Dc Mayoral Candidates Contend With Trump’s Shadow

President Donald Trump’s shadow looms large over the upcoming Washington, D.C., mayoral election, as the two leading contenders insist that their relationship with the White House will be less chummy than that of the city’s outgoing mayor.

As they canvas Washington ahead of a June primary, Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie, the two frontrunners to replace Mayor Muriel Bowser in City Hall, are both contending with the spectre of the district’s most famous — and powerful — resident.

Both of them argue the president merits a more heavy-handed approach than the light touch taken by Bowser.

“We haven’t won anything but a false sense of freedom that’s not based on a reality that we are experiencing as everyday residents,” Lewis George, the more progressive of the two, said in an interview. “We are living in a military state here in D.C., and we are militarily occupied. And we have federal agents who are enforcing laws in our streets.”

Trump is everywhere in this election. At a mayoral forum last month at the city’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, candidates fielded questions about federal control for nearly half an hour.

Both Lewis George, a city councilmember, and McDuffie, who served on the council for more than 13 years before departing in January, say they’ll end any cooperation between the city’s Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and look to build allies in Congress to rebuff the president.

“Our city needs a fighter for mayor who can hit the ground running on day one, to be able to fight against Trump and a hostile Congress and protect our home rule and protect our most vulnerable residents,” McDuffie, who has the backing of much of the city’s business community, told POLITICO.

But angering the president along with his GOP allies in Congress could rip funding away from the city, some District operatives worry, or imperil the 1973 Home Rule Act that gives the city limited self-governance, empowering locally elected representatives — and not federally appointed commissioners or lawmakers — to run the city.

Bowser’s office declined to comment. But Beverly Perry, a longtime adviser to the mayor who left City Hall last year, said the candidates are underestimating how much power the president holds over the nation’s capital.

“Whoever becomes mayor, President Trump will be there for another two years,” she said. “And they can't fight him. If you fight him, the city loses. And they will learn that early on.”

Trump has left his mark on D.C. like no other modern president. In August, he announced plans to federalize the city’s police department and sent in the National Guard to crack down on “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum,” even though crime in the District had hit a 30-year low. The Guard remains in D.C. even after police returned to local control, rankling residents.

The White House has also taken a cudgel to the federal workforce, slashing thousands of jobs through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative last year. Now, the president is planning a series of physical changes to the nation’s capital, from a massive new ballroom at the White House to a 250-foot “Independence Arch” by Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery.

“The stakes today are as high as they've ever been, in terms of D.C. residents needing to elect a mayor with the experience, the track record of fighting back against Trump,” McDuffie said.

Bowser has taken heat in the city for praising elements of the administration’s crime crackdown, and for painting over Black Lives Matter Plaza just across the street from the White House.

Critics point to an August 2025 press conference in which Bowser appeared to praise parts of the president’s federal surge. Bowser also reportedly pushed D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb to refrain from suing to end the National Guard’s presence in the District, worried about deepening tensions with the president.

But, as her defenders point out, Bowser has a working relationship with the administration that they argue prevented even greater blowback on the city. And the president lavished praise on Bowser in a September Truth Social post, celebrating her “hard work, courage, and being SMART.”

Lewis George argues that this is the wrong approach that demoralizes city residents.

“What I’m not going to do is talk about the harmful things as if they’re beneficial. And I think that’s different,” she said. “I’m not going to communicate that our community is so happy and so grateful. When our community hears the mayor say those things, it feels like they are alone in the fear that they are experiencing.”

Perry, the one-time aide to Bowser, called McDuffie and Lewis George’s inclination to fight Trump “surprising.”

“If they have the [strings to the purse], what are you supposed to do?” she said.