D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) will not seek reelection, a seismic decision in Washington politics that will bring to a close more than a decade in leadership overseeing some of the city’s most booming times and also its most turbulent crises this century.
In an interview Monday night with The Washington Post, Bowser, 53, said that “we’ve accomplished what we set out to accomplish.” After securing one of her latest wins — a deal to build a new NFL stadium — she said she determined it was time to step aside.
“I think I had to answer the question, if I’m the only one that can do it. And no, I’m not the only one that could do it,” she said.
Bowser’s decision to step aside, announced publicly Tuesday, opens up what is bound to be a highly competitive mayor’s race at a high-stakes moment for the city, with President Donald Trump in the White House and an aggressive Republican-controlled Congress eager to impose its policy vision on the liberal city.
Bowser declined to say whether she will endorse a candidate to succeed her or what she plans to do when she leaves office in January 2027. “We will have other candidates that will have ideas about how to do it, and D.C. voters will pick the right one,” she said.
Her decision comes at a challenging time for the city, as further threats loom over its limited right to self-governance, and as the Trump administration’s mass layoffs of federal employees and a still-struggling downtown real estate market have created major economic woes for D.C.
Bowser said D.C. faces a tough budget again in the spring, but that in her final year in office, she hopes to push new economic and tech incentives that she thinks could boost the economy in the wake of federal job cuts.
The D.C. business community recently launched an effort to “draft” Bowser for a fourth term, saying it was not the time for “on-the-job training,” but by then Bowser had largely made up her mind. She said she told her father before he died last year that she did not think she would run again, and recently got a ringing endorsement of that plan from her mother, who she said has been wanting her to return to a normal life as she raises a 7-year-old daughter, who has only known her mother as the mayor.
Bowser took office in 2015 during a period of soaring economic vitality, setting her eye on major development projects and housing goals, before the covid-19 pandemic interrupted her agenda, requiring her to pivot to a “comeback plan” to reverse the declining economic trajectory. Bowser led the city through other ensuing crises, including mass racial justice protests in 2020, the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and most recently Trump’s unprecedented action in August in which he declared a crime emergency to temporarily take over D.C. police and called in the National Guard. The mayor herself acknowledged Monday her image as a “crisis management mayor.”
Often referred to as “pragmatic” by foes and supporters alike, Bowser said she used to scoff at the term and still says it is unfairly applied to female leaders, while male counterparts are called “brilliant or smart.” But she said after almost 11 years as mayor, she has come to appreciate the label.
“I used to hate it when people called me pragmatic or a pragmatist, but that’s kind of the job of being mayor. Like it’s not to be an ideologue. It is to run down the middle, bring people from the fringes inside, and get things done. And I think that’s how we approach the work.”
She became known for a steady hand and measured approach under fire — the same type of restraint that has guided her strategic approach to Trump’s second term, seeking to forge a relationship with his administration while the city’s home rule has been on the line. She tore up the most visible symbol of her resistance to first-term Trump — Black Lives Matter Plaza — after Republican threats and was willing to coordinate with the Trump administration on some public safety issues in the hopes of avoiding even more intense attacks on the city’s autonomy.
But her approach has deeply divided the city, as some residents and D.C. Council members have opposed her willingness to cooperate with Trump’s federal law enforcement surge and wanted the mayor to take more forceful action to oppose his immigration crackdown.
Bowser acknowledged the difficulty of navigating between the Trump administration and the left-leaning D.C. Council but said neither was a factor in her decision not to run again. Nor was it that she was tired, she said.
“I’m not running because we we’ve accomplished what we set out to accomplish,” Bowser said. “And it’s time. People don’t run for a fourth term.”
Throughout her tenure, Bowser built a reputation as a developer-friendly mayor who sought to attract business investment while boosting affordable housing in areas from the city’s downtown core to the underserved neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River. She pointed to major projects in Ward 8 as among her accomplishments, including the opening of a new hospital and the development that has sprung up on the east end of the new Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge.
She said she anticipates that people will also remember her as a “sports mayor.” She brokered an $800 million renovation plan at Capital One Arena to keep the Washington Capitals and Wizards playing there rather than moving to Virginia — a maneuver that she said “tested every skill I ever had: charm, and negotiation. Stick-to-it-ive-ness.”
Most notably, this year she inked a $3.7 billion deal to return the Washington Commanders from Maryland to the site of the shuttered RFK Stadium and transform the riverfront parcel into a major new attraction — the largest public-private development deal in the city’s history and a legacy achievement for the mayor.
“I would have regarded it as a personal failure to leave office with 180 acres kind of rotting on the Anacostia River,” Bowser said. “So when we secured RFK, I knew we had a path to bring the team back and to have some amazing development on the Anacostia.”
Her administration made historic investments, roughly $1.5 billion, in affordable housing production. She also helmed a paradigm shift in the city’s approach to family homelessness with the closing of the decrepit D.C. General megashelter and the opening of a network of smaller family shelters across the city — a transition she said was probably “the hardest thing I’ve done in government.”
But despite big goals to address stark wealth and racial inequality — some of the most enduring challenges in the nation’s capital — major gaps remain between poorer and wealthier Washingtonians, and Black and White Washingtonians, on issues such as housing stability, employment and educational outcomes.
She also confronted major challenges with public safety, including a generational spike in homicides. Bowser — who often tussled with the D.C. Council over the problem — said she was proud that the city substantially drove down violent crime over the past two years to reverse that trajectory, believing people would regard her as a “law-and-order” mayor for that effort.
Bowser acknowledged there was work that her administration may not have completed, but said that “we laid the foundation” that the next leader could build on. “How are we going to change high school? How are we going to complete our work bringing back our affordable housing ecosystem to where it was before covid?” she said.
She also listed D.C. statehood as unfinished business — but said she believes that given the challenges of this year, the nation has understood more than ever the District’s unique vulnerabilities.
Bowser’s decision leaves a wide-open race with two potential high-profile candidates so far. Council member Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), a self-described democratic socialist, has said she is considering a mayoral bid — a move that would energize voters on the left who have grown frustrated with Bowser’s moderate approach. Her council colleague Kenyan R. McDuffie (I-At Large), who would occupy the more business-friendly political lane now vacated by Bowser, also said on WAMU 88.5’s “The Politics Hour” this month that he had given “serious thought to running for mayor.”
Bowser did not say who she wanted to see in the race, but said she will be watching.
“I’m a D.C. voter and I’m a taxpayer, and I have a kid in public schools,” she said. “It matters who the mayor is.”
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