“Tonight our campaign ends,” said D.C. mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George to a crowd of cheering supporters on Tuesday night, only minutes after the D.C. Board of Elections confirmed her victory. “Tomorrow our work begins.”
Lewis George, a self-identified democratic socialist who easily bested a more well-established centrist candidate in June’s Democratic primary, has made political waves in D.C. this year and in the process brought to an end the 12 years of Mayor Muriel Bowser’s business-friendly rule over the city.
But she will also enter the mayor’s office facing significant challenges, from D.C.’s slumping economy and a looming fiscal cliff to relations with a mercurial president who has found that the most control he can easily wield is over the nation’s capital.
Lewis George launched her formal transition on Wednesday morning, a two-month sprint where her team will have to staff an administration and prepare for the Jan. 2 takeover. Here’s what she’s facing — both good and bad — as she ends her campaign and begins her work.
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The List Of Challenges Is Long
If Tuesday night was for celebrating, Wednesday morning could well be for considering the “scaries.”
That’s how one council member told me they’re referring to the significant and scary budget realities Lewis George will assume immediately upon taking office. She’ll be tossed directly into the formulation of the city’s budget for 2028, and the numbers are already looking rough: Lewis George could face a budget deficit of anywhere from $650 to $850 million that she’ll have to close somehow, whether by raising additional revenue or cutting spending. And that’s just to sustain current levels of spending, not implement any of her own ambitious plans.
Some of those very plans, in fact, are wrapped up in that budget hole. Take the Pay Equity Fund, the $62.7 million annual pot of money that’s used to increase salaries for child care workers. Lewis George has championed it, but it’s currently budgeted to have no money after the current fiscal year. That means that Lewis George — who campaigned on making child care more affordable for all residents — will have to find money somewhere for it.
The same goes for maintaining the city’s existing child care subsidy program, which she has said she wants to expand so that it eventually covers all families regardless of income. The subsidy program faces a $50 million hit next year, and that doesn’t even include what it would cost to start expanding it.
The difficult spending decisions will also cut directly at the coalition that led her to victory. Dozens of labor unions representing some 10,000 D.C. government workers are agitating for a new contract that guarantees them cost-of-living increases that they’ve largely foregone for the last year — and could go without for the next four. While teachers, police officers and firefighters have all recently gotten new contracts and raises, there’s currently no money in the budget to extend the same to the other unions.
And that’s just the beginning. Lewis George will have to find ways to kickstart D.C.’s slumping economy after federal layoffs and related cuts that have cost the city more 36,000 jobs, while weighing that against her promises to raise taxes on wealthy residents and close loopholes that benefit law firms and lobbying shops.
Still, the size of those challenges doesn’t dissuade her supporters from thinking she can still be a successful executive.
“We know politicians aren’t magicians,” said Kurtis Hagans, chair of the Metro D.C. Democratic Socialists of America, in an interview with The Washington Sun. “We know JLG will be limited by a budget and an anti-Janeese president, but she still has control over the office in terms of how she gets the message out to Washingtonians.”
The Opportunities Could Come in Starting Small
Lewis George herself isn’t blind to the challenges she faces, and on Tuesday night she said that being a democratic socialist mayor of D.C. won’t just be about the big swings — but also the smaller ones that residents might notice more quickly.
“We will pick up the trash, plow the snow, eliminate the rats, and make it easier to open a small business and easier to keep it open,” she said. (To that end, last month she pledged to create a new position of D.C. rat czar.)
That focus on the nuts-and-bolts of running D.C. has unified seemingly disparate factions of the city’s politics.
“Nobody elected you to be Secretary of State. They elected you to take care of potholes. That’s true for the mayor and true for the council. We’re not here to solve all the world’s problems,” said former mayor Anthony Williams in an interview with Capital Commonsense this week.
Lewis George has also said that she wants to dig into current spending by city agencies, both to root out waste and find ways to control spending.
A Democratic Congress Makes Life Much Easier For JLG
Lewis George may be facing local challenges to her ambitious platform, but with Tuesday’s midterm elections now settled, at least Capitol Hill won’t be one.
Over the last two years the Republican-led House Oversight Committee has been a thorn in D.C.’s side, introducing, debating and passing multiple bills that touched on everything from the city’s criminal justice policies to whether traffic cameras should be permitted. Most stalled in the Senate, but the message from the Hill was clear: We’re watching, and we have power over you.
With Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California) set to take over the committee, the congressional interference isn’t only expected to stop, but it could well be reversed. “We will remove every budget rider on DC next year and pass DC statehood in 2029,” wrote shadow Senator Ankit Jain on X.
Statehood still faces challenges in the Senate, but Jain’s invocation of budget riders is significant. Those are Republican-sponsored provisions that are dropped into the federal budget targeting specific D.C. policies and practices. The city has been banned from legalizing recreational marijuana for more than a decade, for example, and isn’t allowed to spend any of its local funds on subsidizing abortions for low-income women. It’s likely that Democrats could remove those two riders.
Coupled with that, Lewis George will benefit from her close relationship with Robert White, D.C.’s incoming delegate, and she’s pledged to walk the halls of Congress more than Bowser did.
But Trump Remains Unpredictable
If navigating Congress will be easier for Lewis George, the already challenging relationship she has with President Donald Trump could get even more complicated — and in unexpected ways.
The two are already starting from a point of friction. Trump has derided Lewis George as a “communist” and mused about taking over D.C. should she cross unstated lines. For her part, Lewis George has pledged that on the first day of her term she will end cooperation between the Metropolitan Police Department and immigration agents that Trump has deployed across the city.
Trump, of course, still retains plenty of power over D.C. In August 2025 he proved as much when he federalized MPD for a month and deployed the National Guard. He’s also gone on a renovation streak across D.C., fixing up parks and fountains (which many locals have appreciated) and obsessing over the Reflecting Pool and building a new golf course at East Potomac Park (which plenty of residents don’t love).
In fact, Trump’s interest in fixing up D.C. seems to have increased as he lost control over some national and international events; with Congress now going to the Democrats, doing more renovating may be the last thing he can do somewhat unimpeded.
On Tuesday, though, Lewis George again said that she’s not solely looking for conflict with Trump. “I’m willing to meet with the president. I’m looking forward to talking about how we can work together to benefit D.C. residents,” she said after casting her ballot. (New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did the same, much to his benefit.)
“To me, it’s just about being strategic and working with your partners, and finding the things we do agree on, and double down on those things,” she said.
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