Washington DC, June 9, 2026 --  

Washington DC's next mayor may give residents a taste of left-wing populism. Liberals are wise to be worried.

Voters in Washington DC like to think of themselves as an enlightened bunch. Political staffers, civil servants, lawyers and policy wonks decorate their front yards with cardboard signs bragging about their progressive values: “Practice radical empathy!” “End the war on Gaza!” “DC Statehood Now!” and “National Guard Go Home!” Ukrainian flags often outnumber American ones even as the 250th Independence Day approaches.

But with DC's election primaries just a week away, ugly populist ideas are getting remarkable traction from these once liberal voters. The front running candidate for mayor Janesee Lewis-George leads her more mainstream opponent Kenyan McDuffie by double digits.¹ Lewis-George, a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, has embraced populist ideas like government run grocery stores and taxpayer funded child care.²

Such positions also helped propel New York's new populist Mayor Zohran Mamdani to victory. It is unclear whether Lewis-George actually believes in these policies or just peddles them because she saw them work for Mamdani. Neither possibility is very reassuring for liberal-minded voters whose last remaining home is in the Democratic Party.

Because 76 percent of Washington DC's registered voters register themselves as Democrats³, the primary ballot is the decisive election. So it is particularly troubling when leading Democratic candidates push such loony ideas. If Janesee Lewis-George and her populist allies running for city council take over DC government, liberally-minded residents will suffer under the thumb of two big government populist regimes — the Trumpers raising tariffs, patrolling the streets with soldiers and rounding up immigrants at the federal level, and the Georgists raising taxes for government-run supermarkets and child care schemes at the local level.

And things might get worse from there. While Mayor Mamdani earned a budding bromance with Trump after his first White House meeting, it is far from certain that Lewis-George can do the same as mayor. She faces a two-pronged disadvantage in earning Trump's respect: first she is a woman and second she will be setting policies unpopular with Trumpers on the same turf where Trump and his administration minions live and work.

If Lewis-George angers or alienates Trump with her leftist rhetoric or soft-on-crime policies, and Democrats fail to take the House of Representatives in mid-term elections, Trump may push congressional Republicans to retaliate. Congress could vote to pare back or even take away the District of Colombia's self-rule, putting Washington DC under full control of Trumpers at the local level and turning it to a showcase for populist right-wing ideas about running a big city.

And it's not just residents of Washington DC that should be worried about this. The rise of populist left-wing politicians like Lewis-George and Mamdani shows that America's populist malaise is not purely a right-wing phenomenon. And while modern left-wing populists have not been associated with weakening democracy and the rule of law, there is no guarantee that this will always be true. Indeed, it has not always been so.

Back in the 1930s, Louisiana Governor then Senator Huey Long made the Democratic Party the home of the ugliest and most dangerous populism America has ever seen. Sinclair Lewis' 1935 dystopian novel It Can't Happen Here told of a fascist takeover of America by a fictitious politician based on Long who defeated FDR in the 1936 Democratic convention, and went on to impose a dictatorship.

The historical Long was assassinated in September 1935 before he could challenge FDR for the presidency, so we will never know if he would have done this. Whether of not left-wing populists will take up Long's mantle and join the Trumpers in threatening democracy remains to be seen. But the more frequently that Democrats turn to ugly populist policies pushed by Mamdani and Lewis-George, the greater this risk becomes.

1. The Hill, Democratic Socialist Leading DC Mayoral Race by Double Digits in New Poll, June 8 2026

2. The 51st, The 51st's D.C. Voter Guide, May 19, 2026

3. Aristotle, DC Voter Data, as posted June 6, 2026