Build the Movement. Elect Bold Leaders. Repeat.

It was after just after 1 AM on June 3rd when the last voters cast their ballots in Ward Four of the District of Columbia. People had waited in line for hours to vote in the Democratic primary,  despite a raging pandemic and a curfew imposed by Mayor Muriel Bowser in response to historic protests in defense of Black lives. Turnout was higher than at any time in decades.

Voters delivered a stunning victory for Janeese Lewis George, a third-generation Washingtonian, Black woman, and longtime progressive with strong ties to the community and leadership experience inside and outside of government. Lewis George triumphed over incumbent Councilmember Brandon Todd, a close ally of the mayor, who raised more money than any other candidate and outspent her by nearly 40 percent, but whose leadership frustrated voters and whose voting record consistently rankled progressives. Still, Lewis George’s victory was by no means guaranteed — in fact, efforts to unseat Todd had fallen short just four years before — making the lessons organizers can learn from her campaign that much more valuable.

It’s easy to overlook results of local elections, especially in a place like DC that is both solidly blue and routinely ignored by national media, which paints the District as a backdrop for national politics rather than a place where 700,000 people live and work. This is a mistake. DC has a thriving local political scene where diverse leaders and organizers are working together for progressive change. 

In recent years, organizers have fought pitched battles to win major investments in affordable housing, create a historic paid family and medical leave program, decriminalize marijuana, pass innovative criminal justice reform, raise the minimum wage to $15, strengthen rent control, and defund the police in one of the most heavily policed cities in the country. None of these victories were guaranteed. Instead, they have come as a result of sustained organizing that often seized on the political openings created by elections.

The Ward 4 Council race offers valuable lessons for organizers across the country about how progressive activists and candidates can work together to build viable, game-changing campaigns that expand the limits of the possible. 

The Results

In the end, a race that looked like an uphill battle proved to be a blowout. Janeese Lewis George beat Brandon Todd by over 2,000 votes. Turnout was nearly 25 percent higher than it was in the 2016 primary, despite the pandemic and curfew. Without these factors, the margin of victory might have been even higher.

Engaging new and infrequent voters was key to Lewis George’s success. Nearly a quarter of those who turned out for the June primary did not vote in the 2016 primary in Ward 4. Furthermore, based on a preliminary review of the voter file, close to a fifth of Ward 4 primary voters in 2020 had updated their voter registration since 2016, suggesting that they had moved within or to the ward in recent years. The campaign made a point of targeting voters who moved to the ward and registered, usually on their own, because these voters were engaged and less likely to be connected to the incumbent. By targeting infrequent voters and engaging voters who are sometimes overlooked by other campaigns, the campaign turned out the number of people they needed to win.

Organizing Support

Early grassroots support provided the campaign with important momentum and created space for more risk-averse organizations, including organized labor, to back a challenger against the Mayor’s core ally on the Council. The energy inside and outside the campaign proved the point again: organized people can beat organized money. 

Grassroots groups like Black Lives Matter DC, DC for Democracy, Jews United for Justice Campaign Fund, Metro DC Democratic Socialists, Sanctuary DMV, the Working Families Party, the Sierra Club, and many others endorsed Lewis George and worked with the campaign to mobilize volunteers in support for her bid. In addition to these groups, sitting elected officials, such as Attorney General Karl Racine and Councilmember Elissa Silverman, and other grass top leaders helped buttress an already impressive coalition. 

Working together with the campaign, these parties helped generate enthusiasm that defined the Ward 4 Four race as the campaign of the 2020 primary cycle. Several of the endorsing organizations delivered early endorsements, six months or more before the primary. Groups such as DC for Democracy, Jews United for Justice Campaign Fund, Metro DSA, and the Working Families Party all moved up their endorsement timelines to give candidates like Lewis George enough time to build a real grassroots campaign backed by small dollar donors. These early endorsements, and the ones that followed, sent a strong signal of how serious these organizations were about the race and allowed them to play a far more active role in the campaign than they otherwise would have. 

