District residents voting in Tuesday’s primary election are staring down a ballot that will fundamentally rewrite the city’s power structure.
With Mayor Muriel E. Bowser stepping aside after a dozen years and congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton retiring after more than three decades, Washington is losing a massive reservoir of institutional memory all at once. The June primary — which serves as the city’s de facto general election given its overwhelming share of Democratic voters — has morphed into an increasingly bitter and high-stakes battle over the city’s identity amid ongoing threats to its local autonomy.
The ideological tug-of-war has consolidated around two mayoral front-runners: progressive Ward 4 Council member Janeese Lewis George and moderate former At-Large Council member Kenyan R. McDuffie. A Washington Post-Schar School poll released this month showed Lewis George holding an 11-point lead over McDuffie, 36% to 25%, among likely primary voters.