Council member Bowser becomes Democratic nominee for D.C. mayor
Muriel Bowser declares victory in D.C. mayoral primary
(6 months later)
Muriel Bowser, the seven year District council member, won the Democratic nomination for mayor Tuesday, vanquishing incumbent Vincent C. Gray, whose quest for re-election was crippled by a federal investigation into his victorious campaign four years ago.
Muriel E. Bowser, a low-key but politically canny District lawmaker, won the Democratic mayoral nomination Tuesday, emerging from a pack of challengers in a low-turnout primary to deny scandal-tarnished incumbent Vincent C. Gray a second term.
Bowser, largely unknown to voters beyond her home base of Ward 4 when she began her campaign a year ago, will face David Catania, the Independent council member, in what is to be the District’s first competitive general election in nearly 20 years.
The 41-year-old D.C. Council member triumphed in the latest in a string of District elections to reveal a city unsettled over the shape of its future. Bowser’s win heralds many more months of uncertainty as she faces a substantial general-election challenger while a lame-duck Gray is left to steer the city amid the threat of federal indictment.
With more than 70,000 votes counted, Bowser led Gray by 44 percent to 32 percent. Troubles with how some of the electronic voting machines were shut down caused n hours-long delay in results.
Bowser (D-Ward 4) moved deftly to capitalize on public doubts about Gray’s trustworthiness fueled by the still-unresolved federal corruption investigation into his 2010 campaign. Alone among seven Democratic challengers, she amassed a coalition that crossed demographic and geographic lines allowing her to outpoll Gray’s shrunken but steady base of African American voters.
As the results trickled in, Bowser, 41, appeared before a crowd of supporters assembled at her campaign party in Ward 8, all but declaring victory and congratulating her supporters. “I know a thing or two about winning a race,” Bowser said. “You go to all eight wards, you talk to a lot of energetic people.”
The outcome of the race remained in doubt for four hours after the 8 p.m. closing of polling places as elections officials struggled with an unusually late and messy tabulation process.
Around midnight, Gray appeared on stage at a hotel on Capitol Hill, thanking supporters, touting his accomplishments, and conceding defeat. He complained about the date of the April 1 primary, saying he hoped that it is changed because the wintry weather made campaigning difficult.
For much of the evening, the campaigns and the public watched results trickle in and wondered what was going wrong at city elections headquarters downtown. Officials blamed the slow pace on poor training of election workers in the use of electronic voting machines. And the campaigns waited impatiently to know who had won.
“It’s hard to be motivated,” he said. “It’s hard, and it’s complex.”
Tamara Robinson, a spokeswoman for the city Board of Elections, said vote counters noticed inconsistent numbers reported in several precincts, so they stopped releasing tallies until they could examine them more closely. They found that five or six machines had not been shut down correctly by poll workers, who may have been overwhelmed by the larger number of electronic machines at precincts this year.
Speaking to reporters after he left the stage, Gray said he decided to concede because the gap was too great between himself and Bowser.
With 89 percent of precincts reporting shortly before midnight, Bowser led Gray 44 percent to 33 percent — prompting a concession speech from the incumbent.
“We are still concerned about the numbers and the validity of those ... but I don’t think it will change the coutcome,” he said.
Gray said he intended to keep working, and “by the way, we have nine more months.”
Asked about the swift erosion of support that polls showed last month after federal prosecutors announced the guilty plea of a 2010 campaign donor, Gray went further than he had before in blaming prosecutors for altering the race.
In her subsequent victory remarks, Bowser struck a conciliatory note, reaching out to her rivals’ supporters in an appeal for party unity during a seven-month general-election campaign to come.
Gray compared his election to the gubernatorial election in Virginia to replace former governor Robert F. McDonnell. “You had a gubernatorial race, didn’t even involve the incumbent. But that investigation stopped until that race was over. And I think it’s common place for these kinds of investigations to not have some kind of influence on the outcome of an election.”
“It’s our job to let them know that I’ll be their mayor, too,” she said. “We’re going to earn their support. We’re going to hear their vision, and we’re going to work with them.”
Gray’s campaign manager, Chuck Thies, went further than Gray, squarely blaming U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. for turning the election against Gray. “One thing changed this election: Ron Machen.”
Election returns and voter interviews indicated that Bowser’s greatest strength may have been in attracting the anti-Gray vote. She had emerged from a field of seven challengers to run even with Gray in the most recent public polls.
“The only thing that changed this election was the timing of Jeff Thompson’s plea deal, and that timing was decided by …the U.S. Attorney, and the U.S. Attorney should answer the question: Why then? That’s the question, was there imminent harm to people?”
While Gray, as expected, won solid majorities in the eastern half of the city, Bowser ran strongly in the western half and held her own in her home ward — where Gray sealed his victory against Adrian M. Fenty four years ago.
