2026-06-15T09:00:08.173Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/15/politics/dc-mayoral-primary-trump
- 华盛顿特区选民将于周二前往投票站参加市长初选，本次初选的核心辩论围绕民主党希望领导层如何应对特朗普政府展开。
- 领先候选人珍妮斯·刘易斯·乔治和肯尼亚·麦克达菲均承诺在面临联邦干预威胁时捍卫特区自治权。
- 特朗普上周暗示，如果民主社会主义者刘易斯·乔治获胜，他可能会推动将特区重新置于联邦控制之下。
AI生成的摘要已由CNN编辑审核。
华盛顿特区市议员、市长竞选领先者珍妮斯·刘易斯·乔治正在挨家挨户拉票时，她的团队得知唐纳德·特朗普总统表示，如果这位民主社会主义者在周二的初选中胜出，他不会“容忍这种情况”。
“也许我们会收回华盛顿，按联邦模式运作它，”特朗普周四在椭圆形办公室对记者说道。
她的团队暂停了拉票活动，聚集在一起商议，并在数小时内发布了回应。
“因不满居民的投票方式而威胁自治权，这本身就是对民主的攻击，”刘易斯·乔治在一段视频中说道，她提到了特区的自治权。“特区人民选举自己的市长，他们希望有人能站出来对抗唐纳德·特朗普。”
总统的这番言论凸显了华盛顿特区市长选举中的核心辩论：特区民主党人希望由什么样的领导人来充当他们与威胁其自治权的政府之间的屏障。
这是本届选举周期全美民主党初选的核心议题，一些被选民认为在对抗特朗普政府方面力度不足的现任官员因此面临连任危机。但在华盛顿特区，关于如何对抗这位掌控国会参众两院的总统的讨论有着格外高的风险——数千名国民警卫队士兵仍在特区街头巡逻，联邦干预的威胁始终存在。
刘易斯·乔治和她的主要初选对手、立场更温和的前特区市议员肯尼亚·麦克达菲都誓言要对抗总统，与国会议员建立桥梁，并为捍卫自治权而斗争。
麦克达菲曾在特区市议会任职13年，今年早些时候辞职。他表示，自己有经验“明智地对抗”总统。他认为，总统有关刘易斯·乔治的言论表明，如果刘易斯·乔治当选，特朗普会将她作为有效的攻击目标。
“如果你认为唐纳德·特朗普对特区的地方自治构成威胁，那么我们最不该做的就是选举一位会让他更有理由为联邦干预辩护的人，”麦克达菲告诉CNN。“我的信息很简单：不要给唐纳德·特朗普他想要的东西。”
与此同时，刘易斯·乔治对即将卸任的民主党市长穆里尔·鲍泽批评更多。鲍泽这位长期担任现任市长的人士一直在寻求在与联邦政府合作和维护特区权利之间寻求中间立场。刘易斯·乔治还获得了“自由特区”等组织的支持，该组织于去年成立，旨在倡导特区自治和建州。
2020年当选特区市议员的刘易斯·乔治驳斥了有关她的当选会给总统干预特区事务提供借口的说法。
“肯尼亚·麦克达菲还没明白我们其他人都明白的道理：你不会通过害怕唐纳德·特朗普来阻止他，”刘易斯·乔治在给CNN的一份声明中说道。“我是特区的女儿，我一生都在为特区建州而奋斗。我不会接受肯尼亚·麦克达菲关于自治权的说教。”
当被问及特朗普威胁要对华盛顿特区实施联邦控制的更多细节时，白宫将CNN引向了总统在椭圆形办公室的讲话。
特区议会主席菲尔·门德尔松表示，尽管候选人在竞选活动中谈论对抗特朗普，但“执政则是另一回事”。
“用一两个词来形容的话，这是一种平衡艺术，”他说。“这就是过去几年鲍泽市长一直在尝试做的事情。我认为在居民眼中，她在这方面做得不够好。”
自1973年《自治法案》通过以来，华盛顿特区才得以选举自己的政府。但即便如此，这种自治权也是有限的。特区在国会的代表没有表决权。国会可以推翻特区的法律，在过去50年里这种情况很少发生。国会也可以通过立法废除《自治法案》，尽管目前似乎几乎没有这种意愿。一项由共和党支持的旨在推翻自治权的法案——名为“鲍泽法案”——未获得任何支持。
去年8月，总统派遣国民警卫队前往华盛顿特区，并宣布该特区进入刑事紧急状态，允许联邦政府控制该市警察局30天。
鲍泽批评了联邦接管，并努力阻止延长允许这种情况发生的30天紧急状态。但她因被一些人视为试图讨好联邦政府而遭到广泛批评，包括她将犯罪率下降归功于联邦执法力量的激增。
鲍泽的合作态度与特朗普第一任期形成了鲜明对比，当时她是民主党抵抗运动的领军人物。这一次，她在特朗普连任前在其海湖庄园俱乐部与他会面，并于2025年3月宣布移除“黑人的命也是命广场”——这个位于白宫附近、曾由她倡导的两街区地标。此前总统和国会共和党人威胁要削减该市超过10亿美元的预算。“我们有更重要的事情要做，”她当时告诉CNN。
