Washington D.C. Ward 4 Council Member Janeese Lewis George poses for a portrait outside the Whitelaw Apartment building on June 8, 2026. (Eric Lee / The Washington Post via Getty Images)
By Arianna Hooker June 28, 2026 at 9:00am
Socialist City Councilwoman Janeese Lewis George won Washington D.C.’s Democratic mayoral primary putting her on track to be the deep blue city’s next leader.
Lewis George won 52.9% of the first choice vote, beating out her closest challenger former City Councilman Kenyan McDuffie who garnered 36.4%, the Associated Press reported Thursday with 75% of the vote counted. The AP called the race nearly two full days after polls closed Tuesday night.
The race took long to call partly due to the fact that this was the first D.C. mayoral election using ranked-choice voting. No other candidate in the race received more than 4% of the vote.
Lewis George has represented the District’s Ward 4 since 2021, when she defeated a more moderate Democrat in the primary. During her campaign she has been compared to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and she is a self-described socialist. Like Mamdani, her campaign focused on cost-of-living issues and strengthening public services.
Democratic D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has led the nation’s capital since 2015, did not seek reelection to a fourth term.
McDuffie has served as D.C. council for Ward 5 for nearly ten years before spending three as an at-large council member.
During Lewis George’s last reelection campaign, her opponents criticized her for being soft on crime. McDuffie has pointed out that Lewis George did not vote for sweeping crime bills in 2023 and voted against allowing landlords to evict potentially violent tenants, according to WAMU 88.5.
Lewis George told Fox 5 that her vision is “someone who addresses retention, recruitment, morale and police enforcement.”
Teen takeovers have been infiltrating D.C. leading to several arrests and violence happening within the city. Lewis George said she was against the idea of implementing a youth curfew to combat teen takeovers and teen violence, according to USA Today.
Lewis George has claimed that the cities teen takeovers can be solved by “investing more in safe spaces and activities for teenagers,” according to the outlet.
“It is dangerous because we have federal troops who are in our city, masked [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] ICE agents who are in our city,” Lewis George said in May 2025. “These are the people enforcing this law in our young people, and these individuals are not trained in deescalation,” she added on, according to USA Today.
McDuffie criticized Lewis George’s take on crime and claimed that “doing nothing is not an option,” USA Today reported.
In an effort to crack down on crime President Donald Trump deployed national guard to D.C. in August 2025.
Lewis George was endorsed by the Working Families Party, the Metro D.C. Democratic Socialists of America and Our America, according to the AP.
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