Wilson Building Bulletin: Our new (interim) councilmember

For years Doni Crawford quietly sat behind D.C.’s councilmembers. On Tuesday, though, she joined them on the dais. 

Crawford, 36, was unanimously confirmed by lawmakers to serve as an interim at-large councilmember, filling the seat previously held by Kenyan McDuffie – her former boss who resigned earlier this month to run for mayor. 

A council staffer since 2022 and policy analyst with the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute before that, Crawford was the unexpected winner of a process led by Chairman Phil Mendelson to find a consensus candidate from a list of more than 40 hopefuls – some of whom were former councilmembers themselves.

“In talking to members, it was clear there was broad support for Ms. Crawford,” said Mendelson. 

The search unfolded largely behind closed doors over the last two weeks, with Mendelson holding meetings with small groups of lawmakers. That he opted to hide the proceedings – the full list of 42 was never distributed, for fear of leaks – initially rankled some of his colleagues, but most later conceded that Mendelson managed the unprecedented process as well as he could to avoid it devolving into chaos.

(Under D.C. law, it’s left to the entire council to find an interim councilmember to fill the two seats held by non-Democrats; for those held by Democrats, it’s up to the Democratic Party to nominate someone.) 

A source close to the process tells The 51st that Crawford was among a group of six or seven credible finalists identified by the 12 councilmembers – and the one who they most consistently ranked in their top three choices. 

Mendelson said that Crawford struck most councilmembers as “very authentic, sincere, and concerned with the District.” But he also added that she’s “clearly knowledgeable about the council,” which many lawmakers said was a key trait they were looking for. (Ward 4 Councilmember and mayoral hopeful Janeese Lewis George said in an interview with NBC4 that she pushed for Eboni-Rose Thompson, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education.)

“There is no doubt that Doni Crawford is immensely capable and ready to take this on from her depth of understanding of how the council and city work,” said At-Large Councilmember Robert White. 

Crawford’s knowledge will be put to the test almost immediately as the council enters its budget season, starting with oversight hearings for dozens of city agencies and followed by a grueling two-month process to review and make changes to the budget that Mayor Muriel Bowser is expected to send them in April. At the same time, she has to hire staff and introduce herself to residents, many of whom will never have heard of her.

“In the first 30 days, I want to make sure I am everywhere across all eight wards,” said Crawford, a renter in Ward 5. “I want to hit the ground outside the building to see what residents want.”

There will be other challenges, according to two councilmembers who themselves started in the Wilson Building as legislative staffers.

“When I was a staffer, you could do the research and make the recommendation, but at the end of the day you’re not the person who casts the vote,” says At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson. “You’ve now got to think about things differently because your name will be associated with that vote in the record.”

Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen says Crawford will also have to distinguish herself from McDuffie, her former boss. 

“Part of the challenge is showing how you are your own person, what distinction can she draw, where would she have approached an issue differently,” he says. “You don’t want to be Kamala Harris on The View saying, ‘I wouldn't have done anything differently.’ That’s not what you want. You want to talk about who you are and how you would do it.” 

All of this, of course, builds towards the question now hanging over Crawford’s head: Will she run in the June 16 special election to finish out McDuffie’s term, or in the November general election for a four-year term of her own? “I don’t have any comment about my future plans,” she told reporters this week.

If Crawford does harbor those ambitions, she’ll have to declare them soon – and start campaigning. If she does, she’ll be facing a known challenger: former at-large councilmember Elissa Silverman has announced she’s running in the special election. (She was defeated by McDuffie in 2022.) For those who have been in the Wilson Building long enough, this possibility has sparked memories of 2011, when Sekou Biddle claimed an interim at-large seat only to lose a special election four months later.

Crawford’s council colleagues may have chosen her because she was best placed to jump into the position at this moment in time, but that doesn’t mean voters would extend her the same courtesy in six months. 

“Politics,” offered one Wilson Building source, “is not meritocracy.”

Labor unions push back on Waymo in D.C.

You can currently get a ride in a self-driving Waymo car in San Francisco, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami – and they may soon start in Orlando and even Australia. But though they have been testing in D.C. nearly two years, passengers can’t yet hail them – and a planned 2026 launch may well be scuttled. 

One of the hangups is a report that the D.C. Department of Transportation was tasked with producing that would include policy recommendations on fully legalizing self-driving car services. (Currently, Waymo and other companies can test with a human driver in the car.) In a letter to Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen this month, DDOT said the report – which was initially due in late 2022 – likely won’t be ready until May, and even then it won’t include draft legislation that the council could then debate and vote on.

Meanwhile, local unions are following the lead of their brothers nationwide and mounting a campaign to slow – if not fully stop – the adoption of passenger service in self-driving cars in D.C. 

Legalizing it “threatens to displace thousands of essential transportation workers, many of whom are immigrants and people of color, who rely on this work to support their families and communities,” wrote the Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO in a letter to the council in December. “Waymo and other Big Tech corporations are rushing to place commercial driverless vehicles on public roads, profiting from the elimination of jobs without a genuine discussion about impacts on communities and public safety as well as without any guarantee of a just transition for displaced workers.” 

Similar labor pushes against Waymo have happened in Boston, Seattle, and New York City. A source tells us that local unions have been ushering ride-share drivers to meetings with D.C. councilmembers in recent weeks, and while specific demands haven’t been made, they’ve been urging lawmakers to consider the fate of those drivers if Waymo and other self-driving vehicles are legalized. 

“We are not against technology, but we are against corporate greed disguised as innovation. Waymo threatens a vital source of income for thousands of D.C. residents,” writes Jaime Contreras, executive director of 32BJ SEIU, in a message to The 51st. “Out-of-state tech corporations don’t get to call the shots in our city. We are calling on the leaders in the District to ensure working people are not left behind or left out of this conversation.”

Meanwhile, advocates of self-driving cars argue that the technology is simply safer than human drivers. Recent data from Waymo showed that its cars were involved in 91% fewer crashes than human drivers on the same roads. Waymo, for its part, told us late last year that it would be ready to begin service here in 2026 and wants D.C. officials to write “commonsense regulations” to allow it to start carrying passengers in the city.

The push for a rent freeze continues

Maybe the third time’s a charm? That’s what advocates of a two-year rent freeze in D.C. must be hoping.

Local activists are again reworking a proposed ballot initiative that, if approved by voters, would freeze rents in the city for two years and make a number of other changes to how affordable housing gets built. 

The changes come after a pair of legal setbacks in the D.C. Board of Elections – the ultimate arbiter of what initiatives can actually make it on the ballot. The most recent issue for the More Affordable D.C. campaign came earlier this month, when the board rejected proposed language for the initiative that would have mandated new income targets for affordable housing that’s built using public funds.

The language would have required that more of the housing go to residents who have the lowest incomes; currently it can go to a broader range. But the board argued that the restriction would unlawfully impose on the D.C. Council’s budget powers.    

The campaign has now tweaked the language to simply make that provision a non-binding recommendation. The two-year rent freeze remains in place, but was amended to lower the threshold at which future rent freezes would kick in (now set for if inflation exceeds 5%). And the initiative also seeks to lower the maximum rent increase in rent-controlled units, from 10% currently to 6%. 

If the elections board approves the new language, the campaign would need to get  25,000 signatures to get the initiative on November’s ballot.

As we reported last year, there’s been an uptick in proposed ballot initiatives that could be decided by D.C. voters later this year. One would ban the sale of foie gras in D.C.; proponents have been cleared to start collecting signatures from voters to get it on the ballot. Another would increase D.C.’s minimum wage to $25 by 2029 and fully phase out the tipped wage by two years later; that one is still making its way through board review.