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Will 2014 Be The Year DC Elects A White Mayor?

Will 2014 Be The Year DC Elects A White Mayor?
By 

Editor, Black Voices

The statue of President Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, sculpted in 1853 by Clark Mill sits in the falling snow in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House in Washington, Monday, March 3, 2014. The winter weather prompted area schools and the federal government to close and the National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for the greater Washington Metropolitan region. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
The statue of President Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, sculpted in 1853 by Clark Mill sits in the falling snow in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House in Washington, Monday, March 3, 2014. The winter weather prompted area schools and the federal government to close and the National Weather Service has issued a Winter Storm Warning for the greater Washington Metropolitan region. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Tommy Wells showed up one evening last fall at a home in Barnaby Woods, a wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood west of Rock Creek Park, where some 30 people had come to hear the DC councilman explain why he should be the District’s next mayor. This wasn’t Wells’s territory—he represents Ward 6, a racially mixed area that stretches from Capitol Hill to the western bank of the Anacostia River. Wells was here because he’ll need votes from Barnaby Woods, and other communities like it, to prevail over his many rivals.

After he made his pitch, a middle-aged white man approached Wells with a question that the councilman, who’s also white, has been hearing a lot these days: “Do you really think a white candidate can get elected mayor in DC?”

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