, my mom did not have time raising three kids and being a postal worker to come down to the Wilson building and say how things were impacting her. And ultimately, ever since I was a young person, even when I was a youth mayor, I've always said, “Who is advocating for those who don't have the money or the time, or the energy or the luxury of advocating?” They don't have time to be lobbyists for themselves.

So when I joined the council, and the reason I'm running for mayor, was because I felt like those people deserve a voice because oftentimes their voice can get lost because they don't have the luxury of being down at the Wilson building. Since I've been on the council, I have been the voice for working people and working families in the city. And not just the voice, but like the person who's been able to deliver those things, right? The Earned Income Tax Credit was about putting money in the pockets of working people. When the small things — not small, but big to me — but like librarians in all of our schools, I remember government saying in a $20 billion budget, we can't afford having librarians in our schools. And I thought, what are we talking about? What do you mean we can't have librarians in all of our schools? And I remember, I sat there all night looking in the budget, scouring and then finding a space in DCPS's budget that could afford librarians in all our schools. 

I think raising wages for early childhood educators was absolutely rooted in the fact that my aunt was an early childhood educator here in D.C. and was unable to stay at that job. It wasn't paying her enough and she had to take care of her grandkids because her daughter unfortunately passed away. Her husband was on disability. She's an early childhood educator who's amazing — people always talked about, "Your aunt's such a great teacher."

Brenda. My aunt Brenda, who is still amazing to this day. Everybody loves her. Her ability to be able to have a living wage and care for her family and then do the most important work of taking care of the most vulnerable children — she deserves a living wage. And even now, my son, right? He's at a childcare education center and his teachers are amazing, right? And so, paying Black and Brown women the wages they deserve for the quality of education, they're professionals, right? And they should be treated as professionals and paid as professionals. I think it is really just my goal for the rest of this race is to really talk to people about the way I've shown up.

You know, I'm a third-generation Washingtonian. I've also been fighting for seniors really hard, Ward 4 has one of the largest senior populations. I remember when I first got on, seniors were waiting on the waiting list for the Single Family Rehabilitation Program that we were supposed to have up, where they can get their roofs repaired. And I remember, one of the people said, "My mom died while waiting on that list." And at an oversight hearing, for my first oversight hearing, I just went to the agency and was like, "Hey, why are people not getting off this list?" And they were like, "Oh, we just haven't" — they hadn't allocated staff, right? It was just an allocation of staff issue. And I said, "Okay, well do you need to fund these staff or do we need to fund the staff? Or you just haven't hired the staff?" And they said, "Okay, both." And so we made sure they were funded and then that program got itself off. 

I think people don't get to see some of that oversight work that produces the changes you need. As a councilmember, I've been really strong on oversight work. A lot of that is not the cool, you know things that people hear about. But it's the things that actually make a difference in people's lives. It's me going on the ground figuring out what the problem is within the agencies and on the ground with people and figuring out those solutions to problems.

So my goal for the next few weeks is to really communicate well: One, that people should not be afraid of change because the change that I am fighting to bring is one that goes back to a fundamental principle that our seniors believe in, that black residents in this city believe in, that everyone believes in. Which is, we can have a government that put people first and invests in our communities. And I think people should, you know, know about how showing up and being on the ground and listening to people can help solve so many of our city's problems. 

And so, that poll just tells me to keep hitting the ground, to keep talking to everyone, to keep sharing my vision and my plans for how we make the city more affordable, how we make government work better, but also share with people who I am and who I've always been and, and continue to share my story. And I think the combination of all those things will land on June 16th.

I wanna talk for a second about crime. It's an issue that's been grabbing a lot of headlines and driving a lot of worry among residents of the city when they feel unsafe. Right now, one of the issues in that conversation is about teen curfews. They are, according to our poll, pretty overwhelmingly popular. And the majority of your council colleagues voted for them. You have been against them. And I imagine a political advisor would say like, "Why don't you just give it to 'em on this?" Why do you think they're a bad idea?

As a former prosecutor, I understand that we have to use various tools, you know? And I think what happened at Chipotle was absolutely unacceptable, right? And I think when kids are doing these teen takeovers and they're leading to violence or destruction of property, it is absolutely unacceptable. And I think we as a city have to do more to prevent these things from happening. And I also believe that, you know, young people have to be accountable for actions when they take those type of actions. And I voted for curfews in the past, right? As a tool. So I'm not totally against them.

