Even Democrats are worried about the sharp spike in crime they’ve been stabbed with, like an ice pick. The beltway denizens have been focused on national issues while ignoring local ones. Now that their police have been defunded out of existence, they’re finally taking notice and taking their ire out on the City Council member responsible for it, Charles Allen.
Crime spree raises anxiety
Politico is extremely worried about the “new age of anxiety” because not just a wave of crime but a tsunami of it has washed through the District of Columbia.
The thing that bothers the pundits at Politico is that it’s “turned Democrat against Democrat.” National politicians in our Capitol city are really angry with the the 13 members of the D.C. Council. One of them in particular. Charles Allen.
According to lobbyist Moses Mercado, half the residents of Washington are politicos just like himself. Originally from Texas, the loyal Democrat “ran John Kerry’s presidential campaign in New Mexico.”
WOW, our grassroots movement to #recallcharlesallen continues to grow, with more than $70K raised from 523 supporters in just 3 weeks. More criminals, fewer police is a FAILED plan. We’re inspired by this momentum to make a difference & #saveDC! Join us: https://t.co/bc789Yw0NA
— Recall Charles Allen (@recallallen) February 8, 2024
He’s spent years as a staffer on the Hill. Just like all of his associates, when election time came, they all ticked off whoever was listed with a D after their name in local races. They trusted their comrades to keep them safe. The out of control crime spree they have to cope with has them coming to the realization of how big a mistake that was.
“I just went along with my business,” Mercado relates. “I didn’t need anything.” There’s an extra dimension to living in that particular city. “I always felt like I was an intruder. Working on the Hill, you come from that perspective of, ‘I’m just here.‘”
Crime statistics have forced them to take a much more active interest in local politics. Mercado “and a slew of other national-politics pros with similarly thin municipal-politics chops — are throwing themselves into the most in-the-weeds aspect of local political logistics.”
Doing the unthinkable
All of that effort is focused on “raising money, circulating petitions and planning door-knocking strategies in the name of a recall campaign.”
One targeted directly against the D.C. council member they blame for “the city’s shocking wave of homicides, carjackings and robberies.” It was a crime that Charles Allen got elected.
When Mike Gill, a former Trump administration official, was viciously assassinated recently, the crime caused an immediate flurry of conversation about how they got to such a state of anarchy and what they could do about it.
Summary: Average centrist Washingtonians live very busy lives and took local politics for granted. Radical activists like @charlesallen took advantage of this and ran/won most of the positions in the city, creating the crime crisis we have today https://t.co/gKOV3hrYGP
— Hank Thomas (@HankThomasDC) February 9, 2024
Especially because Gill was “the rare political type who kept a hand in both Company-Town Washington and Hometown D.C., where he’d been the GOP member of the city’s election board.”
They quickly figured out that a fellow Democrat named Charles Allen is practically the one singlehandedly responsible for all the dangerous violent crime. He’s “the councilmember most associated with championing the force reductions, budget cuts and new transparency rules that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd.” All those BLM protesters outside his house convinced him he better do something to keep all the criminals out of jail.
“When you have people who are committing violent crimes over and over, something has to change,” Capitol Hill resident and “heavyweight Democratic fundraiser” Tonya Fulkerson agrees. “He pushes these policies that are extreme far left. He listens to these extreme advocacy groups over his own voters in his own ward.” They put him into office and they can take him out.
