The DC Board of Elections released their approved list of candidates two weeks back: most of the city’s Council seats are going uncontested, and even the non-Democrat at-large seat has failed to attract significant attention.

General elections in DC are typically quieter than the mid-summer primaries — DC is a Democratic stronghold, and so the tight contests in the city tend to occur inside the Dem Party line. However, DC’s Home Rule Charter - the city’s constitution - requires that “not more than two of the [four] at-large members shall be nominated by the same political party.” This creates an opening for non-Dem candidates that typically ignites into local General Election interest.

Voters can select two candidates in the at-large race on their ballot, and the top two vote-getters win the seat. The Dem seat is typically safe - a democratic incumbent has only lost their seat once in the city’s history (1997, to a Republican!) - and Dem incumbent Robert White is generally popular across broad segments of the city’s working-class. So the real question this year is whether independent incumbent Christina Henderson can survive a vote-of-confidence.

Tellingly, non-dem incumbent Christina Henderson has not drawn any serious competition — just two other candidates are running in the race. The lack of challenge this year is a stark departure from prior at-large races - in 2020, this same race attracted twenty-four candidates! Activity in 2022 was more diluted but still provided a wider range of choice at eight competitors. This year, we are reduced to four. What gives? 

There’s no one answer for this — but three simple explanations stand out: (1) Fair Elections burnout has snuffed out potential paths for would be challengers; (2) Henderson’s relative popularity; and (3) dulled mass movements across the city reducing potential for upstart competition.

Fair Elections program has limited use for upstarts

In 2018, the DC Council passed the Fair Elections Act, which established a new public financing program for candidates available to individuals running for office. The program allows candidates to receive a five to one matched funding of dollars raised from small-dollar donors across the city so long as they limit donations from individuals and avoid soliciting dollars from corporate entities and PACs altogether.

There was a lot of excitement about this when it passed, and 2020 was the first year of the program’s implementation, and this invigorated a lot of upstart politicos to jump into the race. (2020 was also a critical swing-year for the Council, as center–left populist David Grosso vacated his seat - lotta go-getters.)

We are two cycles out from this new system, and I suspect enthusiasm around this program has waned. It’s certainly a good program — it has created a new opening for political blocs in the city and participation in the program has become a de-facto litmus test among voters. But to really field a competitive operation, a campaign needs a critical mass of donors (and you need at least 250 to even qualify). A few extra dollars is no stand-in for a base of support and political infrastructure to build/harness the mass appeal needed to really exploit this program.

A progressive coalition in the city (anchored by the DSA, DC for Democracy, labor unions and other political clubs) has figured out how to use this program to build a reliable left-wing electoral infrastructure. Conservative forces, too, have figured out how to grease this — Mayor Bowser’s machine in the city has made use of this program as have a few business groups that know how to scuttle quickly behind corporate surrogates. It's less that this program is creating potential for new political bases, so much as it tipping the scales in favor of populist alliances already active in the city.

I don’t think this is the motivating factor for the lack of competition this year, but I suspect it's one of the reasons why fewer people are willing to even throw their name out there than in 2020. In any case, why have both the left and right avoided fielding a candidate?

Henderson broadly popular across the city

Again, the Democrat is all but guaranteed to win an at-large race - particularly a well-liked one like Robert White. So any general election is going to be a real race against the independent incumbent. This year, that’s Christina Henderson.

Christina Henderson’s 2020 victory was definitely an upset. Lacking endorsements from major political characters and local organizations, she campaigned on a vague platform (“pragmatic progressive”) that gestured towards the center-left of the city. She was able to eek a victory by just two percentage points: beating out populist Vincent Orange and democratic socialist Ed Lazere by about 10k votes. At the time, many attributed her victory to her ballot placement - she was first on the twenty-four person ballot. Was this victory a fluke? What were voters to expect?

The clearest signal of Henderson’s orientation occurred in the winter of 2021, when she voted to resume homeless encampment clearings in the middle of winter over the protestations of local charities, civil rights groups, and the Council’s own Office of Racial Equity. This was a particularly cruel vote that signaled to many that Henderson was perhaps less progressive than she sold herself as. Since then, Henderson generally acted as swing vote on the Council, enabling some capital-friendly policies to sneak through the Council — JUFJ maintains a great scorecard for tracking this record. The councilmember has avoided advocating for any truly transformational ambitions of the city’s working-class, such as dramatic expansion of rent control, stronger TOPA rights, pursuit of social housing or municipalization of DC's power company Pepco.