本月早些时候发布的《华盛顿邮报》/沙尔学院民调显示，50%的特区登记选民希望鲍泽在对抗特朗普方面采取更多行动，而34%的选民表示她处理该市与总统关系的方式恰到好处。79%的选民反对联邦接管特区警察局。
市长发言人拒绝了CNN的采访请求。
“讨好式”的对抗特朗普承诺？
无论谁赢得周二的初选，都将极有可能在11月的大选中获胜。下任市长将不得不在特朗普政府任期的最后两年里，在与联邦政府合作和对抗之间找到自己的平衡——而目前尚不清楚特区居民更青睐哪位候选人。
《华盛顿邮报》/沙尔学院的民调发现，在该市新的排序选择投票制度下，32%的登记民主党初选选民表示会将刘易斯·乔治列为第一选择，25%的选民表示第一选择是麦克达菲，另有26%的选民尚未决定。民主党选民在谁更值得信任处理特区与特朗普政府的关系上存在分歧，35%的人选择麦克达菲，32%的人选择刘易斯·乔治，差距在误差范围内。
批评鲍泽做法的人认为，她有时会提前迎合联邦政府。
“历史告诉我们，那种‘哦，别惹麻烦’的立场实际上非常危险……我们现任市长就经常这样，”“自由特区”竞选主任亚历克斯·多兹说道。“我们一直在寻找一位能捍卫这些权利的市长候选人。”
但其他人强调，任何特区市长都必须与联邦政府合作。曾为鲍泽和前特区市长阿德里安·芬蒂管理竞选活动的前特区市议员比尔·莱特福特表示，候选人对抗特朗普的承诺是“讨好选民”。
“这些候选人只是在放空炮。他们在说民众想听的话，”莱特福特说。“从实际情况来看，他们没有权力、没有资源来对抗总统。”
他表示，他预计无论谁赢得市长选举，都会请求与总统会面，就像纽约市市长佐赫兰·蒙达尼去年所做的那样。“然后他们就会表现得友好一些，”莱特福特说。
尽管特朗普因素主导了本次竞选的大部分内容，但民主党候选人仍需在经济适用房和公共安全等问题上向选民阐明自己的主张。
刘易斯·乔治的竞选活动被拿来与蒙达尼的竞选相比较，蒙达尼也是一位民主社会主义者，2025年击败了支持建制派的温和派候选人。
“蒙达尼市长和其他崛起中的领导人一直在说，人们需要看到政府能为他们服务——而不仅仅是富人和有权势的人，”她在给CNN的一份声明中说道。
麦克达菲试图将刘易斯·乔治描绘成一位经验不足、平台不切实际的候选人。他还指责她在反对实施青少年宵禁以遏制青少年在公共场所聚集滋事的问题上对犯罪持纵容态度。刘易斯·乔治认为，由于担心联邦官员会如何执行宵禁，宵禁是危险的。
刘易斯·乔治则攻击麦克达菲的捐款来源，并称他在为降低公用事业成本而斗争方面做得不够，麦克达菲称这一说法是“谎言”。
支持刘易斯·乔治的美国劳工联合会-产业工会联合会大都会华盛顿委员会主席萨姆·埃普斯表示，这位候选人对生活成本问题的关注是他们支持她的部分原因。
“我们的会员要花更多的钱来支付房租、汽油和 groceries（食品杂货），而珍妮斯·刘易斯·乔治是我们认为——我们也会全力支持——能够帮助解决这些经济适用房问题的人，”埃普斯说。
对其他人来说，这场竞选的关键在于经验。
阿什利·拉夫是土生土长的华盛顿人，也是特区东南部社区咨询委员会委员。她说她支持麦克达菲，因为他在特区市议会任职期间有更长时间对抗特朗普的记录。她说她想投票给一位她觉得能倾听她声音的候选人。
“我想支持这样一个人：你会倾听我的声音，你会来帮我清理我的社区，同时你也不会因为想把事情变得更好而把人们赶出我的社区，”她说。“事情不会一夜之间就发生改变。”
The next mayor of DC will have to navigate its most famous resident: President Donald Trump
2026-06-15T09:00:08.173Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/15/politics/dc-mayoral-primary-trump
- Washington, DC, voters head to the polls Tuesday for a mayoral primary dominated by a debate over how Democrats want leadership to respond to the Trump administration.
