A diverse crowd of nearly 300 people squeezed into the auditorium at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library on Monday evening; it was a standing-room-only setting at the latest DC mayoral forum, one sponsored by The 51st, The Washington Informer and SpotlightDC.
Six Democratic candidates participated in this week’s forum: Gary Goodweather, Rini Sampath, Hope Solomon, former at-large DC Councilmembers Vincent Orange and Kenyan McDuffie, and current Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George.
Earlier this year, nine contenders submitted nominating petitions in the June 16 Democratic primary contest that caught fire after Mayor Muriel Bowser announced her forthcoming retirement. It appears Ernest Johnson remains a candidate, but he did not participate in the forum. Kathy Henderson and Stanley Lawson have thus far been denied ballot access by the DC Board of Elections.
Neither Goodweather, Sampath nor Solomon has held public office in DC — not even as advisory neighborhood commissioners. The local media and some political operatives have helped fertilize the theory that a person is not qualified for elected office unless that person has previously been elected or is currently serving in a political position or was a staffer for someone who met the two former criteria.
That mythmaking created the presumption, even before the pool of candidates gelled, that McDuffie and Lewis George were the top candidates. However, many voters I interviewed over the past several weeks are still undecided.
“I’m not feeling any of them right now,” said Sandra Seegars, a Ward 8 civic leader, who was troubled by McDuffie’s multiple switches of his political party membership. She asserted that Lewis George would be “learning on the job.”
Seegars said she considered voting for Orange before learning details about the composition of his campaign organization. “I’m thinking about writing in Anthony Muhammad,” she added.
“I’m probably more interested in Hungary and Budapest than in DC. I am happy with the results there,” said E. Ethelbert Miller, a Ward 4 resident.