Yet, Henderson has remained cordial to the left and her record demonstrates some progressive potential. Expanding healthcare access, especially for mothers, has been something Henderson has been consistent about since joining the Council. She worked with the DSA to introduce and pass a Medicare for All resolution in 2021, voted for increasing taxes on millionaires, against weakening tenant protections, and to sustain the removal of police from schools. Palestine solidarity organizers in the city have identified Henderson as a strong ally in the call for a ceasefire resolution. In the most recent round of annual budget fights, Henderson fought against cuts to social services (with a focus on DC’s Pay Equity Fund).

Politically, Henderson has mostly kept quiet and hasn't clearly anchored to any political bloc in the city. Although she sided against the DC left in the 2022 Ward 5 race, she joined socialist Janeese Lewis-George and other lefties in endorsing progressive Ebony Rose-Thompson in this year’s Ward 7 primary (Rose-Thompson lost to Dem Party loyalist Wendell Felder by just 500 votes). 

If Henderson’s 2020 victory was a fluke, she appears to have endeared herself to a wide range of political cliques across the city. The local left sees her as someone who will move when pushed, and so not worth antagonizing. Capital and corporate interests see her as someone unlikely to challenge their deeper material interests in the city. And the Mayor’s team doesn’t identify her as much of a threat or critic worth hassling.

The two other contenders in this race are running potemkin campaigns that are unlikely to develop steam. Darryl! Moch is running on the Statehood-Green Party ticket. A reverend, community organizer, and Green Party official, Moch is going to appeal to die-hard leftists and loyal Statehood voters. But again, the Statehood-Greens are just not active or well organized enough to operate a serious challenge. Fourth challenger Kevin Rapp is a local realtor associated with one of the largest firms in the city (Compass Realty). He appears to be running as a generic liberal - supportive broadly of social and economic support for the poor and maintaining the status quo. No thanks.

Lack of city-wide mass movements dull potential for electoral campaigning

A final facet of this year’s election is the dulled mass movement politics in the city. Without a mass bloc of voters pushing towards one clear set of demands, there is limited potential to create the on-the-ground momentum needed to push an exhausting city-wide campaign.

This is a big divergence from 2020 and 2022, where cross-ward coalitions across the city were still operating and navigating political life in the city. The Reclaim Rent Control Coalition was the most established movement campaign operating at the time, as were anti-police protesters driven to force hard questions and positions on policing to candidates. These movements' effects on the at-large race were subtle in the moment but clear in retrospect: although their biggest booster (Ed Lazere) failed to jump onto the Council, they nailed Henderson to the left and forced establishment favorites into the margins.

Mass movements were diminished in 2022, but were still large enough to force out reactionary efforts in Ward-level races. In 2022, the Defund MPD Coalition was still standing as a muscular political bloc in the city, nimble and resourced enough to boost candidates that favored the Coalition’s demands while boxing out pro-police surrogates. Separately, a base of labor motivated residents organizing in support of Initiative 82 forced candidates to acknowledge and commit to respecting the outcome of this vote, even where it wasn’t successful in forcing unanimous support among contenders.

This year, there are still organized progressive forces navigating the city, but they are less ambitious and less ubiquitous. The exception is the anti-war coalition. While it is large, it is  largely disengaged from city-wide politics and lacking the sort of density or local focus necessary to capture attention of candidates vying for the Council. The power of this extant left is strong enough to keep Capital interests boxed out of the Council, but any hold in the status quo means more space for capital and corporate forces to retrench. “Pragmatic Progressives” can tinker on the edges but the churn of gentrification, displacement and poverty will continue unless this city is socialized.

Competitive, transformational elections are unlikely to return to the city without renewal of mass movement politics among the people of DC. Without these mass ambitions, catalysts for change lack the mass attention necessary to fuel insurgencies against the status quo. Unchallenged, our local democracy decays into inaction.