How Georgetown Voted

Last week DC Democrats made a fairly dramatic swing to the left across the board in their primary election. As the DC primary is the de facto general election for most of the important political seats in the city, these results are in effect the final results. But did Georgetown follow that trend?

(There’s a funny rule called Betteridge’s Law that states anytime a news article poses a question like that, the answer is always “no”. And that’s true here!)

With one exception, Georgetown did not follow the citywide trend. It voted for Kenyan McDuffie, Brooke Pinto, and Lisa Raymond, each of whom came up short in their races against outspokenly left-leaning candidates.

The one exception was actually not technically part of the Democratic primary. This was the special election to fill the non-Democratic At-Large seat that Kenyan McDuffie vacated to run for mayor. Former councilmember Elissa Silverman comfortably won that seat back (she lost it to McDuffie in 2022). Georgetown also favored her comfortably, with 59% of its vote going to her (which is actually higher than her overall total of 55%).

(I should also note that in the other at-large contest, the left-leaning candidate that won overall, Oye Oeolewa, lost in Georgetown, but only just. He lost to Lisa Raymond in Georgetown by only 10 votes.)

The fact that Georgetown was so out-of-step with the rest of the city on the choice for mayor is rather notable. It’s only the second time this has happened since the Marion Barry years. There have only been a handful genuinely contested primaries since then: 2002 (Anthony Williams first run, which was hampered by a screw-up that forced him to run as a write-in), 2006 (Fenty’s one victory), 2010 (when Gray unseated Fenty), 2014 (when Bowser unseated Gray), and this year.

Georgetown voted with the rest of the city in 2002, 2006 (Fenty remarkably won every single precinct this year), and 2014. It split with it in 2010 (Georgetown voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Fenty) and last week. I’m sure partisans of both candidates can divine a message in that, but I’ll pass on offering one myself.

Here are the vote totals for Georgetown with the overall winning candidate bolded:

DEM Delegate to U.S. House

• Brooke Pinto: 924 (59.6%)
• Robert White: 419 (27.0%)
• Kinney Zalesne: 116 (7.5%)
• Greg Jaczko: 55 (3.5%)
• Trent Holbrook: 34 (2.2%)

DEM Mayor

• Kenyan R. McDuffie: 913 (57.6%)
• Janeese Lewis George: 454 (28.7%)
• Gary Goodweather: 77 (4.9%)
• Hope Solomon: 71 (4.5%)
• Rini Sampath: 42 (2.7%)
• Vincent Orange (“VO”): 23 (1.5%)
• Ernest E. Johnson: 3 (0.2%)

DEM At-Large Council (2 seats)

• Lisa Raymond: 320 (24.3%)
• Oye Owolewa: 310 (23.5%)
• Kevin B. Chavous: 207 (15.7%)
• Fred Hill: 182 (13.8%)
• Greg Jackson: 118 (9.0%)
• Dwight Davis: 66 (5.0%)
• Candace Tiana Nelson: 55 (4.2%)
• Leniqua’dominique Jenkins: 25 (1.9%)
• Dyana N. M. Forester: 25 (1.9%)