Bowser’s blunders: Four times DC’s Democratic mayor courted controversy

Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., has seen her fair share of controversy during her tenure.

From threatened lawsuits over her flip-flopping on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to her stance on the city’s crime bill, here are four times Bowser faced controversy.

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SNAP increase

Bowser showed support for a move that would use $40 million in excess funds from the city to boost its SNAP but abruptly faltered in her position in December.

“Should we advance a nine-month benefit that goes away? Or should we work on something that’s more sustainable for more people? That’s the question I put to the council,” she said, according to NBC4.

The apparent flip-flop drew outrage from social activists, who argued that withholding the boost from the program would be illegal. Legal Aid DC announced a planned lawsuit against Bowser, to which she responded by retracting her hesitance and confirming the SNAP increase.

Stance on crime bill

Washington seized national attention early last year when the city council passed a crime bill that reduced punishments for many violent crimes amid a surge in them. Bowser invited the anger of liberal activists and the city council by vetoing the bill, arguing it sent the “wrong message.”

“I support modernizing and standardizing the District’s criminal code. However, given the broad scope of legislation, and remaining divisions of the criminal justice community, I urge the Council to take more time to consider it, a sentiment I have heard echoed in the community,” Bowser wrote in a letter to the council. “A complete overhaul of our city’s criminal code is a once-a-century opportunity. I believe it is more important to get this opportunity right than to add policies and weaken penalties into what should be a bill that makes D.C. safer. As elected officials, it is our duty to ensure our criminal justice system is fair and functional. Enacting this legislation without listening to our criminal justice partners or our judicial branch fails to uphold that duty.”

Her veto was quickly overruled by a majority of the council, leading to a national showdown in which Congress moved in to veto the bill. Despite her own veto, Bowser criticized Congress’s intervention, saying it set a bad precedent.

Immigrant housing in COVID-19 quarantine hotels

Washington was one of the first targets of Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) policy of busing immigrants to large blue cities up north. As with other cities, including New York City and Chicago, the district has struggled to cope with the influx, with Bowser unsuccessfully begging for support from the National Guard.

In August 2022, Bowser invited controversy by utilizing an unconventional solution for the lack of space for the new influx — hotels slated for COVID-19 quarantine patients. This policy of housing immigrants in the Hampton Inn in the NoMa neighborhood quickly led to fury from immigrant advocates, who said the solution was inhumane.

The advocates argued the solution was inhumane because the hotel staff, most of whom only spoke English, were unable to accommodate the immigrants. COVID-19 restrictions also limited the immigrants’ freedom within the building, leading to complaints.

Families housed in the hotel received a room with three meals a day, but advocates said this wasn’t enough. Difficulties communicating with the hotel staff and overcrowding meant that other resources were hard to come by. Anonymous immigrants speaking with the DCist said they were relegated to sitting around, watching TV for most of the day. Third-party organizations provided families with diapers, milk, baby supplies, clothes, and toys for children.

Black Lives Matter Plaza

Amid violent riots surrounding the death of George Floyd in 2020, Bowser commissioned street art saying “Black Lives Matter” in large 50-foot yellow letters along two blocks of 16th Street outside the White House. A public records request from Judicial Watch last year found that $271,231 was spent on materials and labor for the paint job. In 2021, Bowser promised to spend $4.8 million to “transform” the newly renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza.

The move came under heavy criticism, largely from conservatives, who argued it was a misallocation of funds as violent crime continued to skyrocket.

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“It’s insulting on multiple fronts,” Zack Smith, a crime and justice expert at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner in November. “If the city council and the mayor’s office are serious about combating violent crime, protecting the lives hopefully of all citizens, but particularly black lives, then they would pour more money into public safety — particularly putting more police officers on the street.”

“Instead, it seems like the city is prioritizing performative gestures that really don’t have an impact on combating violent crime,” he said, adding it sends the “message that violent crime will be tolerated in the city.”