What I have been saying is, as an executive and as a leader you have to make a decision about which tools you implement and when you implement them. And I feel strongly that the implementation right now is very dangerous. And that's because I've been on the ground. Not for a photo-op or press conference. I went down to Navy Yard 'cause I wanted to just see what was happening just, just like an everyday basis. We have federal law enforcement who is — right, like D.C. can't stop them — enforcing juvenile curfew and these agents, right? Trump's troops and the ICE agents and HSI — I even once saw IRS police, which I never even knew there was IRS police.

Maybe the kids are delinquent in their taxes.

I was like, "What you doing here?" That was the first of my time. So my point is this: You gotta choose when you use your tools and if you have different federal police departments and agents in our city, they are not trained in deescalation. We know that. We know that they are not accountable to the council or government. There's no oversight over them. And so the question is, do you use a tool like this when you know that it is going to be enforced by federal law enforcement troops and agents that are not trained in deescalation, who are not accountable to D.C. residents. And we know that there have been shootings that have occurred where D.C. residents have been killed. My biggest fear, right? I'm a mom too, right? My biggest fear is do we hand over our youth to federal troops? And ICE agents? Do we do that?

But I think a lot of people would say, listen, you got a thousand kids. Like you and me have both been teenagers, right? And I did some dumb stuff — you were the youth mayor so maybe you maybe you didn't — but the point is, if you get a thousand people together, some percentage of them are gonna be knuckleheads. Why not empower the authorities to say like, move along?

And we do. We have empowered our law enforcement to do that work and they can do that work. What happened in Chipotle was criminal activity and so I hope that the police department and the attorney general's office are working together — that's what I've asked — for them to work together to figure out who are those responsible people? Because those workers and the families who were there don't deserve to have been in that experience, that was criminal activity, right? So that needs to be handled with real enforcement and real accountability. 

My point is we don't have to give federal law enforcement troops and ICE agents tools to use against our children because we have the tools we need as a city to help protect our children and to get them to better third spaces.

In 2020, you talked about moving funds away from the police. Now you have talked about needing more officers. I think changing minds is a great thing in public life. Not enough people do it. People should do it more, but I think it's important to explain, like, tell me about the evolution of your thinking from then to now.

This has come up, which has been interesting. I think one of the things people don't talk about is we were all together in 2019 and 2020. And we remember what the national conversation was and what the local conversation was, right? We had just dealt with George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. Here in D.C. we had Karon Hylton-Brown, who was a young person in my ward. And actually we had gone 10 years of seeing on TV Black people particularly being killed on camera and there being no indictments or no accountability. Right? 

I remember — Tamir Rice hits me the strongest because that was a young kid who was on a playground by themselves. They didn't deescalate in any way. He was just shot. And then we saw Dylan Roof, for example, who shot up a church and they deescalated him and took him in a car and got him a burger — and Tamir Rice was killed, right? And so I think in that moment, as I stood up as a regular person — I wasn't on the council then — I was saying the cry of all of our community, which was — Black Lives Matter and we want police to show up in our communities in a way that doesn't mean we end up killed. And then if people end up killed, there's actually some accountability and justice.

Transcript: City Cast DC's Interview with Janeese Lewis George

DC Politics

Here’s the transcript from the interview that executive editor and co-host Michael Schaffer did with former D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, who is running for mayor. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity and was conducted prior to City Cast releasing its recent mayoral poll. You can also 

Council member, thank you so much for being here with me.

Yeah, absolutely. Looking forward to the conversation.

You have spoken really eloquently about growing up in D.C. Stronghold was the neighborhood you used to live in. And you've talked about what it was like to be growing up here in the eighties and nineties. You said you've made bad decisions, you have friends who made bad decisions and that stuff happened to you. I'm wondering, looking at the city now, as a kid growing up as you did in a neighborhood like Stronghold… better place now? Worse place now?

I think it's better for a number of reasons in terms of safety more broadly across the city. I think the reputation of the city is better. I think the economy has grown in many ways that has afforded some opportunities to people. But I think it's uneven, frankly.

Depending on where you go and who you ask, you're gonna get a different answer about whether it's better, because in the process of this city growing over the last 20, 25 years, a lot of people have been displaced. A lot of people who perhaps could have benefited from some of the expanded job opportunities, new businesses, just some of the amenities that exist in downtown — they're gone, frankly.

So I think it's been a mixed bag depending on who you ask. But, D.C. in 2026 certainly feels safer than it did when we were growing up in the 1980s and 1990s.

