Real Estate Money Mostly Flowing To One Candidate In D.C. Mayor's Race
D.C. is preparing to elect its first new mayor in 12 years, and the stakes are high for the commercial real estate sector.
The city’s economy has been dragged down by lingering effects of the pandemic and the Trump administration’s job cuts. Downtown office vacancies have hit record highs, with buildings selling for dimes on the dollar. And housing construction has slowed dramatically as investors shy away from the city and landlords face financial distress.
Mayor Muriel Bowser’s successor will be tasked with solving these problems now and for setting the stage in the decades ahead.
Housing has emerged as a key issue in the race, and the two leading candidates, Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and former Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, both released platforms in recent weeks that seek to jump-start development.
Pro-housing advocates appear split on which candidate would be better for their goals, and there is a divide between construction unions and their employers. But the commercial real estate industry has a clear favorite.
McDuffie’s campaign has raised nearly nine times the amount of money from commercial real estate professionals that Lewis George has, a Bisnow analysis of campaign finance records found.
“I'm afraid that if [McDuffie] is not elected, we're going to start going backwards,” said Willco President Gary Cohen, who contributed to McDuffie. “And I think out of all the candidates, Kenyan is the best one to continue that trajectory of where D.C. has been going for the last 30 years.”
McDuffie’s campaign has received 305 contributions from commercial real estate professionals totaling $51,114. Because he is using the city’s five-to-one public funds matching program, that money will have a spending power for his campaign of more than $250K.
Donors are capped at giving $200 to mayoral candidates via D.C.’s Fair Elections Program.
Lewis George’s campaign has received 105 contributions from the industry totaling $6,017. With the city matching program, that money gives her campaign spending power of about $30K.
While the contributions to campaign committees are the most transparent in public records, they only tell part of the story of the fundraising race. Each candidate is also backed by outside groups that have raised far more money.
But the donor rolls provide a window into overall trends in the 2026 race.
CRE industry funds make up 10.7% of the $480K McDuffie’s campaign has raised in the Fair Elections Program since launching on Jan. 14. For Lewis George, industry donations made up 1.2% of the $494K she has raised in the program since Dec. 1.
McDuffie and Lewis George's campaigns didn't respond to Bisnow's requests for comment.
These two front-runners aren’t the only candidates who qualified for the ballot in the mayor’s race, but the others have raised far less money.
Gary Goodweather, a real estate developer who launched a run for mayor in February 2025, has raised $89K since then. Rini Sampath, a government contractor who launched a campaign two months ago, has raised $35K over that span. Vincent Orange, a former D.C. Council member who launched a campaign in January, isn’t participating in the public financing program, and his campaign’s contributions don’t appear in the city’s database.
In addition to making up a larger share of McDuffie’s funding haul, the real estate professionals who gave to him were also much more likely to contribute the $200 individual maximum. The contributions he received from these real estate donors averaged $168, while the real estate contributors who gave to Lewis George averaged $57.
Lewis George’s commercial real estate donors tend to be architects, city planners and housing nonprofits. McDuffie garnered support from some of the city’s biggest developers, brokers and commercial contractors, and his CRE donors include more top executives.
McDuffie received 23 donations from Cushman & Wakefield employees, while Lewis George received one donation from an employee with the brokerage.
Mark Lerner, who runs Lerner Enterprises and the Washington Nationals, gave the maximum contribution to McDuffie, along with Lerner execs Jonathan Lerner, Michael Cohen and Debra Lerner Cohen. They didn’t respond to Bisnow’s requests for comment.
McDuffie also garnered contributions from multiple employees at Edens, EYA, Quadrangle Development Corp., Akridge and MRP Realty. More than 20 individuals from D.C.-based contractor MCN Build gave to his campaign.
McDuffie, a former Department of Justice attorney, represented Ward 5 on the D.C. Council from 2012 to 2023. Then he served as an independent at-large council member from 2023 to the start of this year, including as chair of the influential Committee on Business and Economic Development. He resigned his council seat to run in the Democratic primary.
PRP Real Assets President Paul Dougherty, who gave money to McDuffie, told Bisnow in an email that he believes McDuffie has the experience to lead amid a crisis. He said Lewis George’s “unrealistic ideas” could put D.C.’s “financial stability at risk.”
“As a lifelong Washingtonian, I’ve seen the real consequences of putting untested leadership in charge at critical moments, and our city is at one of those moments right now,” he said. “We are facing serious financial strain, and Kenyan brings the proven judgment and discipline to manage it responsibly.”
Lewis George, who has labeled herself a democratic socialist, has been on the council since 2020, when she unseated incumbent Brandon Todd to represent Ward 4. A Howard University School of Law alum, she previously worked as a prosecutor in the D.C. Attorney General’s Office.
