If you missed it yesterday, we started fact-checking some of the principal attacks lobbed between mayoral frontrunners Janeese Lewis George and Kenyan McDuffie. We focused on claims that Lewis George would divest from MPD, and that McDuffie was to blame for D.C.’s initial foray into sports betting. While there were elements of truth in both, there was a lot more nuance.
Much the same is true with the next round of accusations, these ones about alleged tax increases, where each candidate is getting money to support their campaigns, and whether McDuffie was a successful legislator.
A tax increase
McDuffie has leveraged an attack that gets tossed around plenty in politics: His opponent is going to “raise your taxes.”
Lewis George’s campaign says that’s not true, and that she “does not support new taxes on D.C.’s working people, middle-class families or locally-owned small businesses.” She does, though, support “closing business tax loopholes that favor Maryland and Virginia.”
That refers to the Business Activity Tax (BAT).
Critics of current D.C. law say there’s a big loophole for lobbying firms, consultancies, and law firms that aren’t set up like normal corporations, but instead operate as unincorporated professional services partnerships. And if their owners live in Maryland or Virginia, the profits are generally not taxed like a normal D.C. business. (This is because Congress does not allow D.C. to tax non-resident income.) The BAT would change this, and in the process bring in an estimated $500 million in new revenue every year.
Progressive groups have been pushing for the BAT for a while, and a few years ago the D.C. Tax Revision Commission — which reviews and recommends changes to the city’s tax code every decade — also considered it. (They never produced recommendations for the D.C. Council to consider, largely because of infighting.) Critics — including some of Lewis George’s competitors, like candidate Rini Sampath — oppose the BAT, largely because they say that as the city’s economy falters, it should do everything it can to be attractive to businesses, not impose any new taxes.
Still, unless you’re a Maryland or Virginia resident who owns a law firm or lobbying shop, it doesn’t seem accurate to say Lewis George wants to “raise your taxes.”
Now, she did raise taxes on some D.C. residents a few years ago. In 2021 she worked with two of her council colleagues to impose a small tax hike on wealthy D.C. residents — single earners making more than $250,000 a year — to fund housing vouchers and pay increases for childcare workers. McDuffie was one of five lawmakers to vote against the tax increase, saying tax policy shouldn’t be made by a last-minute amendment to a budget, and that it instead should benefit from public hearings and fiscal assessments.
Trump bucks and Pepco dollars
If there’s a bad word to be thrown around in D.C. politics, it’s “Trump.” And that’s probably why Lewis George has wanted to tie McDuffie to the current occupant of the White House, specifically by accusing him of accepting “big Trump donor dollars.”
Is that right?
Per campaign finance records, McDuffie’s mayoral campaign has accepted 22 contributions from individuals who have, at one point or another since 2016, similarly given money to campaign committees associated with Trump. (Some of those individuals also gave to McDuffie in the past, either when he ran for an At-Large seat on the council or for attorney general.)
Now, there’s some context to consider. According to a May 10 fundraising filing, his campaign has gotten financial contributions from more than 4,800 people, some 3,600 of which have been D.C. residents. All of those contributions have added up to almost $632,000. (Per the city’s public financing program that McDuffie and Lewis George are both participating in, the maximum amount any individual can contribute is $200. Contributions from D.C. residents are matched by the city five-to-one.) The “Trump donor dollars” aren’t exactly a big part of that: roughly $4,000, all told.
Probably the most active donor who has given to both McDuffie and Trump is David Carmen, a local lobbyist who has been active in D.C. politics for years while remaining close to Republican politics on the national level. Still, even then, Carmen’s contributions to McDuffie over the years amount to just over $1,200; not exactly “big” money. (Washington City Paper dug into Carmen’s links to local politicians a few years ago.)
Where McDuffie has done well, though, is with the real estate industry: According to an analysis from Bisnow, as of last month McDuffie had raised nine times more from commercial real estate professionals than Lewis George. (In March the Washington Post had a handy breakdown of where each candidate was getting their money; most was coming from normal D.C. residents, though Lewis George has had an edge there.)
Ultimately, both McDuffie and Lewis George largely coincide on Trump: They say they would end cooperation with MPD and ICE and broadly defend the city’s home rule, while remaining open to economic development deals and other federal proposals that could benefit D.C.