- Leading candidates Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie both pledge to protect home rule amid federal interference threats.
- Trump suggested last week that he might move to bring the district back under federal control if Lewis George, a democratic socialist, wins.
AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.
Janeese Lewis George, a Washington, DC, councilmember and leading candidate for mayor, was knocking on doors when her team got word that President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t “put up with it” if the democratic socialist wins her Tuesday primary.
“Maybe we’ll take back Washington, run it on the federal basis,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Thursday.
Her team paused its canvassing, huddled together and within a few hours released a response.
“Threatening home rule because you don’t like how residents are voting is an attack on democracy itself,” Lewis George said in a videohttps://www.facebook.com/reel/879043807922875, referencing DC’s right to self-governance. “The people of DC elect their mayor, and they want someone who’s going to stand up to Donald Trump.”
The comments from the president underscored a debate at the center of the DC mayor’s race over what kind of leader Democrats in the district want standing between them and an administration threatening their autonomy.
It’s a question that’s dominated Democratic primaries across the country this election cycle, endangering incumbents who some voters say aren’t doing enough to push back on the Trump administration. But the deliberations over how to fight a president whose party controls both chambers of Congress have uniquely high stakes in DC, where thousands of National Guard troops still patrol the streets and the threat of federal interference is ever present.
Both Lewis George and her main primary opponent, the more moderate former DC councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, have vowed to take on the president, build bridges with members of Congress and fight to protect home rule.
McDuffie, who spent 13 years on the DC council before resigning earlier this year, said he has the experience to “wage a smart fight” against the president. He argued the president’s comments about Lewis George show he would use her as an effective foil if she’s elected.
“If you believe Donald Trump is a threat to DC’s local autonomy, then the last thing we should do is elect someone whose agenda would make it easier for him to justify federal intervention,” McDuffie told CNN. “My message is simple: don’t give Donald Trump what he wants.”
Lewis George, meanwhile, has been more critical of outgoing Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser, the longtime incumbent who has sought to find a middle ground between working with the administration and asserting DC’s rights. She’s also won the support of groups like Free DC, which formed last year to advocate for DC home rule and statehood.
Lewis George, who was elected to the DC Council in 2020, has pushed back on the suggestion that her election would give the president cover to interfere in the district’s affairs.
“Kenyan McDuffie has not figured out what the rest of us have. You don’t stop Donald Trump by fearing him,” Lewis George said in a statement to CNN. “I’m a daughter of the District, and I’ve been fighting for DC statehood my entire life. I’m not going to take a lecture from Kenyan McDuffie on Home Rule.”
When asked for more information about Trump’s threat to exert federal control over DC, the White House referred CNN to the president’s Oval Office remarks.
Phil Mendelson, the chairman of the DC council, said that while candidates talk about fighting Trump on the campaign trail, “being in office is different.”
“I would describe it, in a word or two, as a balancing act,” he said. “That’s what Mayor Bowser has been attempting for the last couple of years. I think in the eyes of the residents she has not done a good enough job at that.”
DC has only been able to elect its own government since the passage of the Home Rule Act of 1973. But even that autonomy is limited. DC’s delegate to Congress is a non-voting member. Congress can overturn DC laws, a power it has exercised rarely over the last 50 years. It can also pass legislation to repeal the Home Rule Act, though there appears to be little appetite to do so. A GOP-backed measure to overturn home rule — named the BOWSER Act — failed to gain any traction.
