Update 6/22/2022: I should have said these are preliminary results. Apparently, there are thousands of dropbox ballots that still need to be counted by the Board of Elections.

Yesterday, Zachary Parker won the most votes for the Ward 5 Council seat in the June 2022 Democratic primary election. As for citywide races, Mayor Muriel Bowser, DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson, and At Large Councilmember Anita Bonds are one step closer to reelection after winning their respective races.

I do not talk overtly about politics on the blog because I cannot say too much publicly on Al Gore’s Internet, but I do want to give a shout out to the campaigns mounted by Faith Gibson Hubbard for Ward 5 and to Erin Palmer for Council Chair. I think it is always a good thing when thoughtful people run thoughtful campaigns for elected office because all of us benefit from their presence and ideas. And we often see some of those thoughtful ideas taken up by people who did not originally think of or champion them.

The only other thing I will say is that I do hope that this election reminds us that we actually can do better as a city. So many challenges that were brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic actually existed prior to the pandemic. They were just ignored and the pandemic made it so that they could no longer be ignored. I often marvel at how DC is not that big of a city. But we sometimes act as if certain things are just so so hard, like fully educating roughly 100,000 school-age children in decent facilities, having safe neighborhoods, timely providing supports to people experiencing challenges, discouraging antisocial and anti-community behavior, and generally doing the work to have a thriving city.

Anyways, hats off to all those who ran thoughtful campaigns and congratulations to those who won.