And why create the made for Twitter ‘Uncle Earl’ moment … whey create a dog and pony show around a plea deal. The answer to the question is to influence an election, and that’s not the job of prosecutors. We were up in every public poll before Machen Monday.
Voting at Shepherd Elementary School, traditionally a bellwether precinct, Phyllis Caudle-Green, 59, said she voted for Gray over Fenty but instead supported Bowser this time.
Gray also blamed the early primary: “When you have an election coming out of the winter, that was odd and it wasn’t just that our voters didn’t come out, voters didn’t come out.”
Bowser, she said, struck her as “capable and competent” and represented a rare opportunity to put a black woman in the city’s top office.
Challenging an incumbent wounded by scandal, Bowser sought to assemble a coalition that cut across the city, a strategy adopted by former Mayor Adrian Fenty, Bowser’s political mentor who lost to Gray in 2010.
“We’re at a crossroads,” the retired investment banker said. “I just think it’s time to go in a new direction.”
Gray, 71, whose “One City” campaign slogan evoked the promise of racial unity four years ago, largely confined his campaigning to his political base – the black neighborhoods that supported him in overwhelming numbers four years ago.
Caudle-Green said she settled on Bowser only in recent weeks, after new corruption allegations were aired against Gray. “I don’t necessarily think the mayor is guilty,” she said. “I just don’t think we need that distraction.”
But whatever support the mayor received in those wards Tuesday was not enough to overcome Bowser’s broader outreach.
A historically small swath of the city decided the race, with Tuesday’s turnout appearing to rival elections in 1986 and 1998 for the lowest in a mayoral primary in 40 years of District home rule.
Prior to the results, Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), a Gray supporter, told reporters that Bowswer was a difficult opponent because she did not rile Gray’s supporters in the way that former Mayor Adrian Fenty had during the 2010 race.
In part, the lower turnout reflected a new, earlier schedule for the city primaries, dictated by a federal law mandating more time between primary and general elections to expand absentee balloting.
“We don’t have the same kind of anti-Fenty attitude,” he said. “We ought to have the same Muriel Bowser attitude, because she’s a protégé of Adrian Fenty. Fenty is written all over her campaign.”
For the first time in a generation, the heat of the Democratic mayoral race took place during the frigid winter months. Previous primary campaigns concluded in the early weeks of September, amid late-summer heat. This year, snow fell during early voting, and incessant rain soaked the final campaign weekend. But weather was not an excuse for the low turnout Tuesday, the most temperate day the city had seen in months.
With turnout low and voters expressing muted enthusiasm for the candidates, Gray and Bowser spent the day sprinting across the city, rallying supporters and struggling to push voters to the polls.
“When you have an election coming out of the winter, that was odd and it wasn’t just that our voters didn’t come out, voters didn’t come out,” Gray said during his concession.
At Shepherd Elementary School in Shepherd Park, both showed up to greet voters as dusk settled over the precinct. The sidewalks were crowded with candidates and their supporters, hugging voters and addressing those casting ballots by name.
Tuesday night’s returns showed that Gray’s level of support eroded precipitously over four years. In his home, Ward 7, in 2010, Gray won 82 percent of the vote. This time, according to early returns, he could muster only 60 percent. Bowser racked up big margins west of Rock Creek Park and showed strength, if not dominance, in gentrifying areas of the city.
“Can you get two more of your friends to vote?” Bowser said. “It’s going to be tight. ”
Many who voted Tuesday said Bowser might not have been their first choice, but they decided late in the race to vote for her as the best option to defeat Gray.
But voters seemed less than eager to choose in a race that is shaping up to be closer than any mayoral election since 1990.
Abe Newman, 40, voted at Mount Bethel Baptist Church in the gentrifying Bloomingdale neighborhood, his 5-month-old daughter Sadie strapped to his chest.
At THEARC in Southeast Washington, in a part of the city considered a stronghold for Gray, only 143 voters had showed up to cast ballots by 6 p.m. — about 16 percent of the 883 who voted in the same precinct four years ago.
The professor of international relations at Georgetown University said he been disappointed with what he called Gray’s “half-baked apologies” for the corruption scandal.
A few miles away at River Terrace Elementary in Ward 7, Gray’s home ward, turnout was also looking low: 390 people had cast votes by 7:15 p.m., just 62 percent of the 628 who showed up in 2010.
D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), Newman said, hewed most closely to his own views. “But I don’t think he had a chance of beating Gray. I don’t find him to be that charismatic.”
For most of his mayoralty, Gray has been wounded by an ongoing federal investigation into his 2010 campaign. Bowser and six other relatively unknown Democratic challengers have struggled to capture voters’ attention.