Last August, the president sent National Guard troops to DC and declared a crime emergency in the district, allowing the federal government to take control of the city’s police department for 30 days.
Bowser was critical of the federal takeover and worked to prevent an extension of the 30-day emergency that allowed it to happen. But she faced widespread backlash over what some viewed as her efforts to appease the administration, including crediting a reduction in crime to the surge in federal law enforcement.
Bowser’s cooperation marked a reversal from Trump’s first term, when the mayor was a leading figure in the Democratic resistance. This time around, she met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago club before he retook office, and in March 2025 announced the removal of Black Lives Matter Plaza, a two-block landmark near the White House that she once championed, after the president and congressional Republicans in Congress threatened to cut more than $1 billion from the city’s budget. “We have bigger fish to fry,” she told CNN at the time.
A Washington Post/Schar School poll released earlier this month found that 50% of DC registered voters wanted Bowser to do more to oppose Trump, compared to 34% who said she was handling the city’s relationship with the president just right. Seventy-nine percent of voters disapproved of the federal takeover of DC’s police department.
A spokesperson for the mayor declined an interview request from CNN.
‘Pandering’ promises to fight Trump?
Whoever wins Tuesday’s primary will be heavily favored to win the November general election. The next mayor will have to strike their own balance between working with and fighting against the Trump administration during the president’s final two years in office – and there’s not yet a clear answer as to which candidate DC residents prefer.
The Post/Schar School poll found that under the city’s new ranked choice voting system, 32% of registered Democratic primary voters said they would rank Lewis George first, 25% said their first choice is McDuffie, and another 26% said they were undecided. Democratic voters were split on who they trusted more to handle DC’s relationship with the Trump administration, with 35% saying McDuffie and 32% saying Lewis George, within the margin of error.
Critics of Bowser’s approach argue she has at times complied in advance with the federal government.
“History teaches us that that positioning of, ‘Oh, let’s not make trouble,’ is actually very dangerous … and we’ve seen that from our current mayor a lot,” said Alex Dodds, the campaign director for Free DC. “We were really looking for a mayoral champion who would assert those rights.”
But others stress that any DC mayor must work with the federal government. Bill Lightfoot, a former DC councilman who ran the mayoral campaigns of both Bowser and former DC Mayor Adrian Fenty, said candidates’ promises to fight Trump were “pandering.”
“The candidates are just blowing smoke. They’re telling the people what the people want to hear,” Lightfoot said. “As a practical matter, they have no power, no resources, to oppose the president.”
He said he expected that whoever wins the mayoral race will request a meeting with the president, just as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did last year. “And then they’re going to play nice,” Lightfoot said.
While the Trump factor has dominated much of the race, Democratic candidates have still had to make their case to voters on affordability issues and public safety.
Lewis George’s campaign has drawn comparisons to that of Mamdani, another democratic socialist who defeated an establishment-backed moderate in 2025.
“What Mayor Mamdani and other rising leaders have been saying, and I agree with this, is that people need to see that government can work for them – not just the wealthy and well-connected,” she said in a statement to CNN.
McDuffie has sought to paint Lewis George as a less experienced candidate with an unrealistic platform. He’s also accused her of being soft on crime over her opposition to enforcing youth curfews to curb instances of large gatherings of teenagers behaving disruptively in public spaces. Lewis George argues curfews are dangerous due to concerns over how federal officers would enforce them.
Lewis George has attacked McDuffie over his donors and said he didn’t do enough to fight for lower utility costs, a claim he called a “lie.”
Sam Epps, the president of Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, which has backed Lewis George, said the candidate’s focus on cost-of-living concerns is part of why they’re supporting her.
“It costs our members more money to pay for rent, to put gas in their car, to buy groceries, and Janeese Lewis George is the one who we believe — and we are supporting full throttle — that she will help tackle these affordability issues,” Epps said.
For others, the race has come down to experience.
Ashley Ruff, a DC native and advisory neighborhood council commissioner in Southeast DC, said she’s supporting McDuffie because he has a longer record of fighting Trump during his tenure on the DC council. She said she wanted to vote for a candidate who she felt had shown they heard her.
“I want to go for somebody that, you’re going to hear my voice, you’re going to come and help me clean up my neighborhood, but also you’re not going to push the people out of my neighborhood because you’re going to try to make things better,” she said. “Things don’t just happen overnight.”