Opinions
Why I support Muriel Bowser for mayor
From ethics to access, Democratic candidate is D.C.’s best bet


Muriel Bowser has said she is committed to hiring a cabinet that will function under strict ethics rules. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
As an out and proud gay man, the choice to support someone other than the gay man running for D.C. mayor was not a decision made lightly. It was, however, made easier because of the many values shared with his Democratic opponent.
Not since 1994 has there been a real contested mayoral election in the District of Columbia. At that time, my support went to Carol Schwartz and I helped write her platform. This time after looking closely at the candidates my vote will go to Muriel Bowser on Nov. 4. She is the right person to be mayor at this time in the District’s history.
Many friends ask what difference it makes. Isn’t politics just a dirty business? My response to that is a resounding no. Because of the work of good public servants, and many deeply committed activists in our community, the District has continued to move forward and improve. We are headed in the right direction since Anthony Williams was elected mayor in 1998. Williams upgraded city services, bringing agency operations into the technological age. Adrian Fenty built on what Williams did and moved education reform to the front burner.
Mayor Gray built on what Williams and Fenty began and rebuilt our reserve fund to record levels. His administration, with Chancellor Kaya Henderson, has made good progress in continuing education reform and our students have shown marked progress. Gray focused on rebuilding local education opportunities for students with disabilities. Today the District is in the best financial condition it has seen. Services are being delivered on time and efficiently. Our streets are clean and business is booming. People continue to move into the District at the rate of about 1,000 a month and we are on everyone’s top-10 list — from ‘hippest’ city to the best place for college grads to move to healthiest city to best sustainable energy plans, to name just a few.
So what we need in our next mayor is someone who will work to continue the progress we have made, provide stability, have a commitment to running an ethical government and ensure that all our neighbors can share in the District’s progress. What we don’t need is someone who castigates people in public hearings or grabs a quick headline, often without follow through. We need someone who understands how to work with all people, whether or not they agree with her; someone who after four years in the mayor’s office will be able to say, “We have continued to build our city and now it works better for everyone.” That candidate is Muriel Bowser.
Muriel understands our city as only a fifth generation Washingtonian can. She knows it still doesn’t work for everyone and grabbing headlines with a public hearing isn’t always the best way to help. Sometimes it’s working behind the scenes and getting government to work the way it is supposed to for the people. There are parts of our city that have been left out of the economic boom and many people still feel marginalized. In our booming metropolis there are people who are starving and homeless; many are illiterate. We need a mayor who will do the hard work and get government to focus on them — a mayor who has lived her entire life in the District supporting the principles of sharing and community involvement and who understands we can make a difference by bringing people together. That is Muriel Bowser.
The principles of community involvement and participation she lives were ingrained in Muriel by parents who believed in them and the principles of the Democratic Party. Her parents taught her to believe in equality for all; that working people deserve a chance to get ahead and earn their way into the middle class. That everyone should have a chance for the American dream and to reach their full potential, whatever that is. They taught her unions were there to help protect workers’ rights and that we all owe something to the community for what we are given.
She understood early that the principles espoused by the Republican Party weren’t hers, unlike her opponent, David Catania, who apparently only understood that when it became personal. As an adult and a Republican elected official he proudly called himself a ‘maverick’ and supported George W. Bush for president. The term didn’t describe someone being ‘independent,’ rather it meant he was in lock-step with the Republican Party raising more than $150,000 to help bring us the Bush/Cheney years.
I met Muriel when she first ran for Council and found out how smart, committed to public service and improving people’s lives she is. She has shown the depth of her understanding of government and our city. She knows how difficult it is to bring people together. She worked to pass the first real ethics bill in the Council when five of her colleagues introduced their own bills. It isn’t like passing a bill that most of your colleagues sign onto before hearings are even held as her opponent often did. She has the ability to work with communities across our city who don’t always agree on the right way to govern or even what they want from government. It means not working with developers on a plan and then bringing it to communities to endorse but rather doing what she is doing at the Walter Reed site in Ward 4 and setting up an advisory committee to see what neighbors want and then taking that to developers to see who could deliver it.
It is working from the bottom up, not the top down like David Catania likes to do. What he did with his recent education bills when he paid a law firm with money he raised from rich friends to write bills and then went to the community for comments. Chastising many in the process, including the chancellor, who suggested it would have been prudent to come to them before writing the legislation. But that wasn’t the way to grab a headline and not the way Catania likes to work.
