Donna Brazile is a political commentator and Democratic Party activist. (Photo Courtesy of wikimedia.org)
The District’s Democratic Party is working to ensure it will be a force in the 2016 local and presidential elections. The District has proven since the 1973 advent of Home Rule to be a Democratic Party bastion of power. Nevertheless, party leaders are urging Democrats in the city not to become complacent.
“We cannot take it for granted that Democrats will automatically win in this city,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser told party members at the 11th Lorraine H. Whitlock Memorial Scholarship and Recognition Dinner on June 25. The dinner honored Whitlock, who is deceased, and party members Derek Ford and Barbara McCoy, and presented a scholarship to H.D. Woodson 2015 valedictorian Christopher Chandler.
Political observers have repeatedly pointed out the city’s changing racial and economic demographics are not reliably Democratic and that has gotten the attention of party leaders also.
“We have to get fired up for 2016,” D.C. Council member Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) said at the Whitlock dinner. “We are ready for a Democrat to win the White House in 2016.”
The Democrats have a 10-1 advantage over Republicans in District voter registration Party. Democrats hold all the city’s major elected offices, with the exception of two independents on the D.C. Council.
In the 2016 Democratic presidential race, it appears that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has the significant advantage among D.C. party members. “She is the most ready and the most capable, and most formidable candidate that the Democrats have,” former D.C. Council member Sekou Biddle said at a Democratic fundraiser on July 1. “She brings a lot to the table and as a secretary of state and a senator.”
Marlena Edwards, a Ward 4 Democratic activist, agrees with Biddle. “Hillary Clinton has mettle,” Edwards said at the fundraiser. “She is known all over the globe and she is seen as an excellent leader. The U.S. is behind in electing women leaders and this is our chance to change that.”
While Bowser didn’t state her presidential preference, she has recently interacted with Clinton. “I was at the U.S. Conference of Mayors and I waited in line to greet Secretary Clinton,” the mayor said at the Whitlock Dinner. “When I got to her and introduced myself, she pulled me over to the side. She said that she was aware of what was going on in D.C. and wanted to connect with me in terms of an urban strategy.”
Not all Democrats favor Clinton. Andy Litsky, the advisory neighborhood commissioner for single-member district 6D04, wants U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to win the Democratic nomination. “I am going for the underdog,” Litsky said at the July 4th Palisades Parade. “I want to make sure that all views are heard and generate a discussion about what is going on in the country and Sanders has some really good ideas.”
Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner 7B03 Gary Butler is on Sanders’ bandwagon also, tweeting on June 28 that “I support Bernie Sanders for president.”
The District will send 37 delegates to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia next year and there is intense jockeying taking place for the 11 delegate positions reserved for activists and residents. “We will likely two more spots for delegates but we are at 37 right now,” D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large) and chairman of the D.C. State Democratic Committee said at the July 1 fundraiser.
“There are about 26 spots reserved for what we in the party call superdelegates, such as the mayor, the chairman of the council, and Donna Brazile, and labor union leaders.
Brazile, who attended the fundraiser, said that while the District is sure to go Democratic in 2016, it is in a neighboring state where the help is needed. “We need D.C. Democrats to campaign in Virginia,” she said. “Virginia is very important. We need people in D.C. to get Virginians to support Democrats.”
Bonds said that District Democrats will go “wherever is needed to win.”
“Some people think it is too early to talk about the 2016 convention but if we don’t prepare now, we could lose out,” she said.