Right, so you and I are about the same age. We grew up in the same city. It's been this kind of amazing run, right? We're 150,000 more people now than we were. Safety stats, a lot of the stats are much better. But what do you think could have been done differently, and maybe can start to be done differently?

There's this displacement you've talked about and those folks are gone, but there's also, I think, among a lot of people, a real sense of alienation. Like, all the nice stuff's not for me and I may not be able to afford to stay here.

I think a lot of the attention at the time [is from] where we saw sort of resurgence, revitalization, and I want to give a lot of that credit to the district's growth and financial turnaround to Mayor Anthony Williams. He deserves it. He laid out that vision of economic growth. He wanted to attract 100,000 new residents to the city. Some people laughed at him, and didn't think it was possible, and he succeeded. Every mayor and elected official in the city's bottom line, frankly, have benefited from that vision.

My vision's a little different because I think we need guardrails. We need economic growth with guardrails to try to avoid displacement. [I’m] thinking proactively and intentionally about how you engage communities that have lacked opportunity, communities that are still suffering from high levels of unemployment, violence, poor health outcomes. How does the city show up for them and demonstrate to them where they fit into the future economic growth?

So, wait. I know what a guardrail is on a highway. What does it look like in city government? What wasn't there that under Williams, under Fenty, under Gray, under Bowser, that could have been there, that was a guardrail that would've kept some of the displacement and inequality from happening?

So, the word ‘equity’ has become sort of a buzzword for a lot of people to use. Frankly, in some circles it's not used anymore because it's a lightning rod. But I think government must do its work through the lens of equity. I'm not ashamed to say and frankly, will lift up the need for the District of Columbia to do its work more specifically through the lens of racial equity.

The city has pretty robust set-aside programs that have focused, rhetorically at least, on equity. Those programs have continued through all of these pro-business mayors we've had. What specifically does that mean? Like, what policy change? What law change?

I'll tell you specifically what it means. A few years ago, I authored a bill that was passed and funded by the council called the “REACH Act,” for short. That acronym stands for “Racial Equity Achieves Results” Act. It established the Council's Office on Racial Equity, or “CORE” for short.

It was one of the first of its kind for city government to take a bill, do an analysis, use a racial equity impact assessment tool and say, "Hey, before you vote on this, here's what the potential impact is on marginalized communities, communities of color, Black, Hispanic communities, women." But it gives you some guidance. It gives you some resources. It does an assessment so that elected officials can see the potential impact before the vote.

That same office issued a critical commentary on extending the youth curfews, which you supported, which is a very divisive issue. They said, probably accurately, it was gonna hit Black kids a lot harder than it's gonna hit white kids who've got fancy backyards in the Upper Northwest.

Should equity have figured into that and how so?

Oh, it does figure into it. That's precisely what the Council's Office on Racial Equity does. There is a Mayor's Office on Racial Equity that isn't funded and isn't utilized to the extent it should be to measure performance across agencies and to really gauge the impact of a government policy and law’s implementation on communities across district limits. Not just marginalized communities. But what is the impact?

So, the youth curfew is just an example. Which is why I believe that the curfew is a tool that should be used temporarily and not permanently. I think that's a contrast that I bring with the current mayor and her approach to addressing some of the things that are happening in the Navy Yard with teen takeovers, and I think in some of the candidates who are running for the Office of Mayor.

The curfew is appropriate on a temporary basis given the risks of those young folks who are coming down to the Navy Yard and other places. Sores, I mean hundreds of kids. You're finding guns, shots-fired incidents. My fear is that it only escalates where young folks who are excited, looking for things to do, want to be on social media, see it as fun and games. But there are real risks. There are serious risks of violence that we've already seen that can escalate when some young person brings a gun or some National Guards person, who's not trained to be a police officer, doesn't understand how to deescalate a situation and actually draws a weapon. So, I think we have to have a curfew as a temporary measure.

But going back to the city as it has changed in the last 25, 30 years… You got outta high school, you worked as a mail carrier, you're in Friendship Heights. All of a sudden, you're in this different neighborhood. It's much wealthier than the neighborhood you grew up in. One thing that hasn't changed is the inequality.

In this run of good statistics that the district has had for these 30 years under Williams, under Fenty, under Gray, under Bowser: What didn't they do that this focus on equity you're talking about would've gotten them to do? What did they do that that kind of focus would've prevented? Because it seems to me they decided, “We wanna make D.C. an easier place to be for rich people, for people who have a choice. And we're gonna make services better and we're gonna make it safer and everyone's gonna benefit and we'll get more and our tax base will grow.” Where in that set of things, where did they go wrong on the equity side?