When Muriel was elected to the Council she understood it was officially a part-time job but she took it as full time. Her achievements may not have had her author as many bills as her opponent but she achieved the goal of making government work more efficiently for her constituents and they rewarded her by re-electing her twice. Catania took the part-time part of his Council job seriously and has earned in the neighborhood of $2 million working for law firms and even a business that contracts with the District while serving as a Council member. He has always had more than one boss while working for the people of the District while Muriel’s only bosses are the people who elect her.
Recently, when workers from a local construction company, Baker D.C., approached the Council to ask it to sign a letter to their company asking them to meet and negotiate with workers, Catania was the only Council member who refused to sign. It was a stark reminder of where Catania really stands on issues. As reported in the Washington Post, “Catania has had a long relationship with the construction industry, most prominently by working as a vice president for non-union electrical contractor M.C. Dean until 2012. His political campaigns have enjoyed the support of firms active with Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group that has opposed ‘project labor agreements’ and other union-friendly measures.”
When questioned about not signing the letter Catania said, “I didn’t see the evidence of management frustrating the rights of workers.” So Catania took management’s side, which seems to be what his natural Republican tendencies dictate. He has also voted against sick leave for workers.
Many believe the two most important positions in the mayor’s cabinet are that of police chief and schools chancellor. Muriel has made a commitment to retain those currently in the jobs — Cathy Lanier at the MPD and Kaya Henderson at DCPS. She has spoken with them, asked them to stay and they have agreed to do so and work with her. If we are to continue to move forward on school reform, which is one of the main planks of Muriel’s platform, she understands that stability and continuity at DCPS are crucial. She also understands that people in different parts of the District view our police differently and is committed to working with Chief Lanier to have every resident in this city trust in the MPD. On the other hand, Catania has not said if he would reappoint either of them.
What we don’t need is a wholesale shake-up of government. The worst thing is leaving people and businesses with a feeling of instability. Whether it is the business community, parents, or those 1,000 people a month moving here, they want to know that the progress we have made will continue at a reliable and steady pace. Muriel has said she isn’t afraid to shake things up when that is the only way to make progress and in the case of Fire/EMS she is committed to doing that. But she has also spoken out about the progress we have made under Mayors Anthony Williams, Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray and is committed to continuing that progress in an orderly and efficient way.
With Muriel we get a mayor who is ethically beyond reproach even though Catania will try anything to get you to believe otherwise. After 16 years on the Council, Catania is as tied to the power structure in the District as anyone else in office.
An example of Catania being comfortable with businesses being involved in local politics and making contributions to impact voting outcomes occurred during the time he worked for an M.C. Dean subsidiary — the same M.C. Dean that paid him $240,000 a year until he left that job when considering a run for mayor. A letter in the Loudoun Times and a column in the Washington Post outlined the following, “From 2005 to 2011 he worked as in-house Counsel for their subsidiary OpenBand, LLC, which operates broadband communications networks. At the time his Chief of staff also took a job with OpenBand, LLC. Both were there when M.C. Dean, of which OpenBand, LLC is a subsidiary, and its executives gave more than $35,000 in contributions to candidates vying for seats on the Loudoun Board of Supervisors according to Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) records. Records show that tens of thousands more have gone to General Assembly candidates and political action committees, supporting candidates who could vote on contracts for either M.C. Dean or OpenBand, LLC.”
Then the Washington City Paper in 2008 reported that while Catania was on the D.C. Council and working quietly to help Patrick Mara defeat fellow Council member Carol Schwartz, (full disclosure: I supported Mara), “his employer was also raising money for Patrick Mara and was one of the prime funders of the Citizens for Empowerment PAC that sent out Schwartz attack mailers.”
When Catania doubled his salary at M.C. Dean in 2011 one of the first things he had to do after taking that job was to recuse himself from the vote on the Electrician’s Equality Act of 2011 passed by the D.C. Council when he should have been able to speak out on the bill and cast a vote to represent the constituents that elected him. This is a clear example of why having an outside job, especially with a company that has a contract with the District, is wrong.
Muriel is committed to hiring a cabinet that will function under strict ethics rules and will issue an executive order to see that all city workers understand their roles and pledge to serve the people ethically.
With Muriel we get a mayor who can work with the people in every ward and who respects everyone. She won’t denigrate or talk down to those who may disagree with her. We need a mayor who understands both the old and new Washington and has the ability to bring them together. Muriel Bowser will be that mayor.