But that’s not the only money-related attack. At the WUSA9 debate, McDuffie said that Lewis George’s campaign has been funded by utility lobbyists. Lewis George’s campaign says the accusation is false; we asked McDuffie’s camp for any examples, but never got a response. (They did respond to WAMU's Alex Koma, and pointed to four people — only one of whom worked for Pepco, but at a relatively low level.)
McDuffie also said that Lewis George’s run is being supported by dark money from New York City. Well, not exactly.
His claim is referring to the Safe and Affordable D.C. independent expenditure committee, an outside group linked to labor unions that is supporting Lewis George in the race. As of March 10 it had raised $200,000, half from a New York-based union-funded political action committee and the remainder from a political action committee linked to SEIU 32BJ, which represents building cleaners, maintenance workers, and security guards in D.C. (The union has endorsed Lewis George; generally labor has sided with her, and some union staffers have even jumped over to work for her campaign.) Safe and Affordable D.C. has so far spent more than $340,000 on mailers and ads supporting Lewis George and attacking McDuffie.
Is that dark money? Not really, since it’s traced back to labor unions that openly support Lewis George. Dark money is more often associated with a particular type of organization, generally 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups that are not legally required to disclose who’s giving them money. (They are allowed to engage in politics, but politics can’t be the only thing they do.) And right now one such group active in local politics is the United D.C. Research Council. The council has raised money (from whom we don’t know) that it has since used to create ads attacking Lewis George for her work on the council. It is also linked to People for a United D.C., a local independent expenditure group that has produced mailers criticizing Lewis George.
A separate pro-business group, Opportunity D.C., has similarly taken some contributions from a related dark money group and weighed in against Lewis George.
None of this is illegal, nor is it necessarily new; unions, businesses, and other interests have in the past used a number of vehicles to weigh in on D.C. elections. But the use of dark money groups has been on the rise in recent years, both by Democrats and Republicans.
Now, it is important to note that none of these groups can legally coordinate with the campaigns; those have to be separate. Still, critics of Lewis George say her campaign is so closely linked to local unions that there’s room to believe coordination is taking place; the Office of Campaign Finance is currently investigating.
Paying (for) the bills
The thing about serving on the council is that while it can be easy to pass a bill into law, ensuring it actually takes effect can be something different entirely. That’s because if a bill carries a cost, it has to be paid for. Lawmakers often leave that to the mayor when they draw up the annual budget, but other times they take the lead and find their own source of funding.
That doesn’t always happen, though; there’s plenty of bills that the council passes that never become more than aspirational words on paper. And that was one attack Lewis George leveled at McDuffie at the WUSA9 debate, saying that for his 13 years on the council, many of his bills never got funded.
“I have a track record of making sure my things are funded and passed,” she said. “My opponent talks about his bills, but they have never been funded or implemented so they don’t count.”
Saying that McDuffie’s bills have “never” been funded or implemented isn’t accurate, of course. There have been examples, though, where that’s true.
One bill McDuffie often likes to tout, and says he would implement as mayor, is Baby Bonds. That’s a program he passed into law in 2021 to put city money into trust funds for low-income kids every year until they are 18, allowing them to use it thereafter for education, to buy a home, or to start a business. (Lewis George voted in favor of the bill.) Despite being the law of the land, no money has yet been set aside.
While startup and initial administrative costs were funded, Bowser has repeatedly used her significant budgetary powers to pull funding for the program. (The cost is estimated at around $30 million a year.) As the city’s budget has tightened, it has gotten harder to restore any of it.
There were similar funding fights over the NEAR Act, McDuffie’s sweeping bill that pushed D.C. to address violence as a public health problem. The bill had multiple components, but funding was only phased in slowly — and in some cases not at all. Of course, McDuffie authored plenty of bills during his time in office (a select list from his office is here), and others were funded and implemented — that includes a bill that gives residents access to free legal representation in civil matters like landlord-tenant court, for one.
Lewis George has a thinner legislative record, and some of her marquee bills — like one to create social housing in D.C. — never even got to a vote. But she says she’s also identified funding to make sure ideas become reality, like when she worked with colleagues to increase taxes on wealthy households to help fund housing vouchers and increased pay for childcare workers.
Martin is a longtime reporter and editor in D.C. He formerly worked for WAMU 88.5 and DCist.com, and has contributed to the Washington City Paper and other publications. He's been in D.C. for 25 years, and tries to ride his bike everywhere he can.
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