PSL STATEMENT: ON Muriel Bowser’s Refusal to Seek a Fourth Term
A legacy of increased police terror, unaffordability, and allegiance to real estate developers, landlords, and Trump will define Mayor Bowser's tenure.
On Tuesday afternoon Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced that she will not seek a fourth term in the highest office of the District of Columbia. In writing her legacy, the people of D.C. will remember Bowser as a politician that declared a war on working-class residents. Siding with the developers, landlords, and the police, she represented the tip of the spear against Chocolate City.
In all areas of concern for working communities, and by every metric, Bowser has failed the people of D.C.
War on Working-Class & Black Families
In 2014, a 2-bedroom apartment cost around $1,469 - today, the average rent is $2,770 for the same-sized apartment. In 2025, Pepco increased its rates for the third consecutive year, with the average D.C. residential customer's monthly bill jumping to $114. Rental assistance funding has dropped dramatically to its lowest level since 2020, despite evidence of overwhelming demand that far exceeds available resources. Tens of thousands of Black residents have left D.C. with affordability being a major documented factor.
And while District residents have seen cut after cut to programs run parallel to a skyrocketing cost of living, the Mayor’s office has been sure to give a raise to the police instead of helping the people. Under Bowser’s tenure, the police budget has bloated from around $497 million in 2014 to $573 million today - even as there are fewer police officers on staff. Bowser's favoritism toward MPD was on full display in April of this year, when amid a spending freeze across all government spending, she waived MPD's budget from being cut.
A Project 2025 for D.C.
Bowser has also overseen a large-scale rollback of the civic rights of its residents won through the struggles for Home Rule and D.C. Statehood. Time and again she has sided with the racist far-right politicians who have demonized D.C.’s autonomy, willingly compromising key parts of D.C. Home Rule.
This year, just a day after Trump called for the removal of a homeless encampment, Bowser accelerated their eviction and ramped up hostility to the District's homeless population. Bowser caved to the efforts of Trump and far-right members of Congress to destroy Black Lives Matter Plaza. In 2024, she sent in the MPD to dismantle the Gaza solidarity encampment at George Washington University. In 2020 during the uprisings against racism, Bowser went further than Trump by imposing a curfew and allowing the mass arrest of protestors across the District. In the years after the uprisings, she rolled back police oversight reforms and increased pretrial detention and curfews of youth. Bowser has allowed the end of all gender-affirming care for trans youth at Children's National Hospital.
But the ultimate betrayal on the people of D.C. has been the total capitulation to Trump’s federal takeover of Washington D.C. since this past August. Weeks into Trump's takeover of MPD, Bowser ordered the continuation of cooperation "to the maximum extent allowable by law. " In practice, this has resulted in the explosion of ICE kidnapping rates, where MPD has assisted with immigration raids in D.C. and led to around 1,200 arrests between August and September alone.
At every step, Bowser has stood by and failed to stand up at all for District residents in ways we should expect from our top levels of civil leadership. The aggressive, pro-billionaire agenda of the billionaire class, Project 2025, has been largely implemented by her hands in this city.
We Need A Bold Program of Resistance
What has been built in the last eleven years under Bowser is a consciousness that we cannot rely on politicians- Democrat or Republican - to guarantee our basic human and civil rights. The fight for Home Rule was won by organic, grassroots struggle, by organizations independent of the two capitalist parties, which we know have no vested interest in giving D.C. residents true democratic rights. As Trump’s two terms led to unprecedented attacks, and as Bowser and the D.C. Council offered little resistance, the people have grown more organized than ever before.
Whoever seeks to succeed Muriel Bowser in the D.C. Mayor’s office should be clear about which side they stand on: with the billionaires, or with the people. Affordability must be at the top of the agenda, declaring war directly on the predatory landlord and developer class that robs renters, and providing immediate emergency relief for all residents struggling to keep a roof over their heads. A program for youth that guarantees they thrive must be fostered, not further arrests and curfews. Transportation must be fully funded and the buses must finally be made free. The dictatorship of austerity and budget cuts must be overthrown, and a program that seeks to protect and expand the economic and civil rights of D.C. residents must be put in its place.
It will take boldness to protect this city's residents from the destructive far-right agenda of Trump and Bowser, but we cannot mistake difficult and impossible. It is a question of will power and popular power: what the masses of working people unite behind can never be stopped. If we fight for a program for the people, we can win it!