In Council Elections With Bowser Allies: Todd Wins; May Leads


Score one for team Bowser. You’ll have to wait on number two.

That’s what happened in the District of Columbia yesterday’s special elections held to fill vacant city council seats in Ward 4  and Ward 8, where candidates endorsed and backed by Mayor Muriel Bowser were running for both seats.

In Ward 4, it was good news for Brandon Todd, and good news for her supporter, Mayor Bowser.  Todd, who was a campaign fund raiser for Bowser and worked as her constituent-services  director won easily in a big field,  taking 42 percent of the vote with 4,310 votes to runner up Renee L. Bowser (no relation to the mayor), who had 21 percent of the vote at 1,192, followed by Leon T. Andrews  at 15 percent and Dwayne M. Toliver at 12 percent .

In Ward 8, the race was still too close to call. Approximately 1,000 special ballots are yet to be counted, which could take a week.

Another Bowser-backed candidate, LaRuby May, who worked as a field director for her mayoral campaign was leading Trayong White, a protégé of the late former Mayor Marion Barry and political legend and Ward Eight councilman,  1,711 votes to 1,559 votes, or 26.94 percent for May and 24.55 percent for White.  This was a race to fill the seat left open in the wake of the passing of Barry. Significantly, Barry’s son Marion C. Barry, trailed badly in the voting with 7.24 percent of the vote.

While the result in Ward 4 was a personal victory for Todd, who joins a council now dominated by an infusion of new faces over the past few years, the mayor was a big winner, too, giving her more influence over the council itself. Should May end up winning, Bowser would have two members on the council who either worked for her or her campaigns, a point that became an issue in both campaigns.

Sad to say, the results could have been even more significant if more people had voted.  As is often the case with special elections—with local elections in general—the turnout was tepid.

Out of a possible 111,723 registered voters, only 16,512 actually voted in the two races. That would be 14.78 percent.

This belied the brave presence of 13 candidates in each race who received votes.  Maybe it means that there lots of people have political ambitions in this city, but few people want to take the time to find out who they are, or even less, to vote for them.

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