Will This Be the Year DC Elects a White Mayor?

Each Saturday we offer online articles not originally published in The Prices Do DC which are of interest to both Washington area residents and visitors.

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?”

Outside Washington, the musing might sound reminiscent of “a different century,” as the event’s host put it to me. But inside the District, and particularly in the minds of its most longstanding residents, there may be no more germane a question suffusing this year’s mayoral race.

To continue reading this story 1st posted by The Washingtonian, click here.