This was significant for several reasons. Since grassroots organizations’ most important resource is people, the longer those people have to work, the more value the endorsement brings. This is especially true because, over time, volunteers increase their understanding, sophistication, and specialization in the campaign. What’s more, skilled volunteers generate new volunteers who generate even more volunteers. There is an exponential growth in people power. When several organizations announced early endorsement timetables, it forced other potential candidates to decide whether they wanted to run — ultimately resulting in what was effectively a head-to-head matchup between Lewis George and Todd.

Grassroots-backed candidates need more time for their relational and community organizing techniques to bear fruit, but, once they do, they are very difficult to beat. The amount of time and level of support each group ended up committing to the campaign was not automatic or guaranteed. Just as community organizers have to work to turnout their base, the campaign worked to mobilize their endorsers, translating their support into real people power. Campaign staff did not sit around waiting for grassroots groups to mobilize their supporters, but instead actively built relationships with their leadership and base. They saw endorsements as important opportunities to do internal organizing at new organizations and build relationships that would last beyond the election.

The campaign was also an opportunity for the endorsing groups to expand their membership by drawing supporters into a high-stakes campaign with clear and immediate asks. Put another way, there was always something for volunteers to do, and the more people did, the more they were asked to do. 

The campaign took a community organizing approach, taking the time to do one-on-ones and build relationships with community leaders and residents who felt ignored by the incumbent, as well as activists who could mobilize others to join their effort. They also employed innovative tactics, especially during COVID, including hosting virtual town halls and night schools that kept people engaged. 

This was not a transactional campaign. While this may seem like standard practice to experienced community organizers, it is unfortunately less common for an electoral campaign because of the added pressure resulting from the impending deadline of Election Day. 

Together, the campaign and progressive organizations reached a record number of voters. The campaign’s success at voter outreach — combined with its impressive small donor fundraisings — helped persuade other organizations, including labor, that Lewis George was running a viable campaign. As the endorsements mounted, they also became important validators for voters, especially those who did not follow the race closely.

COVID-19

While no one could have predicted a global pandemic when Lewis George launched her candidacy, the campaign’s early base-building efforts and nimble ability to pivot when the virus hit were critical factors in her victory. These efforts helped build a community of activists who sustained the campaign’s energy when door knocking and in-person events had to stop.

When the coronavirus reached DC, the campaign quickly pivoted and, in true movement fashion, focused on serving the community. This was not only the right thing to do; it was also an astute decision. The campaign remained in contact with voters who were struggling to navigate the pandemic, establishing Lewis George as a leader who was taking responsibility for meeting the needs of her constituents. For weeks, every phone call from the campaign to prospective voters began by asking if the person was okay and if they needed support. Significant organizing resources went into connecting voters with support, often via the mutual aid group serving the community. The campaign also helped the mutual aid organization by highlighting its work and helping prospective volunteers learn how to join. 

In addition to its mutual aid work, the campaign organized virtual town halls to meet and organize with more voters. These quickly took the place of a traditional house party, and, in some ways, were more engaging and helpful to the campaign. House parties typically involve a supporter building a small event for the candidate by inviting friends and neighbors to meet them. These can be hit or miss because it's difficult to know where all of the guests stand on an issue or in relation to the candidate. The campaign quickly discovered that town halls, when built around issues, brought in active and engaged participants and made it easier to speak to a specific audience and their passions. While certainly not a replacement for traditional house parties, the virtual town halls became an incredibly valuable tool for organizing supporters. Each forum included several allies who worked on a specific issue. The allies brought expertise but also increased the visibility of the event by sharing it with their audiences. 

An inspiring campaign video and digital ads also helped them reach voters whom the campaign couldn’t get to through other efforts. The campaign video was viewed over 60,000 times, a remarkable number considering that it was three times the number of people who voted in the election. The video was primarily targeted to eligible voters via social media so a significant share of all views were in Ward 4, meaning some residents watched many times. 

DC’s First Fair Elections Councilmember

A powerful tool the campaign had at its disposal was DC’s new public financing program, commonly known as Fair Elections. The new voluntary program provides a five-to-one match for qualified small dollar contributions, as well as a start-up grant to help candidates get their campaigns off the ground. Participating candidates must also agree to forgo corporate PAC contributions.