Then there are both the tangibles and intangibles that come with electing a Democrat. While it isn’t my main reason for supporting Muriel it definitely went into my decision process. At a recent fundraiser for John Tierney (D-Mass.) my good friend, former Congressman Barney Frank said it best, “Being a Democrat means standing for something.” It means working for and with people. It means working toward immigration reform; LGBT civil and human rights; and the right for women to have equal pay, full equality and control of their own bodies. It means supporting workers and unions and building the middle class. It means demanding that all people have the right to vote. While clearly not all these issues are directly related to running the District government, having a Democrat as the mayor of our nation’s capital says to people in no uncertain terms, these are the things the people of the District stand for. It also calls into question which principles of the Democratic Party David Catania is so uncomfortable with. A recent Washington Post column reported that when asked why he became an independent and not a Democrat after leaving the Republican Party, he responded, “I have been in one bad marriage and I’m not about to jump into another.”
There is another way in which electing Bowser could benefit our city and the nation. Many believe in 2016 we will elect our first woman president, a Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton. To the District it could mean that our next mayor, Bowser, can play a direct role in making that happen. She will be a super-delegate to the Democratic National Convention and can cast her vote for Hillary. As a young woman she will be able to speak out not only for equality in our city, but for making the nation a place where everyone has an equal chance to get ahead. Muriel Bowser will have access to power and the better ability to make the case for the people of the District for independence. She will work closely with our champion on the Hill, Democrat Eleanor Holmes Norton, to move the issues of the District forward. Muriel will have access that no Republican or independent could ever have.
For so many reasons I urge everyone to cast their ballot for Muriel Bowser for mayor on Nov. 4.

The felon in the White House, who has lied his way to victory, has now signed his ‘big disgusting bill’ into law. He has managed to get members of Congress to agree to screw their own constituents, and vote for this abomination of a bill.
Republican members of Congress who have said it will be a disaster in their states. Who have said it will force the closure of rural hospitals, and throw seniors out of nursing homes, in their states, because they will lose their Medicaid. Who have said they oppose the bill because it will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit, which young people will suffer for in years to come. They have said they oppose it because it pretends to help those earning tips and overtime, but close reading of the fine print shows it does practically nothing for them. But because their lips are firmly attached to Trump’s ass, they voted for it anyway. It is the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the country’s history. Now if that doesn’t give decent people the incentive they need to fight, to take back their country, nothing will. And when I say fight, I mean with their votes.
To win, Democrats need to stop the self-immolation. Democrats are doing fine across the nation. Winning many special elections for state legislatures and the judiciary. Even when they don’t win, the margins in solid Republican districts are way down. Democrats will win governorships in New Jersey and Virginia this year. So instead of Democrats constantly talking about how bad the polls are for the party, and trashing each other, they need to focus on what it will take to win back Congress in 2026. The best way to start is to trash Republicans. I am concerned about groups like David Hogg’s PAC, and figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders, supporting candidates against sitting Democrats. Spending money and time on primaries against sitting democrats, even old ones, may not be the way to go this cycle. We need one focus — taking back Congress in 2026. That means laser like focus on which seats are winnable; open seats, and Republican seats, in both the House and Senate. Doing this is the only way we can stop the felon in the White House, and his MAGA sycophants in Congress, from doing more damage in his final two years as president. Time to face reality, that is really all that can be done for now.
If Democrats take back the House, they can stop the budget machinations Trump is trying to get done. If Democrats take the Senate, they can stop the felon from getting any more MAGA judges, or disgusting unqualified executive branch nominees, confirmed. Again, that has to be the singular focus for 2026 for anyone serious about stopping Trump. I, too, want younger members of Congress. I would urge older Democrats, those in safe districts, to voluntarily step aside. But spending millions to primary them, when in most cases history shows they will win anyway, seems counterproductive at this time. Choose the best candidates in primaries for open and Republican seats — those with the best chance of winning in the general election. I have given my support at this time to Zach Wahls, running to unseat Sen. Joni Ernst in Iowa.
Democrats must remember that most of the voters in the nation are moderate and concerned with kitchen table issues. So, while there are districts far left candidates can win, like Mamdani who just won the mayoral primary in New York City, we have seen such candidates lose in most of the country. There are takeaways from Mamdani’s win in New York for every candidate, other than everyone likes things for free. I recommend candidates look at the brilliant way he used social media. That is something Democrats around the country need to learn. People, especially young people, get their news that way these days. Then Democrats must accept the midterm elections are really local elections. They will be about what the local Democratic candidate campaigns on, and the contrast to what the Republican Party is doing for, or in most cases to, the voters in that particular district.
