DC primary elections

1.  I am not surprised that Muriel Bowser won the Democratic nomination for Mayor.  From a candidacy perspective, she was the strongest in terms of the demographics of the electorate and likely voters.

It would take a very special white person to be elected to the position of mayor in this city, given that the population is 50% African-American, and I don't think we've seen such a candidate come to the fore, at least not yet.

2.  There is speculation that Gray supporters, disillusioned, did not come out to vote, which dampened the total number of voters--in the 2012 Democratic primary, there were about 93,000 voters, in a presidential election cycle, while in the 2014 election there were about 80,000 people voting in the mayoral election.

In the two previous mayoral primaries, 2010 and 2006, there were about 133,000 and 106,000 votes in the mayoral race.

But the 2010 and 2006 primaries were held in September, and the 2012 and 2014 primaries in April.

3. For a few years I have criticized the move to April as being too early--a change was required in response to federal election requirements--but the primary election could be held as late as August and still meet the federal requirements.

The move to April cut 5 months of electioneering out of the cycle.  Maybe that's a good thing, but I believe in contributes to what we might call a form of "voter suppression" which would normally support the incumbent, but didn't in the case of either Mayor Gray or Councilmember Jim Graham in Ward 1, both of whom had ethical issues which cancelled out the benefits they might have otherwise had from a shorter primary election cycle.

4.  I might favor CM Grosso's introduction of various improvements to the election process through legislative proposals if he also addressed the hyper-early primary, which he did not.  CM Mendelson introduced legislation to move the primary to June, which if passed would have changed the date of the 2014 primary, but he received little support from other members of Council, which should be an embarrassment to them, but probably they don't see it that way.