Well, I think it would be an oversimplification to say they just got it all wrong. I think they did what they thought was best in terms of how to operate government, use the tools that you have to grow economy, create jobs, and try to connect folks. A lot of great programs around workforce development have been implemented and have been helpful to some people.

On the other hand, what does it look like to actually show up in those communities and ask them for what they think they need? You have challenges when it comes to education that I think are largely a byproduct of policies, racist and discriminatory policies. No fault to the folks who have been in office the last 20 years, but that created a city that concentrated wealth in certain communities and concentrated poverty in other communities.

So, if you are building a city and your focus is on downtown and you have elected officials taking pride in counting cranes but you're not making a connection to build housing that is affordable or you're not deconcentrating poverty intentionally in communities that are plagued by high unemployment, poor health outcomes, pick your—

Why didn't they do that? And did you push them to? I mean, you're on the council.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We have. And you've seen some progress. I can point to specific things where I passed a bill that requires, every time the District of Columbia has a surplus, 50% of it is directed to the city's Housing Production Trust Fund, which is the primary tool that we use to preserve existing units of affordable housing and to build new units of affordable housing. We've built lots of housing over the last several years, and some of it has been deeply affordable—the lower end, 30 to 50% of the median family income. So you're seeing more people be able to access that type of housing.

I did a bill that says whenever you dispose of the city's land for the purpose of building multifamily housing there has to be [some units] set aside for affordable housing. Again, all the way up to that missing middle, 80% of the median family income. So we've done some things well and you've seen the city grow in a way that has been more equitable over the last decade or so, over the last 15 years.

I'm not trying to assign blame. That's not what residents of the District of Columbia want in their leadership. And that's not what I'm giving them. I'm giving them new innovative solutions to intractable issues that we face as a city, and frankly, cities across this country have faced over the last several decades.

It's a weird election because you're facing an opponent who has a very clear, articulated ideology. And you are saying, which I think most of your recent mayoral predecessors would say too, “OK, the market does some stuff well, but we need some guardrails.” It's not a message that people can go to the barricades for in the revolution. What is the Kenyon McDuffie ideology?

I would say that at a time where the District of Columbia faces a $1.1 billion spending pressure, where resources are thin, and we have a federal government, a really hostile administration that has cut federal jobs, that has reduced federal spending– you have a Congress that has treated the District of Columbia like a political football. It has cost us lots of money. Our bottom line is suffering. Our bond rating has been downgraded on Wall Street because they're saying we're too tethered to the federal government.

With all that as a backdrop, we need a fighter to push back against a federal administration. But we also need somebody who's pragmatic and understands how to deliver results for people in terms of delivery of core services, right? We need to keep the city safe. We need a police force that has more officers that are well-trained, and understand community-oriented-policing. We need to reduce the millions of dollars we're spending in overtime and boost morale out of a department that's felt depleted.

My approach to policing is grounded both in my training as a lawyer, civil rights attorney and in President Obama's justice department, traveling around the country, investigating police departments, offering technical assistance, making sure that it's community oriented. But also, my experience growing up in a city where the federal law enforcement converged on neighborhoods across the District of Columbia. I know what injustice feels like, to be arrested as a teenager in your own neighborhood.

What I'm saying is, I'm not gonna divest from the police like my primary opponent is saying. We're actually gonna support law enforcement and make it a place where they want to work, where they don't get burned out, where they show up in communities proactively and not just after 911 is called, where they know the streets and they know their beat and they know the senior citizens sitting on the porch so that when a crime happens, they can close out those cases at a higher percentage than what they're doing right now.

You say we need more cops and you wanna stop the drain. I mean, now there's another reason for the drain, which is the feds are trying to hire people away and offer more money.

If you ask some of the sort of diehards and the police union, they will say that the demoralization of the police had to do with some of the reforms that passed after 2020. What do you think of that argument?

Well, I think that there is a serious morale issue right now at the Metropolitan Police Department. But there's also a lack of the tools that they need to do better recruiting. You mentioned that a lot of other regions, including the feds, ICE, HSI, are throwing $80,000 at officers. Well, we need to double at least the recruitment bonus that we're giving to officers to be in the Metropolitan Police Department.

But would you roll back any of the reforms that—I mean, congress has rolled some of 'em back already—but would you roll back any of the 2020 reforms?