Newman said Bowser impressed him with her performance in a debate broadcast by WAMU (88.5 FM), and subsequent polls and endorsements cemented his vote.
“There wasn’t anyone I was really enthusiastic about,” said Barbara White, a 77-year-old former editor, who said her vote was still in doubt before she entered a Northwest polling place.
Gray becomes the second consecutive D.C. mayor to lose his job after a single term, following in the footsteps of Fenty — the sharp-elbowed reformer who plucked Bowser from obscurity seven years ago, backing her to fill the D.C. Council seat he once held.
White ended up voting for D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (Ward 6), one of the seven candidates challenging Gray, a field that also included council members Jack Evans (Ward 2) and Vincent B. Orange (At Large), restaurateur Andy Shallal, former state department official Reta Jo Lewis and musician Carlos Allen.
The erosion of Gray’s political support began in the earliest months of his mayoralty. A former rival candidate in 2010, Sulaimon Brown, was given a patronage job in Gray’s administration, only to be fired after questions arose about his qualifications and background. Brown then revealed he had been secretly paid by the Gray campaign to levy verbal attacks against Fenty in apparent violation of campaign finance laws.
Gray led by double digits in polls early in the year, but his ability to keep voters focused on his stewardship of the city’s growing economy was shaken in early March when businessman Jeffrey E. Thompson pleaded guilty to illicit campaign funding, including on behalf of Gray’s 2010 campaign. Gray has denied any wrongdoing in his dealings with Thompson.
Gray was able to keep the allegations of wrongdoing at arm’s length until July 2012, when it became clear that Brown’s revelations had opened a window into a much larger corruption scheme.
“There’s been a lot of dirt dug up on him, but nothing’s been able to stick,” Debra Knight-Harvin, 52, said Tuesday at a polling place in the former Bertie Backus Middle School in Northeast Washington.
Federal prosecutors revealed that Gray, 71, had benefited from more than $650,000 of secret spending — again, in apparent violation of campaign finance laws — from businessman Jeffrey E. Thompson, the city’s largest contractor, whose health-care firm did more than $300 million of business with the city each year.
A bitter contest since Gray announced he would seek reelection in December, the campaign was rife with tension Tuesday morning as both the mayor and Bowser traveled to the same polling place in Bowser’s ward, where supporters from both sides shouted at each other.
For a year and a half, the allegations did not touch Gray directly, and the mayor maintained he did nothing wrong as he went about his duties, touting rising school test scores, a declining unemployment rate and a proliferation of construction cranes.
“We’re confident that the residents are frustrated with much of Mayor Gray’s office and they are going to come out to vote,” said Bowser, dressed in a blue suit and a green scarf, as she stood outside LaSalle Elementary School on Riggs Road in Northeast.
For months last year, he declined to say whether he would seek a second term — surprising many political observers and the handful of candidates who had emerged when he entered the race just after Thanksgiving, weeks before a petition deadline.
Gray, arriving about 20 minutes after Bowser had departed, slipped one of his campaign’s blue T-shirts on over his dress shirt and danced in front of supporters to the song “Happy” by Pharrell Williams.
Bowser modeled her campaign on Fenty’s 2006 playbook: getting an early start by becoming the first to formally launch her campaign and putting a premium on direct voter contact through neighborhood canvassing and intimate meet-and-greets. Her campaign pitch, like Fenty’s, was rooted more in energy and responsiveness than specific policy proposals or blockbuster projects.
“We’ve gotten people back to work,” Gray told reporters, noting that the unemployment rate had dropped by four percentage points since he took office and saying that he helped guide the opening of new Wal-Marts in the District. “We’ve brought fiscal stability back to the city.”
Her campaign team also looked familiar — sharing a campaign chairman, chief strategist and key fundraisers with Fenty’s mayoral bids. They embarked on a plan to position Bowser as the inevitable alternative to Gray, the candidate with the broadest appeal and best chance to unseat the wounded incumbent — an impression Bowser built through dominant fundraising, strong showings in closely watched straw polls and an anodyne platform palatable to a broad swath of voters.
As the candidates sought to rally supporters, their campaigns dispatched armies of volunteers and paid workers to turn out the vote.
With Gray’s defeat, the city embarks on an unprecedented nine-month period of political transition.
Bowser’s forces assembled at a parking lot near Nationals Park, where dozens of newly hired canvassers — many responding to Craigslist ads that promised $100 for the day — were loaded into more than 50 vans and dispatched to neighborhoods to knock on prospective voters’ doors.
On Thursday, a newly lame-duck Gray is set to propose a city budget that will be hammered out by a D.C. Council that almost certainly includes the future mayor in its ranks. Left unclear are the fates of major Gray initiatives such as a $150 million city investment in a professional soccer stadium and a new $300 million city-built hospital in Ward 8.
