If you forgot the Democratic mayoral primary election was two weeks ago, I wouldn’t blame you.
There I was, on April Fool’s Day, heading to the School Without Walls cafeteria to give up the right to vote in my home state of Massachusetts and make my voice heard in a crowded, scandal-ridden fight for D.C. supremacy. It was pretty lonely at the polls. Only about one-fourth of 370,000 registered voters went – the lowest turnout in three decades.
By the end of the night, Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser ousted incumbent mayor and GW alumnus Vincent Gray. In November’s general election, Bowser will go up against independent David Catania.
For many of us, it’s tempting to support Bowser without question. GW students are predominantly Democrats or liberals and would support Bowser for her party label alone.
But we shouldn’t blindly give her our support without challenging her to craft better solutions to the city’s most pressing problems. The woman who the Washington City Paper called an “empty suit” does not look ready to tackle the city’s lack of affordable housing and failing public school system.
When it comes to lowering the city’s housing costs, which is suffocating low-income residents, we should see the red flags around Bowser’s plans, even though she is the chair of the Council’s economic development committee.
Bowser only has empty words behind her concerns for housing. She hasn’t authored a single bill to address the city’s affordability crisis. It certainly does not help that Bowser’s campaign is financially buoyed by real estate developers who do not benefit from building for poorer demographics.
As mayor, she plans to funnel $100 million or more into affordable housing projects, but we should still be skeptical. It’s easy to say a problem will be fixed by throwing millions of dollars at it, but this is likely to fail low-income households.
For example, the city program New Communities, a $400 million project, has failed to build enough units for the growing low-income class. Eight years after the program launched, New Communities has constructed only 30 of the 280 promised buildings at their site located near the Capitol, according to a D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute report from January.
But here’s the kicker: Even though New Communities tears down old low-income housing units without efficient replacement in Northwest D.C., Bowser still called that program a success.
Bowser’s education plan is also weak. She’s advocated for “Alice Deal for all” – an ambitious plan to make every middle school as high-performing as the Alice Deal School, located in the affluent Tenleytown neighborhood.
This plan, however, puts undue focus on the city’s middle schools, ignoring the dropout crisis and other major issues in our secondary schools. The city’s high school graduation rate stood at 64 percent last year, an improvement from the previous year, but still far behind the national rate of 80 percent.
Other candidates, including my choice for mayor, Council member Tommy Wells, had clearer visions for the city, even if they didn’t have big money behind them. A former city social worker, Wells championed child welfare efforts in his time on the Council and had a comprehensive plan to reform the city’s schools, including increasing neighborhood elementary schools and job and internship opportunities for high school students.
Even Andy Shallal, the Busboys & Poets owner who no one ever considered a serious candidate, had a more ambitious housing plan than Bowser. He planned to provide millions of dollars in affordable housing every year while also pitching affordable rent incentives and tax credits for long-time neighborhood residents.
Neither Shallal nor Wells had the political connections to win the nomination. But if Bowser wants to unite the city’s Democrats before November, she needs to look to defeated candidates for direction.
Only in appealing to a clear progressive vision with concrete policy proposals will she truly earn and deserve the full support of the Democratic party.
Jonah Lewis, a sophomore majoring in political science and sociology, is a Hatchet columnist.