I don't think the rollback is where you need to place the emphasis today. You need to place the emphasis on creating an environment where metropolitan police officers want to stay and retire. I think that has to do with hiring up the numbers so they're not getting burnt out. I think there needs to be better recruitment, double the hiring bonus from $25,000 to $50,000… having a mayor who cares deeply about the police force to make sure that it's strong.

Those officers are literally risking their lives every time they put on a uniform to protect and serve and we're gonna work with them to get the numbers up and ensure that we're addressing the burnout that they're feeling right now. We don't want them to be recruited away. It's the nation's capital. We want them to take pride in what they do. We also wanna make sure that they can show up in the rec centers, community centers, in other institutions, working with the faith community: partnerships that give them the ability to engage the community in a meaningful way so that their ability to do their jobs is just much better than what we've seen.

There's a counter argument, which is that–in particular we've heard it with the youth curfews, we've heard sometimes with the school resource officers—that the last thing kids, particularly kids in struggling neighborhoods, need is more policing of them. What's wrong with that argument?

I think it's important for people to understand that community safety and policing is really built on a foundation of trust and you don't establish that trust by simply responding after somebody calls 911. You certainly don't establish that trust by over-policing in a hostile, adversarial way in communities that feel like the presence of the police is intrusive. When I was growing up in the early eighties, that adversarial relationship didn't exist. I played basketball and football for the Metropolitan Police Boys and Girls Clubs when I showed up—

I think you're a little more athletic than me.

When I showed up to play, to hoop at the Metropolitan Police Number 10 Club at 14th and Clifton, that was a place you didn't go unless you lived there or knew somebody. But when you went inside the club, it was a safe haven.

But you went all the way over there from Stronghold?

I absolutely did. It was the best place to play. And you went inside that club and Officer Lynch was the first person to greet you. You went downstairs to practice, and Mitch Credle was on the force, right? So that trust was being established without me even knowing it.

When I went home to my neighborhood in Stronghold, my best friend's older brother was on the Metropolitan Police Department. So, my desire to be a civil rights lawyer in part was based on my desire to see justice in neighborhoods like mine. And I think policing is a delicate balance, but MPD does a much better job today than they did two decades ago for sure. In part because you had investigations by the Department of Justice's Special Litigation Section where I was employed, where you put in place policies and you form departments so they're doing policing that is community-based.

Yeah, consequences are important. Accountability is absolutely essential. But you also have to make sure that as a government you have accountability paired with opportunity in communities that have seen lots of crime and violence historically in our city. We know where these communities are. We know where a lot of these kids are coming from that are making some really bad decisions, that are engaging in violence. And we need policies that are “both and,” not “either or” when it comes to community safety.

We've seen things turn around though. We've seen policies turn around both at the council where we increased some of the penalties when it comes to pretrial detention. Some of the things that were changed, I supported. But I asked tough questions before saying yes to supporting some of those things. My principal opponent did not.

Let me try to represent it as accurately as I can: We have this situation where people have been accused but not convicted of a crime. They are kept in often terrible conditions in jail. This lands much harder on poor people. It is a classic case of non-equity. Why should we have a pretrial? The country seems to be moving away from that. Why was it a good thing?

We were in a state of crisis in terms of violence that we’re experiencing. The levels of gun violence, gun possession, use of deadly weapons, were at levels we hadn't seen in decades. And we needed to respond. We needed people to feel safe and to be safe. We needed to demonstrate the city was going to hold those charged and accused of crimes to make sure that we can ensure we had safe communities across the District of Columbia.

I think we have to be in a position as elected officials to make tough decisions and to assess decisions that we make, to make sure that they are viable and that they have the efficacy that we think they will have when we implement them.

Transcript: City Cast DC's Interview with Kenyan McDuffie

Michael Schaffer

Janeese Lewis George holds a slim lead over Kenyan McDuffie, according to City Cast’s new poll of District residents. But the results also suggest that her lead might not hold up once second-choice votes are tabulated under the city’s new ranked-choice voting system — setting Washington up for a dramatic aftermath to the June 16 primary election. 

According to the poll, the first citywide public poll in the most hotly contested race in a generation, Lewis George is the first choice of 39 percent of Democratic voters, five points above rival McDuffie.

No other candidate tops 7 percent and 24 percent said they were undecided.

McDuffie, though, has a meaningful lead over Lewis George when it comes to second-choice votes among supporters of other candidates. Twenty-seven percent of those voters back him, against 15 percent for Lewis George.

Under ranked-choice voting, voters’ second, third, fourth, and fifth choices get factored in if no candidate wins an outright majority, which appears likely according to City Cast’s poll, conducted by the polling firm TrueDot.

