Bowser wins Democratic primary for mayor in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON — (AP) — Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser gained the Democratic major on Tuesday, overcoming a progressive rival and just about guaranteeing that she is going to win a 3rd consecutive time period to steer a metropolis confronting inequality, crime and public security issues.

Bowser defeated At-large Councilmember Robert White, who harshly criticized her response to spiraling violent crime charges, and Councilmember Trayon White, who represents Ward 8, the poorest and most crime-ridden space within the district.

The winner of the Democratic major is the prohibitive favourite within the November common election within the closely Democratic metropolis. That might make Bowser the second mayor to win three consecutive phrases, tying with Marion Barry, who presided over the town repeatedly from 1979 to 1991.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows under.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser confronted a formidable combat for a 3rd time period, challenged in Tuesday’s Democratic major by two council members in a race dominated by crime and public questions of safety.

Throughout Bowser’s tumultuous second time period, she clashed with former President Donald Trump and walked a public tightrope between her personal police division and a vocal coalition of activists led by Black Lives Matter.

Her challengers embrace At-large Councilmember Robert White, who harshly criticized Bowser’s response to spiraling violent crime charges, and Councilmember Trayon White, who represents Ward 8, the poorest and most crime-ridden space within the district.

The winner of the Democratic major is the prohibitive favourite within the November common election within the closely Democratic metropolis.

Crime and public security have dominated the mayoral marketing campaign. Homicides have risen for 4 years straight, and the 2021 homicide depend of 227 was the best mark since 2003. In January, a candidate for the D.C. Council, Nate Fleming, was carjacked at gunpoint.

On Sunday evening, gunfire erupted at a avenue live performance 2 miles from the White Home, killing a 15-year-old boy and wounding three others, together with a police officer.

The Washington, D.C., marketing campaign broadly displays a wider dynamic enjoying out in longtime blue stronghold cities, with progressives going through off in opposition to Democratic traditionalists over crime.

Bowser, 49, campaigned on her expertise and management and her historical past as one of many faces of Washington’s ongoing quest for statehood. She additionally obtained good marks for her dealing with of the pandemic, typically working in coordination with the D.C. Council.

In the summertime of 2020, following mass protests over the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Bowser publicly feuded with Trump after racial justice protesters had been forcibly cleared from an space close to the White Home. Bowser responded by renaming the protest epicenter Black Lives Matter Plaza and commissioning a mural with “Black Lives Matter” painted on a stretch of sixteenth Road, one block from the White Home, in large yellow letters.

Beneath strain from activists calling to defund the police, Bowser largely stood by her police division, combating public battles with the D.C. Council over the police funds. She quietly changed an older white police chief with a youthful Black successor and has pushed for funding to construct Metropolitan Police Division staffing, presently at 3,500, as much as 4,000 officers over the subsequent decade.

In April, the D.C. Council’s judiciary committee minimize $6 million from Bowser’s $30 million funds proposal to rent extra officers, concentrating on incentives Bowser claimed had been important to draw good candidates. The committee, on which neither of her challengers serves, did approve a $20,000 hiring bonus to assist recruit extra cops, one thing Bowser introduced a couple of days earlier than the first.

“I’ve by no means been to a neighborhood the place they stated they didn’t need the police. By no means,” Bowser stated in a radio debate final month. “We want the police that we want.”

Robert White, 40, has a historical past of profitable rebel campaigns, having unseated an entrenched incumbent for an at-large Council seat in 2016. He proposed tackling crime by a large private and non-private youth jobs program that Bowser derided as unsustainable.

Trayon White, 38, overtly invokes the spirit of Marion Barry, the late mayor and council member who stays a controversial however beloved determine amongst many Washingtonians. A former grassroots neighborhood activist, White was a protégé of Barry’s. He has has opposed Bowser’s bids to rent extra cops and favors neighborhood violence intervention packages, one thing he says Bowser was sluggish to embrace.

In 2018, Trayon White was accused of antisemitism after saying a distinguished Jewish household was controlling the climate in Washington.

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