Janeese Lewis George, D.C.’s Democratic nominee for mayor, is set to return to the public stage this week, providing Washingtonians with their first sustained view of the democratic socialist since she won the primary that all but assures she will succeed Mayor Muriel E. Bowser in January.
Beginning in Southeast, which includes the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods, Lewis George will preside over community meetings in each of D.C.’s eight wards through the next month, appearances that her campaign touts as an opportunity to “let Janeese know what’s working, what isn’t, and how government can better serve you and your community.”
Lewis George faces nominal opposition in November, so her campaign has shifted gears from the nuts and bolts of door knocking to setting the groundwork for her likely mayoral administration. She has been meeting privately with a wide mix of groups, including business leaders, educators and the police union, as well as conferring with mayors in other cities, such as Zohran Mamdani of New York, who is also a democratic socialist.
Lewis George’s commanding victory over former D.C. Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie in the primary — she won seven of the city’s eight wards and came within 400 votes of a sweep — was propelled by bold promises, including providing universal affordable child care, ending local police coordination with federal immigration enforcement, lowering utility bills and constructing 72,000 units of new housing in the next five years. Her team is considering creating a new role to oversee all aspects of housing in the District, a chancellor or czar of sorts.
Now she faces the matter of how to fulfill those pledges at a moment when the city’s economy is still struggling to recover from the pandemic and federal job cuts. At the same time, President Donald Trump has positioned himself as an adversary, branding the city’s presumptive next mayor as a “communist” and threatening to interfere further in local governance.
Lewis George, in an interview, said she’s excited about the challenges that lie ahead, and humbled, too.
“It’s a large task, when I hear people say, ‘I am putting my hope in you. You winning has changed how I feel,’” Lewis George said. “And I’m hoping that’s going to be a good thing.”
Lewis George, a native Washingtonian, announced her candidacy for mayor in December, a week after Bowser said she wouldn’t run for a fourth term. “It’s time we had leaders who fight for the people,” Lewis George said in her first campaign video.
A former prosecutor who lives with her husband and toddler in Manor Park, Lewis George has served on the council since 2021. While she has proposed broad bills like a “Green New Deal for Housing,” her legislative victories have tended to be more granular.
Council member Brianne K. Nadeau (D-Ward 1), a supporter, said that Lewis George’s role as chair of the facilities committee would be especially helpful as mayor because it gave her experience with the ins and outs of basic city services. “She’s focused on highly functioning, safe schools, parks, trash collection, rats — the things that people experience on a day-to-day basis,” Nadeau said.
Mary M. Cheh, the former Ward 3 Council member who endorsed McDuffie in the primary, said that she’s optimistic about a Lewis George administration and that she appreciates, in particular, the likely mayor’s emphasis on affordable child care. “I think she has enough ability to step it up a little bit,” she said. “I’m going to be enthusiastic until proven wrong. … I hope she’s listening to a range of voices and not just socialist voices.”
After spending months making the case for her candidacy across the city, Lewis George is focused on just that — talking and convening with people who may have ideas for how to solve problems in the District.
For example, she recently met with a group of current and former D.C. public school principals. When she asked about chronic absenteeism, they responded with policies that worked at their schools.
“They literally have the solutions,” she said.
Members of business improvement districts shared how they could do trial runs of programs, such as pedestrian streets, before the city implements them on a larger scale.
Lewis George has also been meeting with groups that didn’t back her in the primary: the D.C. Police Union and business associations.
The police union’s president, Gregg Pemberton, did not respond to requests for comment. The organization consistently lambasted Lewis George on social media during the primary, including over her previous support of defunding the police, which she has since walked back.
And for someone who came into office on a tenants’ rights platform, she has been seeking out housing providers.
“I think they came into the meeting, some of them, skeptical, unsure, like, ‘Is she serious about this?’” Lewis George said. “And I think I have been conveying the thoughtfulness and seriousness and getting into the weeds with people.”
Malcom Fox, the executive director of Opportunity DC, which raised nearly $1 million through an independent expenditure committee for McDuffie, believes Lewis George’s housing goal is ambitious but wants to help make it happen. If she succeeds in adding 72,000 homes, “even her strongest detractors will have to admit she’s been an effective mayor,” Fox said.
Still, he thinks she will have to make some tough choices to get to that number. “If you talk to capital right now, they largely don’t want anything to do with D.C. from a housing standpoint,” due in part to the difficulty in collecting rent and having a timely eviction process, he said, adding that making business-friendly changes could upset her base.
Lewis George has also been chatting with her probably soon-to-be peers: mayors of other cities, such as Brandon Scott of Baltimore and Michelle Wu of Boston, their offices confirmed, as well as Mamdani.