Public financing helped Lewis George to compete on a more level playing field and proved to be a useful tool for building her base of support among donors, volunteers, and voters. Under Fair Elections, the maximum contribution allowed for a ward level council seat is $50, but it is matched 5-1, resulting in an effective contribution of $300 ($50 from the original contribution, and $250 from matching funds). Without public financing, the maximum contribution for a ward level seat is $500. While not exactly equal, it proved a lot easier to ask for $50 than $500. 

The multiplier effect of the matching funds also motivated supporters by allowing them to maximize their impact and “max out” with just a $50 contribution. Todd’s decision to opt out of the Fair Elections program and take corporate PAC dollars became an important campaign talking point, feeding Lewis George’s narrative that she was “unbought and unbossed.”

By the end of the primary, Lewis George raised $349,556: $68,501 in small dollar contributions that were matched with $281,055 thanks to Fair Elections. While Todd still outraised her by over $130,000, Fair Elections helped Lewis George remain competitive. This is particularly evident in comparison to the 2016 race, when Todd raised over $ 445,945 while his closest competitor, Leon Andrews, raised just under $200,000. Todd won that race with 8,145 votes with Andrews coming in at 6,738, just 1,500 votes short of an upset. 

What is maybe the most noteworthy takeaway is not just how much Lewis George was able to raise but whom she was able to raise it from. According to the website DC Geekery, Todd took in just half of his contributions from DC residents and only a quarter from constituents in his ward. By contrast, 100 percent of Lewis George’s contributions were from individuals, over half from inside her ward, while one fifth of Todd’s were from corporations, PACs, or other entities. 

Movement Matters

The campaign focused on four major issues, each with major racial justice implications and all broadly popular with voters yet opposed by the incumbent: paid family leave, one fair wage, affordable housing, and criminal justice reform. 

These issues helped appeal to the activist base and draw a major contrast between Lewis George and Todd. A major challenge for any candidate taking on an incumbent is being able to highlight differences serious enough to give voters reason to take a risk and support someone new. As Delvone Michael of the Working Families Party put it, any challenger essentially needs to be able to say to voters: “You should fire them, and hire me.” 

The campaign avoided any discussion of personality and made these policy contrasts the central issue. For each policy area, Janeese told a story about what that issue meant to her and her family. Those powerful stories were central to the campaign.

Defund the Police

One issue that really caught fire at the end of the election was criminal justice reform, specifically defunding the police. This issue took center stage at the close of the campaign when Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) began sending out vicious attack mailers against Lewis George because of her opposition to military-style policing and her position that resources should be transferred from ineffective policing programs to much more effective violence prevention programs. She argued that the city needed to rethink community safety by redirecting resources to better support Black and brown residents. 

Even before the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapois set off historic protests to defund the police, these attacks fired up her base and drew outrage from many residents, including other elected officials. In the end, DFER spent half a million dollars this cycle; while it’s unclear exactly how much they spent against Lewis George, all signs would indicate that she was the target of the bulk of their expenditure. This is a daunting amount, especially when one considers that her campaign raised just under $350,000. It seems likely that DFER spent more on the Ward 4 election than the cost of Lewis George’s entire campaign. However, once the uprisings kicked off, DFER’s efforts may have helped Lewis George.   

At the start of her campaign, Lewis George’s bold stance on criminal justice reform felt risky, but it is a good example of the ways real leadership pays off. By staking out an issue that might not have enjoyed popular support, she worked in tandem with movements to bring people along with her. She never backed down from her critique of ineffective and damaging policing, her support for accountability, or her insistence on evidence-based models. While subjected to increasingly negative and misleading attacks, she held firm and spoke with moral clarity. 

Build the Movement. Elect Bold Leaders. Repeat.

Janeese Lewis George’s insurgent campaign offers clear lessons for electoral and movement organizers. In many ways, the hard work that local organizers did in recent years in recent years around paid family leave, one fair wage, affordable housing, and criminal justice reform set the terms of debate and shaped the political environment that allowed Lewis George to win. In particular, DC's new public financing program, Fair Elections, provided a powerful tool for taking on an incumbent backed by big donors and corporate PACs, allowing a grassroots candidate not only to raise the money she needed to be competitive but also to make fundraising a grassroots organizing tool. By running on a bold and unapologetically progressive platform and by putting organizing at the center of her campaign, Lewis George was able to navigate an unfolding pandemic and uprisings to deliver a stunning upset and important win for the people who live and work in the District.