60,000 people have already voted

First Up

D.C. voters head to the polls today — as they have been for a couple of weeks. According to the Board of Elections, nearly 60,000 have already voted, either at early voting centers, by taking ballots to drop-off locations or by putting them in the mail. That’s around two-thirds of the total vote from four years ago.

Thanks to D.C.’s new ranked-choice voting system, we may not know the winner for a while. Because all of the mail-in ballots need to arrive before preferences get tabulated, it may take up to ten days. But tonight we’ll at least know each candidate’s number of first-place votes. That will give partisans something to cheer or mourn at the election night parties taking place despite the odd new timetable.

It will still make for an anticlimactic end to a pretty disappointing campaign.

In City Cast this morning, I wrote about how leading candidates Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie both represent familiar D.C. mayoral candidate archetypes. He’s the pol with the long CV who seems due for a promotion, like Linda Cropp in the last open mayoral primary. She’s the idealist out to redress the city’s injustices, like her colleague Robert White four years ago. The common denominator of these two archetypes: They usually lose.

Unless the polls are wildly wrong, one of them will win this time. Lewis George has held a lead in polls by City Cast and the Washington Post, though she was well under fifty percent in both, with a large number of undecideds. And a Post report over the weekend captured a distinctly pessimistic electorate, worried about the city’s Trump-era fate but also underwhelmed by the candidates.

Both candidates are going to need some luck today — and probably even more luck in the next four years.

What D.C.'s Talking About

Gambling for Votes. A Dallas PAC has spent $417,000 to re-elect D.C. Councilmembers Zachary Parker, Charles Allen, Doni Crawford, and Phil Mendelson. According to NOTUS’ Martin Austermuhle, it’s part of a push to legalize online gambling in the District. It all makes for “a stark example of big money special interest trying to manipulate elections,” according to Elissa Silverman, who is running against Crawford. The pressure won’t let up post-election: The gambling industry says legalization could net the cash-strapped city $100 million in new tax revenue, something that will surely come up as councilmembers struggle to balance the books.

Netflix and Bill. Netflix is leasing a big chunk of the Woodies Building downtown, Washington Business Journal reports. The streaming behemoth isn’t just creating an office where its D.C. staff can plot how to influence the government: It’ll also be a new insider destination. The facility will have its own theater, where Netflix can host Beltway big shots — and occasional regular Washingtonians — at private screenings or movie premiers.

Beyond the Mall. Former Commission of Fine Arts Chairman Justin Shubow says that the locations for the Smithsonian’s planned women’s history and Latino museums are a problem. Both facilities would be jammed into subpar spots on the National Mall because “the assumption appears to be that the Mall is the only honorific location in Washington.” Instead, Shubow suggests placing the museums right across Independence Avenue at the current site of the Department of Energy, whose brutalist headquarters he wants to tear down. Shubow’s opinion is worth noting because he’s a conservative architecture activist who has the ear of the Trump administration.

Ward 1 Debates Biden. The race for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat has descended into acrimony over… Joe Biden. According to WAMU, candidate Rashida Brown has sent out mailers blasting progressive rival Aparna Raj for beating up on the 46th president over his Gaza policy. “Can we trust Aparna Raj to show up for Democrats when it matters most?” a mailer read. Raj, a Democratic Socialists of America member, tells Alex Koma that she attacked Biden during the 2024 primaries, not the general election.

WaPo Unpublishes Racist. Politico reports that The Washington Post’s newly conservative opinion section has deleted two pieces by Scott Greer, who you may remember from a 2018 scandal over racist pseudonymous posts for neo-Nazi Richard Spencer’s publication. The Post’s editorials have lately engaged local D.C. news as they lambaste Lewis George’s leftism and weigh in on a possible foie gras ban. Keeping company with bigots is probably not going to help the board spread Jeff Bezos’ politics in deep-blue Washington. Greer accused the board of succumbing to a “woke mob,” adding that “the opinions that got me ‘cancelled’ in 2018 are now mainstream conservatism.”

No Eatin’ at Eaton! The activist group Harriet’s Wildest Dreams is criticizing Councilmember and Congressional candidate Brooke Pinto for hosting an election night party at the Eaton Hotel. The activists say the venue choice caused “harm” because Eaton was once hired for an Axios event featuring defense-industry firms, among other misdeeds.

Finally: Tastes Like Chicken! Chaia, the pioneering Georgetown vegetarian-taco joint, is adding a new ingredient: Chicken. Co-founder Suzanne Simon tells Washingtonian’s Jessica Sidman that it’s a concession to modern economics (operating costs are up), health trends (protein is in) and generational change (younger diners aren’t so into food identity labels like “vegetarian”). “The addition of chicken does not make our menu any less vegan- or vegetarian-friendly than it currently is,” she says.

Did someone forward you this email? To subscribe, visit https://dc.citycast.fm/newsletter

What To Do