Bisnow also reached out to several commercial real estate professionals who donated to the Lewis George campaign but didn’t receive any responses.
While the campaign contributions through the Fair Elections Program are the most transparent, the majority of the money in the race is coming from outside groups.
Opportunity D.C., a pro-business group with backing from the real estate industry that has been spending on D.C. elections since 2022, endorsed McDuffie last month. And while its fundraising hauls don’t appear in public records, the group said earlier this month it plans to spend $1M on an advertising campaign for McDuffie.
“We know that one of the most effective ways to drive down costs in the District is to expand the housing supply,” Opportunity DC Executive Director Malcolm Fox said in a statement. “We have a clear choice between Kenyan McDuffie who has a proven track record of creating economic opportunity for all DC residents and Janeese Lewis George who has advanced policies that make it harder to create more housing.”
Safe & Affordable DC, which launched March 10 to support Lewis George, has raised $200K, public records show. Its funding comes largely from labor unions, including the Baltimore-DC Metro Building Trades Council.
“D.C.'s labor unions have watched Kenyan McDuffie — despite his rhetoric on affordability — vote time and again to make D.C. more expensive for workers and our families,” Safe & Affordable Chair Joslyn Williams, a longtime union leader, said in a statement.
Associated Builders and Contractors of Metro Washington, which represents construction companies, endorsed McDuffie, and its political affiliate launched an advertising campaign supporting his candidacy earlier this month. The Small Multifamily Owners Association, which represents more than 14,000 landlords in D.C., also endorsed McDuffie this month.
“Kenyan McDuffie understands the full housing ecosystem, from the smallest housing provider to larger operators, and that is exactly what this moment requires,” SMOA CEO Dean Hunter said in a statement.
The Apartment and Office Building Owners Association of Metropolitan Washington hasn’t yet made an endorsement, but it may do so after a May 14 candidate forum it is hosting along with other business groups. AOBA’s Brian Gordon said the members he has spoken with about the race have a clear favorite: McDuffie.
“They have found him to be collaborative to work with the business community to not only try to promote new investment and new opportunities in the District but also to ease the regulatory climate, which makes such an impact on those investment decisions,” Gordon said.
While McDuffie has more backing from real estate organizations and professionals, pro-housing advocates have been split between the candidates.
Lewis George landed an endorsement from Greater Greater Washington, a prominent urbanist blog that advocates for building more housing. Several of the group’s leaders have contributed to her campaign.
“We believe Lewis George is the candidate most likely to advance our priorities of more housing, more affordable housing, fewer trips by car, and fairer land use practices in the District of Columbia,” Greater Greater Washington said in its endorsement.
DMV New Liberals, which lists building more housing as one of its top three priorities, last week endorsed McDuffie, saying he is the “clear pragmatic choice” and “understands the financial constraints of the city.”
Pro-housing group DC YIMBYs hasn’t made an official endorsement, but its elections committee recommended voting for Lewis George. It said she “is not our ideal candidate” due to her past support for policies that would make it harder to build housing, but it said she “has the most serious commitment to producing a Comprehensive Plan that meets the moment.”
Both candidates have voiced opposition to a draft of the comprehensive plan’s future land use map that the Office of Planning released last month, saying it doesn’t go far enough to allow more housing density in the city.
The D.C. Policy Center’s Yesim Sayin, whose organization isn’t endorsing a candidate, said she was pleased to see both candidates calling for building more housing. But she said their policy platforms focus too much on land use and zoning, which aren’t the primary reasons D.C. housing starts have plummeted in recent years.
“The biggest part is the lack of investor interest. There’s no capital stack there, and the reason investors aren’t interested, especially for rental housing, is A, they’re not seeing demand, they’re not seeing huge population growth, and B, there are certain parts of D.C. law that make it very difficult for them to consider investments here,” Sayin said.
The laws that have discouraged investment include pandemic-era eviction policies that led tenants to rack up massive levels of unpaid rent while remaining in their units. Landlords have told Bisnow they have lost millions of dollars from rent delinquencies that have made their buildings unprofitable and put their financial stability at risk.
The two front-runners in the mayor’s race were on the council when it passed the Rental Act, which sought to alleviate this issue by changing eviction policies and sought to encourage investment by reforming D.C.'s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act. McDuffie voted for the bill, but Lewis George voted against it.
“The affordable housing rental community is in a state of free fall, and the reason for financial difficulties is directly tied to the laws, rules and regulations passed during the Covid health emergency,” said CIH Properties Vice President Zach Huke, whose firm owns 2,000 units of naturally occurring affordable housing in D.C. and who donated to McDuffie.
“Landlords are an integral part of the housing ecosystem, and Kenyan McDuffie knows that, and Janeese Lewis George wants to double down on the existing policies,” Huke added.
