Socialist Janeese Lewis George won the Democratic nomination for mayor of Washington, D.C., presenting her victory as one brought by and for the working class. But an analysis by the Washington Examiner found that many of her small donors are located in progressive enclaves.
“I’m honored to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for the mayor of Washington D.C.,” Lewis George, the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America endorsee, said after Kenyan McDuffie conceded Thursday. “It would not be possible without the broad coalition of supporters, the most diverse coalition in this city’s history.”
Lewis George has good reason to claim a “working-class” victory: The Ward 4-based councilmember won seven out of eight wards in the district. The campaign also says it set the record for the largest number of D.C. residents to donate to a primary candidate in the city’s history. Impressive. Surely, many of her most fervent supporters are the working-class city-dwellers on whom she focuses her platform.
Not quite. The Washington Examiner analyzed donations of $200 or less in Lewis George’s campaign finance reports by ZIP code. Most of her small donor contributions come from ZIP codes in progressive, professional enclaves with median household incomes over six figures.
The councilmember’s Ward 4 gave the most in small-dollar donations. The three highest participating ZIP codes all have six-figure incomes of at least $110,309. The top five ZIP codes, which map onto Wards 1, 4, and parts of 5 and 6, account for almost 60% of all qualifying contributions.
By contrast, Washington’s poorer, working-class ZIP codes, which map to Wards 7 and 8, produced 579 contributions — just 5.8% of Lewis George’s total small-dollar participation. These wards, while still pulling for the socialist, also voted less compared to their progressive enclave counterparts. These results reflect a truism in political primaries: More affluent ideologues tend to donate and vote.
It’s true that Ward 3, D.C.’s wealthiest ward, opted for McDuffie. Two wealthy ZIP codes that map onto Ward 3 — including 20015 and 20016, with respective median household incomes of $250,001 and $178,920 — did not power her campaign like the ZIP codes that cover Ward 1, Ward 4, and northeast DC did. Lewis George backers may cite Ward 3’s support for McDuffie as proof that Lewis George’s campaign represents the battle of haves and have-nots.
But a campaign heart lies with its most core constituency. The locations of Lewis George’s individual small-dollar donors reveal hers: professional-class, urban progressives, who often view themselves as working class or, at the least, a voice for the downtrodden.
DEMOCRATS BECOME THE PARTY OF SOCIALISTS AND THIRD-WORLDISM
Lewis George’s primary win tracks with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s primary results, as well. Many neighborhoods in the so-called gentrified “Commie Corridor” — Astoria, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Bushwick, and more — handed Mamdani the Democratic nomination. Again, it’s true that lower-income neighborhoods joined the mayor’s coalition last November, but it’s the same formula: College-educated urbanites birthed his campaign, and others followed later.
So-called democratic socialists, Lewis George included, attribute their success solely to working-class frustrations. And to her credit, she won across most of Washington, including in the poorer Wards 7 and 8. But her small-dollar base tells a more complicated story than the socialist class war-style branding allows. Whether it’s New York City or Washington, D.C., young college-educated professionals are driving the socialist fervor in America’s cities.