If Democrats do anything nationally it should be to flood the airwaves with the negatives of Trump’s bill. If done right Democrats will win. Then stop trashing Democrats who don’t agree with you on every issue. Again, stop listening to the likes of Bernie Sanders, who tells people if they don’t like everything about a Democrat, they can vote for an independent. History tells us that only helps Republicans.
Understand the most important vote any legislator makes is their first one. It determines who will control the legislature. Who will be Speaker of the House, and Majority Leader in the Senate, and most state legislatures. If the vote is for the Democratic leadership, then Democrats control the agenda, and committees. That is how to make a real difference.
Stop listening to those who claim the Democratic Party is not clear on what it stands for. The Democratic platform has been clear for years. Democrats support equality, unions, working people, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. They support the right of women to control their bodies; support equality for the LGBTQ community. Democrats are for a fair immigration policy; doing everything possible to fight climate change, and protect the environment; bringing down prices for groceries, gas, and rent. If Democrats take back control of committees, in both state legislatures, and Congress, they can once again begin to move forward on all those issues.
So, stop the self-immolation, and attack Republicans. They are the enemy of the people, not a Democrat who you may not agree with on every issue. Try to move forward as a united Democratic Party. If everyone understands and does that, Democrats will win in 2025 and 2026, and will stop the felon in the White House before he totally destroys our country.
Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.
Opinions
USAID’s demise: America’s global betrayal of trust with LGBTQ people
Trump-Vance administration dismantled agency after taking office

The U.S. Agency for International Development — proudly my institutional home for several years of my international development career and an American institutional global fixture since November 1961 — is no more.
How will USAID’s closure impact LGBTQI+ people around the world, especially in poor, struggling countries (“the Global South”)? Time will tell, but “dire,” “appalling,” and “shameful” are appropriate adjectives, given the massive increase in HIV/AIDS deaths that follow the callous, abrupt, and unspeakably cruel cut-off of funding for USAID’s health and humanitarian programming in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and care.
Regarding LGBTQI+ people and issues, USAID worked in a tough neighborhood. In Africa alone, more than 30 countries in which USAID had programming still criminalize same-sex relationships, often to the point of imposing the death penalty. These fiercely anti-LGBTQI+ countries share harsh anti-LGBTQI+ punishments with most countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Other countries where USAID formerly worked retain colonial-era sodomy laws.
Where did USAID fit into all this turbulence? The agency was not allowed to transgress local laws, so how could it support the human rights of local LGBTQI+ people? USAID did so by building close and trusting relationships with local LGBTQI+ civil society, and by “superpower advocacy” for the universal human rights of all people, including those of us in the queer community.
I served at USAID’s Africa Bureau under the Obama administration, becoming the only openly transgender political appointee in USAID’s history. In that role, I was privileged to have a platform that caught the astounded attention of both queer people and of anti-LGBTQI+ governments around the world. If the president of the United States can elevate a transgender woman to such a senior position within the U.S. government, that open declaration of acceptance, inclusion, worth, and recognition set a precedent that many in the LGBTQI+ community worldwide hoped their countries would emulate.
Serving as an openly queer person at USAID also afforded me the opportunity to meet with many fiercely anti-LGBTQI+ senior politicians and government officials from African countries who sought USAID funding. Uganda’s first woman speaker of the parliament, Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga and her whole delegation came to see me at USAID in Washington about such funding. I had some very frank (and USAID-approved) “talking points” to share with her and her team about President Obama’s strong and secular commitment to equal human rights for all people. My tense meeting with her was also an opportunity to educate her as to the nature of the transgender, nonbinary, and intersex community — we who are simply classified and discriminated against as “gay” people in Uganda and in most countries in the Global South. I also had the chance to represent USAID in the “inter-agency” LGBTQI+ human rights task team led by openly gay U.S. Ambassador David Pressman, whose effective leadership of that Obama-era initiative was inspirational.
Working closely with professional, capable, and caring USAID career employees such as Ajit Joshi and Anthony Cotton, and with the strong and open support of the USAID Deputy Administrator Don Steinberg, I helped to craft and promote USAID’s very first LGBTQI+ policy. Under President Obama, USAID also created the LGBT Global Development Partnership, a public-private partnership supporting LGBTQI+ civil society groups throughout the Global South. USAID funding also increased for programs promoting LGBTQI+ inclusion, anti-violence, and relevant human rights protections. This programming expanded further (albeit never adequately funded) during the Biden administration under the able leadership of USAID Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam and his team.
So what did it all mean? Has USAID left a footprint for the global LGBTQI+ community? Will its absence matter?
