A tumultuous term later, and with homicides and violent crime rates rising, Boozer is in a re-election campaign, with two Columbia District Council challengers accusing her of mismanaging public safety issues and criticizing her push to hire more police officers. In the context of mass shootings across the country, the mayoral campaign reflects a broader dynamic playing out in longtime Democrat strongholds, with progressives facing traditional party criminals. “Call the sky blue against the pitch heel blue,” said Michael Fauntroy, an associate professor of politics and government at George Mason University. “People have an anxiety about crime. There is no doubt about that. “ This ideological impetus is taking place under the watchful eye of Republican politicians who want to claim that Democrats can not control or protect their cities. The winner of Tuesday’s qualifiers is the outright favorite in the November general election. Crime and public safety dominate the campaign. Homicides have risen for four consecutive years and the 2021 homicide rate rose to 227, the highest since 2003. In January, DC Council nominee Nate Fleming was attacked with a gun. However, Bowser’s challengers are wondering if adding more police officers is the answer. “I do not think the police are the ultimate solution to reducing crime,” City Councilman Trayon White said during a June 1 debate. “At the height of the crackdown, DC had more than 5,000 police officers and never reduced crime.” City Councilman Robert White also criticized Bowser’s proposals for crime prevention: “I have not heard the short-term (solution) and I have not heard a plan.” Bowser is campaigning for her experience and leadership as the city emerges from the pandemic and for its history as one of the faces of Washington’s ongoing search for the state. It accuses the DC Council, including its challengers, of obstructing its efforts to curb crime. “I have never been to a community where they said they did not want the police. “Never,” said Bowser, 49, in a radio interview last month. “We need the police we need.” Chuck Tiss, a longtime political advisor to the county, identifies a turning point in the wave of protests and unrest in the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd in police custody. Some mass demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere have been disastrous, and calls for police repayments have become more intense in democratic circles. Thies, who has no ties to any of the mayoral candidates, said the public safety debate “will continue to play a role.” “For Democrats, it’s quite uncomfortable.” A Washington Post poll in February found that 30% of city dwellers said they did not feel safe from crime in their neighborhood, compared with 22% in 2019 and the highest rate in two decades of polls. Asked to name in an open-ended question the biggest problem the district faces for the mayor to work for, 36% of residents cited crime, violence or guns long before housing, poverty or transportation. Concerns about crime have plagued other Democratic candidates in local races elsewhere. In New York, a former police chief, Eric Adams, was elected mayor last year on a platform of law and order. In Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms suddenly announced in May 2021 that she would not run for a second term as mayor, as issues of crime and police brutality left her trapped between activists and a police station in riot gear. In San Francisco, prosecutor Chesa Boudin was recalled earlier this month after just 18 months amid public outcry over rising crime rates. Fauntroy said the unique nature of the California system, where newly elected politicians can face immediate, well-funded recalls, makes him reluctant to “draw conclusions nationally.” But Ron Leicester, a prominent Democrat pollster who worked with the late Washington mayor Marion Barry, said Budin’s loss showed the level of public concern about crime in the midst of longtime Democratic voters. “Voters did not have confidence that (Boudin) was adequately prosecuted,” he said. Leicester said Adams’s victory in New York “strongly shows that people do not support a large repayment of police resources.” Boozer has been making public cords in policing for years. Local activists, including those with the Black Lives Matter, have long ridiculed her as desperately biased towards police. Former President Donald Trump and other conservatives have argued that he does not have enough support for law enforcement. In the early days of the summer 2020 protests, Bauser publicly sided with the protesters as Trump usurped the local authority and called for a massive federal security response. He responded by renaming the protest center Black Lives Matter Plaza and commissioning a Black Lives Matter mural painted on 16th Street, one block from the White House, in giant yellow letters. The local BLM subsidiary immediately dismissed it as an “executive distraction” from the actual policy changes, and activists seized the space to express their views. The original mural bore a yellow outline of the perimeter flag – two horizontal lines with three stars. Within a few days, the activists had deleted the stars to create the appearance of the equal and added their own message, turning the mural into “Black Lives Matter = Defund The Police”. Fauntroy, Professor George Mason, described Bowser as “not really activist-oriented. “He is a manager and the managers try to keep the trains moving.” Despite public pressure, Bowser relied heavily on her police department, waging public battles with the DC Council over the police budget. He has quietly replaced an older white police chief with a newer black successor and is pushing for money to increase the Metropolitan Police Department’s current staff from 3,500 to 4,000 over the next decade. A few days before the qualifiers, he announced a $ 20,000 recruitment bonus to help recruit more police officers. In April, the DC Council Judicial Committee reduced Bowser’s latest budget proposal to hire more officers. None of its challengers serve on this committee. Robert White, 40, has a history of successful guerrilla campaigns, having ousted an incumbent leader for a DC Council headquarters in 2016. He has proposed tackling crime through a huge public and private youth job program that Boozer mocks as unsustainable. Trayon White, 38, openly invokes the spirit of Barry, the former mayor and council member who remains a controversial but beloved figure among many Washington residents. Once a base community activist, White was Barry’s protégé and now represents Ward 8, as Barry did. It is the poorest and most criminal wing of the city. Trayon White, who was accused of anti-Semitism in 2018 after saying a prominent Jewish family controlled the weather in Washington, opposed Bowser’s efforts to hire more police officers and favored community violence programs, which Bowser says it took him a while to embrace.
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