All of a sudden, DC has two high-stakes contests for seats that haven’t been competitive in years: mayor and congressional delegate.
If you haven’t been following closely, you might be forgiven for forgetting who is running in which race— the likely front runners in both races are all sitting DC council members. Robert White and Brooke Pinto have announced their campaigns to challenge Eleanor Holmes Norton, while Kenyan McDuffie and Janeese Lewis George are poised to run for mayor.
Now that mayor Muriel Bowser has announced that she won’t run for a fourth term, though, observers have speculated whether White or perhaps Pinto might decide that a relatively open mayor’s race suits them better. Challenging Bowser would have been one thing, the thinking goes, but an incumbent-free contest for the powerful executive position might be more tempting.
Campaign representatives for both candidates say they’re not making any last-minute shifts, though.
A representative for White told Washingtonian today that the at-large council member was “definitely not” considering switching back into the mayor’s race.
White, who has been critical of mayor Muriel Bowser’s often-conciliatory stance toward the Trump administration, nearly ran for mayor in the first place instead of joining the race against delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton. White had already challenged Bowser in 2022, and told Washingtonian in an interview earlier this year that he had been planning to mount a similar challenge until August, when he decided to make a “sudden pivot.”
But now, White is “definitely all in,” says Roger Limoges, his spokesperson, “because he still maintains that [the congressional delegate] is the most important office that we have right now.”
Council member Pinto told Washingtonian something similar.
“I am fully committed to serving the city that I love and know that the best way for me to do so is in congress standing up to the Trump administration— to fight for our right to govern ourselves, for our families, for our safety, and for our entire community,” Pinto said in a statement. “An effective representative on the Hill is crucial to meeting this moment when the stakes are so high— and I know that is how I can best serve the District.”
In their campaigns, both Pinto and White have stressed the urgency of the delegate’s role in protecting DC from attacks by the Trump administration, and have encouraged the beleaguered Holmes Norton to withdraw.
McDuffie and Lewis George, meanwhile, are likely running in what’s now an open mayor’s race, though neither has formally launched a campaign. McDuffie will run closer to Bowser’s moderate, pro-business tendencies, while Lewis George is reportedly planning something of a Zohran Mamdani-style challenge from the left. For now, they appear to be the most high-profile mayoral hopefuls— though with Bowser out of the picture, anything could happen.
Ike Allen covers politics, food, culture, and transportation in DC and writes the monthly Hidden Eats column for the magazine. He grew up in DC.