The canvassers planned to make three rounds of stops at homes already visited over the weekend by Bowser campaign workers, hoping to push them to the polls.
Also complicating the coming months: The probability of a highly pitched general-election campaign.
Gray’s campaign dispatched nearly two dozen 50-seat buses to transport voters to polls, and it also sent staffers and volunteers to apartment buildings, senior citizen centers, Metro stations and shopping centers.
Bowser’s victory in the Nov. 4 general election is probable but not assured. The highest-profile entrant so far, fellow council member David A. Catania (I-At Large), trailed Bowser by more than 30 percentage points among registered voters surveyed by The Washington Post earlier last month.
Asked late Tuesday afternoon how the results would turn out for the mayor, Chuck Thies, his campaign manager, said, “It’s a coin flip.”
Catania, who was tied in a theoretical matchup with Gray, said after that he had no plans to abandon his mayoral run should Bowser or another Democrat prevail.
Earlier, Gray stood outside St. Timothy Episcopal Church on Alabama Avenue in Southeast Washington, in a precinct where four years ago, a crush of nearly 1,500 voters sided with him by a margin of more than 4-to-1.
Statehood Green and Libertarian candidates will also appear on the November ballot, as well as other potential independents.
The sun was shining, and an SUV with his blue campaign signs sat idling across the street, blaring the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.”
There was just one problem. The sidewalk was empty. As in other campaign stops of the day, Gray and his traveling band of supporters far outnumbered voters.
Wells, meanwhile, appeared at Capitol Hill’s historic Eastern Market a little before 10 a.m. to cast his vote.
“We’ll just have to see (the results) at the end of the day,” he said. “It’s a pretty day,” so weather shouldn’t keep anyone away. If turnout is low, he said, it will be because the council kept the primary on April 1 rather than delaying it until June, as he had favored. “It’s the incumbent-protection plan,” he said of the April date.
Shortly after 10:30 a.m., at the usually busy polling place at Shepherd Park Elementary School, voting was sluggish. The school, in one of the highest-voting precincts in high-turnout Ward 4, is typically hopping on Election Day. But it wasn’t so late Tuesday morning, where only a handful of voters moseyed in and out over a half-hour period.
After the morning rush had subsided, only 295 voters had cast ballots at the precinct, which saw 1,822 Democrats vote in 2010. (Another 268 voted there early this year.)
Gray won 63 percent of the vote in this bellwether precinct in 2010, upending incumbent Adrian M. Fenty in his home ward. But many of the voters trickling out of the school’s gymnasium said they were ready to go in another direction.
Phyllis Caudle-Green, 59, said she voted for Gray over Fenty four years ago but was supporting Bowser this time.
Bowser, she said, struck her as “capable and competent” and represented a rare opportunity to put a black woman in the city’s top office. “We’re at a crossroads,” the retired investment banker said. “I just think it’s time to go in a new direction.”
Caudle-Green said she settled on Bowser only in recent weeks, after new corruption allegations were aired against Gray.
“I don’t necessarily think the mayor is guilty,” she said. “I just don’t think we need that distraction.”
But Hugo Word, an 82-year-old former patent examiner, said he was sticking with Gray, because his experience and performance as mayor outweighed the accusations against him. “He knows the system,” Word said. “He’s moving the District forward.”
Phyllis Matthews, 75, who voted at the former Backus Middle School, still favored Gray.
“I don’t care for [Bowser], period,” said the retired worker for the city’s parks and recreation department. “She has an attitude I don’t particularly care for, woman to woman. I would vote for Hillary [Rodham Clinton] without batting an eye, but I would not vote for that lady.”
The corruption allegations against Gray, Matthews said, did not outweigh his long record of service to the city: “I believe Vincent Gray told the truth, and if he didn’t, shame on me.”
Loyalties were split, however, inside one North Michigan Park household.
Sherwood Marable, 67, opted to stick with Gray, while wife, Helena Marable, 60, went with Bowser.
“I want more of the same,” said Sherwood Marable, who retired from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “I like everything Vincent Gray’s been doing.”
His wife said she was looking for a change: “We need a female in the office now, a female viewpoint,” said Helena Marable, who worked for a health insurance company. As far as the corruption allegations, she said: “My feeling is he’s guilty. He’s crooked and there was a cover-up.”
Her husband begged to differ: “To me, they are allegations until they are proven in a court of law. ”
Helena Marable said the mayoral race has been the subject of some marital discord, but she said she expected it to end Tuesday. “That’s why we’re here together,” she said. “When it’s all said and done, we’ll still love each other.”
Emma Brown, Robert Samuels, Susan K. Svrluga, Zach Cohen, Mary Pat Flaherty, Hamil R. Harris, Marc Fisher, Michael E. Ruane and T. Rees Shapiro contributed to this report.
