Kenyan McDuffie concedes DC mayoral primary to Janeese Lewis George

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Kenyan McDuffie concedes DC mayoral primary to Janeese Lewis George

2026-06-19 01:07 Last Updated At：01:10

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington, D.C., mayoral candidate Kenyan McDuffie on Thursday conceded the Democratic primary race to Janeese Lewis George.

Although the official certification of the primary race is continuing, McDuffie said in a statement that “it is clear that the voters have chosen a different path.” The former member of the D.C. council said he had contacted Lewis George and congratulated her. He thanked his supporters and urged them to continue working for the city.

"The campaign may be over, but the work of building a safer, more affordable, more prosperous city continues.”

The Associated Press has not declared a winner in the race. Lewis George had a little less than 53% of the vote Thursday morning, which is just a few percentage points above the 50% threshold to avoid ranked choice voting.

The city is scheduled to release preliminary ranked choice voting results on Sunday. AP will call the race before then if it is clear that the ranked choice process will be avoided.

Lewis George has pledged to aggressively stand up to federal intervention into Washington, D.C.’s, affairs, setting up a potential showdown with President Donald Trump over his administration's moves to challenge the city’s limited autonomy.

If the results stand, Lewis George is likely to win November’s general election in the heavily Democratic city. The winner in the general election will replace Muriel Bowser, who decided not to run again after three terms.

Lewis George would join Robert White Jr., who won the Democratic primary for the district’s delegate to Congress, as the top local officials who likely will contend with the federal government’s intentions for the city. They each campaigned on a promise to take a harder line than their predecessors against the Trump administration’s moves on the district, including its deployment of the National Guard on an ongoing, open-ended mission meant to fight crime.

“As mayor, I will work with anyone who makes D.C. safer,” Lewis George told a crowd of cheering supporters Tuesday night, “but I will also stand up to Trump.”

Washington has limited autonomy and federal leaders retain significant control over local affairs, including approval of the budget and laws passed by the D.C. Council.

Trump further encroached on that autonomy last year when he briefly federalized the city’s police force and deployed an ongoing law enforcement surge that included the National Guard. His efforts to downsize the federal government also roiled the capital region, costing thousands of people their jobs. And he has been reshaping the city by renovating storied landmarks and putting his name or image on buildings.

Lewis George, a self-described democratic socialist and a member of the D.C. Council, has already come under fire from Trump, who last week threatened to place the city under federal control if she won.

“Maybe we’d take back Washington, run it on the federal basis,” he said.

Lewis George, 38, and a third generation Washingtonian, has vowed to overrule an executive order by the city’s police chief permitting local law enforcement to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Lewis George argued the order “hurt the trust of our community.”

She also pledged to use any levers available to her through the city’s home rule compact to resist what she called authoritarian infringements on the district’s local governance.

“We have legal tools we can use to fight back,” she told the AP in an interview before the vote. “And we know that when we have gone to court, we’ve won.”

Bowser found herself walking a fine line between staying in Trump’s good graces and responding to the concerns of constituents, many of whom said she didn’t push back hard enough on Trump’s actions. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the 18-term, 89-year-old delegate to Congress, meanwhile, faced mounting concern from critics who said she wasn’t forcefully pushing back on the Trump administration’s moves against the city.

New Yorkers are set to fete the Knicks with a ticker-tape parade

NEW YORK (AP) — New York is celebrating the Knicks in classic style Thursday, throwing a ticker-tape parade for the team that brought home the NBA championship longed for by generations of fans.

The Knicks' victory — after a 53-year drought - has electrified New Yorkers, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani has predicted that Thursday’s parade might be one of the biggest in the city's history.

The mere fact that it's happening is historic in itself. Although the Knicks won the championship twice in the 1970s, the city didn't host a parade for them either time. Then-Mayor John Lindsay had cut down on ticker-tape extravaganzas for financial and other reasons, and he instead honored the Knicks at a 1970 reception at the mayoral mansion and a jampacked 1973 ceremony outside City Hall.

This time, the city is going all out.

“There will be performances, there will be New Yorkers, there will be the team and there will be history,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday.

The parade is set to start at 10 a.m. Thursday near Battery Park and head up Broadway on the skyscraper-flanked route dubbed the "Canyon of Heroes.” The procession is to end at City Hall, where the players are to get another traditional tribute: keys to the city.

Knicks legends Walt “Clyde” Frazier — a member of the ’70s champion teams — and Patrick Ewing are expected to participate in the parade, according to a person familiar with the plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the details before they were publicly announced. The person said Mike Breen, the Knicks’ play-by-play announcer on MSG Network, was set to emcee the City Hall ceremony.

Alicia Keys, the singer who collaborated with Jay-Z on the New York-loving 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind,” has been tapped to perform.

“How could I not?” Keys said Wednesday in a social media video that featured her on the phone with Knicks forward OG Anunoby.

Police plan to deploy 10,000 officers to secure the event, which follows ebullient but sometimes chaotic street celebrations and some violence during the Knicks' run to victory over the San Antonio Spurs.

“We want people to enjoy this moment,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a planning meeting Wednesday, “but public safety comes first.”

Some 650 sanitation workers have been assigned to clean up what could be tens of thousands of pounds (kilograms) of debris, if recent history is any guide.

Ticker-tape parades derive their name from the narrow strips of paper used by telegraph-era “stock ticker” machines. New York brokerage firm workers took to tossing the paper out their office windows during parades in the late 19th century, adding a swirling aerial spectacle to the festivities.

Over the years, especially up to the mid-1960s, the city rolled out ticker-tape parades to honor visiting foreign leaders, mark historic anniversaries and hail feats in aviation, war, sports, music, space travel and more.

The Knicks' parade will be the 210th, and it comes after a ticker-tape bash for the WNBA's New York Liberty in 2024.

AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney contributed from Southampton, New York.