“The second-choice results suggest McDuffie has room to grow through ranked-choice transfers, creating a real challenge,” said Jon Cohen, the CEO of TrueDot and a former polling director at 

. “But ranked-choice outcomes are inherently harder to model

than first-past-the-post elections … So these numbers are best read as evidence of McDuffie's path to tighten the race under RCV, rather than an indication of the ultimate outcome.” (Some 30 percent also said they wouldn’t cast a second choice.)

With less than a month left in the race, the poll gives both leading campaigns reason for optimism. Lewis George has a lead, and the survey of voter sentiments suggests there’s a lot of passion around priorities like expanding the safety net, which polls higher than any other issue. Lewis George declined to comment on the poll results. 

McDuffie would no doubt prefer to have a lead. But ranked-choice voting — ironically, something he opposed as a D.C. councilmember — gives him a real chance, as does the fact that nearly one in four voters remains undecided. The poll shows that his main rival is also on the wrong side of public opinion on curfews, which are driving headlines as the campaign heads into its final stretch.

“In the coming weeks, the 25% of voters who remain undecided will continue to learn about his record of delivering,” McDuffie’s campaign said in a statement. “Meanwhile, with three-quarters of voters saying that crime and safety are major concerns, Councilmember Janeese Lewis George…is going to have trouble.”

The outlook is a lot clearer in the race for D.C.’s non-voting Congressional delegate, where D.C. Councilmember Robert White holds a 38-21 lead over colleague Brooke Pinto. No other candidate tops 5 percent.

The survey, conducted between May 12 and 17, asked 735 District residents — including 487 registered Democrats — about the upcoming citywide races for mayor and Congressional delegate, as well as about an array of issues facing the District. The poll employed a hybrid sampling design and had a margin of error of 3.7 percent for the full sample and 4.7 percent for the registered Democratic sample.

With little public polling so far in D.C.’s first open mayoral race in 20 years — and its first competitive Congressional race since 1990 — the survey offers a fascinating glimpse into a city whose political coalitions and policy priorities are in flux.

Among other things, the 2026 race seems to be scrambling the old assumption that race and geography are D.C.’s major political dividing lines. Historically, white voters and residents of the western side of the District have often gone in very different directions from Black voters and those who live in the eastern half of town.

Maybe not this time. While McDuffie’s support is generally stronger with black voters and Lewis George leads among white Washingtonians, both have racially diverse bases. Geographically, McDuffie leads in wealthy Wards 2 and 3, on the western edge of the city, as well as in historically poorer Wards 7 and 8, located at the District’s eastern tip. Lewis George, meanwhile, is well ahead in the central band of Washington.

Still, the divide by race is much less pronounced than the generational split. Where McDuffie leads by 27 points among baby boomers and older, Lewis George is preferred by 24 points among Gen Z members and 19 points among millennials. By contrast, Lewis George is up by six points among white voters and McDuffie by nine points among Black voters. (Voters who don’t identify as either prefer Lewis George by 39 points).

Age is a particularly striking divide among white voters. Those under 46 support Lewis George by 54 percent to 26 percent; those above 46 prefer McDuffie by 52 percent to 30 percent. In Black Washington, by contrast, McDuffie holds a narrow 6-point edge among voters under 46 and a 10-point lead among those over 46.

There’s also a dramatic gender gap, with Lewis George leading by 15 points among women while McDuffie leads by 4 points among men.

And when it comes to class, the Democratic Socialists of America member Lewis George does not seem to be cleaning up among D.C.’s poorer and less-educated voters. She’s leading by 13 points among voters with college degrees, while McDuffie is out front by eight points among those without.

Sign up for City Cast DC's daily newsletter

Lewis George also leads by nine points among voters with household incomes above $150,000 and ten points among those with household incomes between $75,000 and $150,000. McDuffie, meanwhile, holds a narrow five-point lead among voters with household incomes below $75,000.

The bottom line: The younger, better educated, and newer you are to D.C., the more likely you are to support Lewis George.

In a city where gentrification and demographic change has been one of the most emotional issues of the past few decades, the biggest divide may actually be time living in D.C. Voters who said they’d grown up in the District prefer McDuffie by 43 percent to 26 percent, according to the poll.

Among voters who moved to Washington within the past decade — 20 percent of the electorate — Lewis George crushes her rival by 58 percent to 16 percent, a whopping 42 points. She also holds a small lead among non-natives who’ve been here more than 10 years.