With Wu, Lewis George said, they focused on how to leverage the city’s universities and hospitals. She and Scott discussed public safety and housing.
Lewis George and Mamdani have had direct conversations, and their teams have been in touch since the primary, said someone close to Mamdani, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
The main thread has been how to build an effective transition office, they said.
Lewis George’s campaign said she has spoken with Bowser since the primary, though they haven’t yet had a formal discussion about the transition. Bowser’s office declined to comment.
As of now, there’s no summit on the books with Trump, who has threatened to federalize D.C. if she wins, while also granting that he’s “sure she’s very nice.” However, both have signaled their willingness to meet one another.
Meanwhile, Lewis George and her team are also thinking through how to best use the final months of her Council term.
On the campaign trail, she promised to create a downtown development corporation to help bring more mixed-use housing to an area struggling with empty office space. They’ll try to get legislation to create it started this fall, said Tommy Wells, the chairman of her campaign, a former Council member and former head of the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment who ran for mayor himself in 2013.
One of the looming questions is whom Lewis George would hire to fill her administration, especially key roles such as police chief and schools chancellor.
Lewis George declined to share names but pledged to have a transparent process and search both locally and nationally to fill roles. “I keep telling people I don’t have a short list of candidates,” she said. “I haven’t picked anyone. No one’s a shoo-in.”
An engagement form released by her campaign soliciting people who want to work in government or otherwise provide expertise garnered more than 600 responses in its first week.
Former D.C. attorney general Karl A. Racine, a supporter whom she worked with as a junior prosecutor, says Lewis George is seeking out people with previous executive experience. Cheh wants to see Lewis George’s team audit all city agencies to determine which need help.
Wells underscored that the structure of the executive office might look different than it does now. “We want to make sure that everyone in government is aligned with the new mayor’s goals,” he said.
In addition to a potential “housing czar,” Lewis George’s team is also mulling changes to the DOEE to emphasize affordability, Wells said, such as creating a separate department that focuses on the cost of utilities and other bills.
Lewis George emphasizes her excitement about this moment, about the potential to turn around a city that a majority of residents believe is on the wrong track.
But there are also harsh realities to contend with: the massive cuts to the federal workforce, a contracting local economy, an annual budget that Bowser warns sets up a “fiscal cliff” and a president who has consistently threatened D.C.’s autonomy. In a move that could draw Trump’s attention, Lewis George said in an interview with NBC4 that she would sign executive orders to end D.C. police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and some work with the administration’s Safe and Beautiful Task Force.
The Washington Post recently reported that federal prosecutors have, in an unusual move, convened a special grand jury to focus on D.C. youth, including the city’s public school system. Lewis George declined Friday to comment on the step.
As the District faces daunting economic challenges, Lewis George wants to encourage more people to live, stay and work in D.C., thereby growing revenue. Wells said Lewis George’s economic strategy for workforce growth is to put money toward programs such as affordable universal child care. Lewis George has floated paying for her child care program by reducing waste in the city budget, using a mix of local and federal dollars or, potentially, by implementing a business activity tax.
While Fox supports the idea of making child care in D.C. more affordable, he said he doesn’t think it “in and of itself is an agenda that will attract and retain D.C.’s tax base,” especially if it involves a business activity tax, which “could spook capital.”
Lewis George said that her meetings and interactions with voters have taught her that people are holding onto a sense of optimism.
“People have been feeling like, ‘Well, we can only go up from here,’” she said. “The Trump situation, the everything — people want something to believe in. They want something to hope for.”
Her intention is to meet that desire. “We want to show people what D.C. government can do if we put people first,” Lewis George said.
And even as Lewis George is working through how to use the levers of government to make good on her campaign platform, she’s also fielding some surprising requests from D.C. residents.
Residents have told her they’re expecting the city’s sports teams to bring home national titles during her tenure. “Apparently the Wizards need to win an NBA championship, the Spirit needs to win,” she said. (While she has no control over the Washington Wizards, she said that the league’s No. 1 pick, Wizards rookie AJ Dybantsa, reached out via his manager to have a conversation.)
People have written to her to request the city use better graphics and fonts. And someone asked her to bring back the signs D.C. agencies used to put up around the city to entreat people to clean up their dog’s waste.
While Lewis George’s campaign centers on big promises, she and her team say that finding and fixing the relatively uncontroversial quality-of-life items — such as creating a one-stop shop for permits, repairing potholes and perfecting trash pickup — is also a huge early priority.
“Doing the low-hanging fruit is how you build the trust that’s necessary for people to trust your vision and work with you toward achieving that vision,” Lewis George said.
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