In my view, that answer is an emphatic yes. International development and humanitarian response go to the heart of recognizing, respecting, and caring about universal human dignity. USAID converted those ethical commitments into tangible and meaningful action, again and again, and modelled for the world what it means to truly include all persons.
My time serving at USAID was a high point of my career, being surrounded by the best of American civil servants and foreign service officers. For me, “USAID Forever” remains my battle cry. Let’s start thinking of how we will rebuild it, beginning in three years.
Chloe Schwenke is a professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
Opinions
Community comes together to repair WorldPride history exhibition
Vandals damaged pictures, timeline walls on June 22

Earlier this month, vandals shouting homophobic slurs damaged the 8-foot hero cubes and timeline walls of the Rainbow History Project’s (RHP) WorldPride exhibition “Pickets, Protests, and Parades: The History of Gay Pride in Washington.” The week’s incident was the fifth homophobic attack on the exhibition chronicling DC’s LGBTQ+ History, the vandalism damage was only made worse by the storms this past week.
In response, RHP posted a call online for volunteers and donations and over a dozen volunteers showed up on Saturday to repair the exhibition in its final stretch.
It took three hours, but the group assembled during a heat advisory to bend the fences back into place, fix the cubes and zip tie all the materials together to keep them safe. Some of those who came out to volunteer, Slatt said, were known RHP volunteers but most were total strangers who had attended an event here or there or just wanted to get involved for the first time, one was even in D.C. as an out-of-town guest and after seeing the Instagram call, decided to spend their day lifting some heavy fencing back into place.
When asked why they showed up, volunteer Abbey said: “especially during Pride month, it’s so important to come together as a community, not just to celebrate, but to support each other. To know that this historic exhibit is even able to exist right now under this administration is really amazing. The fact that we’re just able to help continue it in its last leg of being out here is really important.”
“Rainbow History Project does a lot of work for the community,” another volunteer Ellie said, “they show up in a lot of ways that I think we really need right now, so in terms of being asked to come out and do a couple hours of lifting, that is something that we can easily support and do.”
“We put out a call asking for support from the community, and so we didn’t know what we’d get,” Slatt continued, “but strangers have shown up. We were upset, we were crying. We were trying to come up with a battle plan and more and more people have shown up with open arms and empty hands to do this. It’s 95 degrees, we are melting in the heat. It’s just amazing the number of people who have come here.”
If anything, the anonymous exhibit designer said, the people who vandalized the exhibit made the community stronger and mobilized members passionate about preserving and sharing our histories. Their efforts backfired in a big way — bringing together people who had only attended one or two RHP events or had read about the organization online to actively contribute to the work.
It’s a meaningful representation of the history of D.C.’s LGBTQ+ community, one that often starts with a small group of people who come together to protest but soon mobilize their communities and enact monumental change in the nation’s capital.
“If Pride in D.C. started with 10 people picketing the White House,” Slatt remarked, “you just got 12 more to join the gay history movement.”
This was especially poignant, another volunteer Mattie said, on the week that the Supreme Court issued a decision allowing Tennessee to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy for minors seeking gender affirming care. It was a devastating moment for the LGBTQ+ community who mobilized once more in front of the Supreme Court this past Friday.
“It’s been actually really important to see this community come together in the face of direct attack on our history in the wake of direct attacks on our rights,” Mattie said, “and we stand up to that. We come together, and we represent. That is so important to maintaining our strength and our community throughout trying times now and ahead.”
When asked about how community members can support RHP’s work and repair the damage long-term to the exhibit, Slatt urged people to donate to RHP, to volunteer as exhibit monitors, and to come visit the exhibit.
“We’ve been doing this for 25 years. This is our 25th anniversary, and if it weren’t for volunteers donating their time and their talents, if it weren’t for small dollar donors, we would never have gotten anything done,” Slatt said. “I’d say to anyone out there that we are on this plaza all through Independence weekend, we are here through the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, people can come on down.”
Slatt and other volunteers will be leading tours each evening at 7 p.m. at Freedom Plaza, and people can pre-order the exhibition catalog right now, which will be delivered in time for LGBTQ+ History Month in October.
Emma Cieslik is a D.C.-based museum worker and public historian.
-
Federal Government1 day ago
Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege
-
Virginia2 days ago
Defying trends, new LGBTQ center opens in rural Winchester, Va.
-
Opinions3 days ago
USAID’s demise: America’s global betrayal of trust with LGBTQ people
-
Travel4 days ago
Manchester is vibrant tapestry of culture, history, and Pride