Age, class, gender, and tenure in D.C. also might help explain some of the more novel findings in the poll, which surveyed voters about lifestyle and tastes — superficial-seeming things that actually matter a lot in an era where culture drives a lot of voter behavior.

Among self-described fans of football’s Washington Commanders, McDuffie leads by 19 points, 45 percent to 26 percent when people leaning to a candidate are factored in.

Among self-described fans of baseball’s Washington Nationals, the candidates are closely divided, with 38 percent supporting McDuffie to 33 percent for Lewis George when people leaning to a candidate are factored in.

 subscribers and local TV news watchers also give McDuffie narrow leads, but those who have gotten news from Instagram or TikTok favor Lewis George by 17 points, 42 percent to 25 percent when people leaning to a candidate are factored in.

People who said they had commuted to work by bicycle within the past six months strongly favored Lewis George, 46 percent to 25 percent when people leaning to a candidate are factored in.

People who said they’d eaten in a restaurant over the past six months where the bill came to more than $100 per person — a possible indicator of disposable income and cosmopolitan lifestyle — were essentially split.

The poll also reveals a population sharply divided in its opinion of outgoing Mayor Muriel Bowser. Those who approve of her performance favor McDuffie, those who disapprove favor Lewis George. Notably, there’s also a massive age divide in views of the current mayor: Sixty-six percent of baby boomers and older rate Bowser positively; only 37 percent of Gen Z Washingtonians do.

City Cast’s poll also surveyed residents on several key political issues, some of which have divided the mayoral candidates. Notably, the poll found that over 70 percent of voters rank issues like cost of living (77%), housing (71%) and public safety (73%) as very important for the next mayor, while only 57 percent felt the same way about standing up to Donald Trump.

On public safety, the poll found broad support for youth curfews that McDuffie has supported and Lewis George has opposed. 72 percent of voters say they favor the curfews; among those voters, McDuffie leads by 12 points. Notably, though, almost half of Lewis George’s supporters support curfews.

Likewise, McDuffie holds a strong lead among the 42 percent plurality of voters who want D.C. to hire more police, while Lewis George is the favorite of a 12 percent minority who would like fewer officers. Both candidates have called for more police. (37 percent of residents said they think the current size of the force is about right.)

On the other hand, Lewis George hasn’t ruled out raising taxes to pay for needed social services — and 78 percent of respondents seem to agree with that, answering that they’d favor expanding the safety net even if it means raising some taxes. Among voters who strongly support that idea, Lewis George leads by 50 percent to 26 percent when “leaners” are factored in. Among the smaller cohort who oppose raising taxes to pay for more social services, McDuffie has a similar lead.

Yet recruiting new businesses — even if it means giving tax breaks — also appears to have broad support, with 68 percent in favor and 25 percent opposed. On this issue, McDuffie is the one who’s way ahead among people who strongly support the idea, while Lewis George leads among those who oppose it.

The poll also found strong voter support for changing D.C. rules to make it easier to build more apartment buildings and townhouses in neighborhoods, something both candidates have voiced support for. But Lewis George holds a ten percent lead among those who strongly support the idea, while McDuffie has an 11 percent lead among the much smaller number of voters who oppose it.

It’s one of several issues involving changes to the contours of public life in D.C. where broad majorities favor the change — but where those who oppose it tend to support McDuffie. He also leads among those who want to roll back bike lanes and those who are hostile to streateries, both of which are rather popular, according to the poll. (McDuffie himself has not opposed either idea.)

But McDuffie’s not the favorite of the change-averse on every issue. Lewis George supporters are much more skeptical than McDuffie supporters about self-driving taxis, which McDuffie has pushed to allow on D.C. streets.

In the race for Congress, White is being elevated by essentially the same coalition that has most strongly embraced Lewis George: Younger, better educated, progressives. But he also leads among Black voters and older voters, where she struggles. Notably, he has the same level of support — 35% — among people who grew up in D.C. as he has among people who’ve moved to town during the past ten years. Still, nearly three in ten voters say they’re undecided, which adds some unpredictability to the race.

That didn’t stop White from exulting. “It shows that D.C. voters are sending a clear message: they want a leader who will fight for working-class Washingtonians and who understands and lives the values of this city,” he said yesterday. “People are worried about their jobs, worried about their safety, and tired of feeling like they are carrying the burden while those with power and privilege look the other way. They know this campaign is different because they know they have a voice in this movement and a fighter who will never stop standing up for them.”

Pinto enthusiasts, meanwhile, took solace in the large number of undecideds, the possibilities of ranked-choice voting, and the fact that White’s number in the City Cast poll is still lower than the 40 percent he got in the 2022 Democratic mayoral primary against Bowser.

"This is a wide open race, and it's clear the momentum is behind Brooke Pinto,” campaign manager Drew Godinich said. “We have built the infrastructure to win - but more importantly, Brooke Pinto has a vision of a DC with our own autonomy, with safer neighborhoods, and an innovation-based economy that has affordable housing opportunities for everyone. Brooke Pinto has been outhustling the competition, and we're not stopping until we win."

Methodology: The May 2026 CityCast DC Poll was conducted by TrueDot among a total of 735 adults residing in the District of Columbia. Interviews were conducted May 12-17, 2026. Among the full sample of D.C. adults, 487 registered Democrats were asked questions about the upcoming Democratic mayoral primary. No respondent data was inferred or modeled.

The survey employed a hybrid sampling design. A total of 384 interviews were conducted with registered voters sampled from the D.C. voter file and reached via text message. An additional 351 interviews were completed with D.C. adult residents recruited through online panels. To ensure the total sample reflects the adult population of D.C., post-stratification weights were applied along key demographic dimensions, including D.C. ward, age, race/ethnicity, educational attainment, gender, and results from the 2024 general elections.

The modeled error estimate for the full sample is +/- 3.7 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The modeled error estimate accounts for the complexity of the sampling design, including weighting and the use of non-probability panel sources, and should be interpreted as an approximation of total survey error rather than a traditional margin of sampling error. Subgroup estimates carry larger modeled errors.

The first citywide poll of District voters shows that neither candidate has a majority in the mayor’s race. McDuffie is the leading second-place choice. 

City Cast DC Poll: Lewis George Leads for Mayor; Ranked Choice Could Boost McDuffie 

Michael Brice-Saddler

Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen (D) is endorsing Ward 4 Council member Janeese Lewis George (D) in the D.C. mayoral primary, praising her as a decisive leader who can restore a sense of ambition to the city.

Allen plans to announce his endorsement Monday. He said in an interview that his backing of Lewis George comes down to a desire for a more assertive approach — arguing that over the last several years, the city’s leadership has “lost the ambition.”

“Just constantly thinking about how you nibble on the edges of a problem, it’s clearly not working for us, it’s not making D.C. more affordable,” Allen said. “I want us to be a city that’s proud: leading, innovating and being ambitious. I don’t know why we think it’s okay not to be.”

In a competitive primary where voter attention remains limited, the backing of an established, longtime lawmaker helps send a clear signal to undecided voters that Lewis George’s campaign has institutional support.

Allen’s endorsement adds to a growing list that solidifies Lewis George’s backing from the progressive wing of the D.C. Council. She has already secured support from At-Large Council member Robert White Jr., Ward 1 Council member Brianne K. Nadeau and former D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine.

Her top rival in the Democratic primary, former Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie, has been endorsed by Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D), former Ward 3 Council member Mary Cheh, former D.C. Mayor Sharon Pratt and the Associated Builders and Contractors of Metro Washington, among others.

The candidates’ different approaches can be seen in their housing goals. Lewis George is pushing a lofty target of 72,000 new units. McDuffie has dismissed that number as 

, countering with a more modest pitch: build 12,000 new units and preserve 20,000 more by 2030.

"Twelve thousand is not part of a bold way to think about how we grow our city," said Allen, who likened Lewis George’s vision to former Mayor Anthony Williams’s historic — and at the time, controversial — push to add 

"People said, 'That’s unrealistic, we shouldn’t think and dream that big,'" recalled Allen. “And guess what? We added 100,000 new residents, and by adding more housing and more residents, we diversified our tax base. We became a growing city.”

A centerpiece of Lewis George’s platform is achieving universal childcare, potentially funded by a proposed Business Activity Tax. Supporters, including Allen, frame it as a restructuring of the city’s business taxes — aimed at capturing more revenue from large firms while 

The council member says the city’s leadership has “lost the ambition” — and Lewis George offers a bolder path forward. 

DC Politics

Transcript: City Cast DC's Interview with Janeese Lewis George

Transcript: City Cast DC's Interview with Kenyan McDuffie

City Cast DC Poll: Lewis George Leads for Mayor; Ranked Choice Could Boost McDuffie

Latest articles

Scoop: Charles Allen backs Janeese Lewis George in D.C. mayoral race

The D.C. Mayor's Race is Actually Heating Up

Two D.C. Council Candidates Form Alliance in Historic First