DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Profile
The following data and information about this state is taken from the 2006 Almanac of American Politics. The 2006 Almanac can be ordered online, or by phone at 1-800-356-4838.

At A Glance  •  Elected Officials  •  History & Analysis

At A Glance:

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-At Large)

The People:
For definitions and additional details regarding the data below, please see the Almanac 2006 Guide to Usage.

• Race/Ethnic Origin: 159,178 (27.8%) white; 340,088 (59.4%) black; 15,039 (2.6%) Asian; 1,274 (0.2%) American Indian; 273 (0.0%) Pacific islander/Hawaiian; 9,584 (1.7%) two-plus races; 1,670 (0.3%) other; 44,953 (7.9%) Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 4.3% Irish, 4.2% German, 3.9% English, 2.5% Subsaharan, 1.9% Italian
• State Natives: 39.2% of residents were born in-state.
• Non-Citizens: 9.0% of residents are foreign-born and not U.S. citizens
• Language Spoken, by Household: 81.0% English; 9.1% Spanish; 6.2% Other Eur.
• Education: 77.8% high school graduates; 39.1% college graduates
• Military Veterans: 44,484 (9.7%); WWII: (22.1%); Korea: (14.4%); Vietnam: (29.5%); First Gulf War: (10.4%)

The Economy:
For definitions and additional details regarding the data below, please see the Almanac 2006 Guide to Usage.

• Industry: 0.1% agriculture; 3.9% construction; 7.4% finance; 6.4% information; 5.1% manufacturing; 36.8% professional; 15.0% public administration; 6.9% trade; 18.4% other
• Work Force: 10.0% blue collar; 73.9% white collar; 16.1% gray collar
• Work Sector: 68.7% private; 25.9% government; 5.2% self-employed; 0.1% unpaid family workers
• Unemployment: 0.1% unemployed
• Median Household Income: $40,127
  • 20.2% are below the poverty line
  • 20.7% less than $15,000
  • 23.7% $15-35,000
  • 14.2% $35-50,000
  • 24.9% $50-100,000
  • 8.4% $100-150,000
  • 8.0% more than $150,000
• Median Home Value: $153,500
  • 1.9% less than $50,000
  • 19.4% $50-100,000
  • 42.4% $100-200,000
  • 12.0% $200-300,000
  • 14.5% $300-500,000
  • 9.7% more than $500,000

About District of Columbia

The District of Columbia, the seat of government of the most powerful and affluent nation in the history of the world, is a beautiful city of great achievements and astonishing contrasts--but not one which has always been blessed with competent local government. For most of a century it was governed directly by Congress, not an ideal state of affairs. In 1974 the District got self-government. But for 16 out of the 20 years from 1978-98 the District government was run by Mayor Marion Barry, a talented politician but disastrous mayor. Under him the District was a dysfunctional polity, a city with above-average incomes and a vibrant commercial property base, but with a local government so bloated with employees yet so indifferent to its responsibilities that it destroyed one marginal neighborhood after another. Now things are different. The District's population decline has slowed; crime is sharply down; affluent professionals and eager immigrants are flowing in, gentrifying and giving vitality to neighborhoods long given up to decline--Columbia Heights, Logan Circle, Shaw. There are still problems: The outflow of middle class blacks from the District to the suburbs continues, and some neighborhoods, especially east of the Anacostia River, continue to be plagued by crime and flight. But most of the city is safer and more prosperous than it was a decade ago.

The problem of how to govern the nation's capital is not new. In 1787 the framers of the Constitution, familiar with contemporary London and Paris mobs and remembering how crowds had threatened Congress in Philadelphia, purposely gave the new federal government control of the 10-mile-square enclave that came to be called the District of Columbia (the portion across the Potomac River was retroceded to Virginia in 1846). Over the years Congress kept control, for its own advantage and, later, out of distrust of the city's large black population. Blacks have consistently made up one-quarter of the population of Washington and surrounding counties since the 1790s, and the city was a center for free blacks even before the Civil War and Emancipation. Radical Republicans gave the District self-government in the era of Reconstruction in 1871, but Governor Alexander ''Boss'' Shepherd in building great public works spent the District into bankruptcy, and the experiment ended in 1874. Later, Washington's vast growth, starting with the New Deal and World War II, resulted in the growth of large, mostly white suburbs, and blacks became a larger percentage of the city's population--a majority in the 1960 Census. Amid the 1960s civil rights revolution, it began to seem absurd to deny the vote to Washington. So in 1964, District residents began to cast three electoral votes for president, in 1968 they were allowed to vote for school board, in 1971 they finally got to elect a non-voting delegate to Congress and in 1974, they got home rule and could vote for a mayor and city council.

The results were tragic. Marion Barry, a man of great ability and charm, inherited a government that was already overlarge and undermanaged, and over the years made it more so. He raised money from public employee unions and real estate developers and increasingly won votes from poor blacks by attacking any critic as racist. In January 1990, he was arrested in a D.C. hotel using crack cocaine, and was prosecuted and sent to jail. Later that year voters chose a reform-minded mayor, Sharon Pratt Kelly, but she flinched when it came time to cut the payroll. Barry, out of prison and elected to the council in 1992, ran for mayor in 1994 and won the Democratic primary with 47% to 37% for Councilman John Ray and only 13% for Kelly. Against Republican Carol Schwartz, a longtime council member, Barry won 56%-42% in November.

In the meantime, the District had changed. Even as the District payroll was peaking--at 51,300 in 1992--the District's population was falling, and becoming more white. Washington's population fell from 802,000 in 1950 to 572,000 in 2000. In the 1950s and 1960s, the District saw white flight; in the Barry years, it saw black flight. The District lost 6% of its population in the 1990s, as blacks headed to majority-black Prince George's County and other suburbs, where three-quarters of Washington-area blacks live. At the same time, Ward 3 and gentrifying neighborhoods near downtown grew in population, so that the black percentage of the population has declined from a peak of 71% in 1970 to 60% in 2000. With higher turnout in affluent areas, whites may now cast half or almost half of the District's votes. But the electorate remains overwhelmingly Democratic: In 2004, John Kerry carried the District over George W. Bush by an 89%-9% margin. Whites voted for Kerry 80%-19%--a higher percentage than in any state. Bush got over 20% of the vote in only 14 of 142 precincts, and over 30% in only two.

But the District's fiscal crisis after Barry's return in 1995 led Congress to take most of the government out from under his control. This was not a hostile takeover: House Speaker Newt Gingrich appointed as chairman of the D.C. subcommittee Tom Davis, a Republican congressman from Northern Virginia long sympathetic to the District, and Davis worked closely with the District's elected delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton. They got Congress to establish a five-member financial control board in April 1995, and the control board's CFO, Anthony Williams, hacked away at the payroll, reformed management practices and literally cleaned up messes in District government offices.

When Barry announced in May 1998 that he wouldn't run again, four council members joined the race -- Schwartz and three Democrats. Then there was a move, encouraged by The Washington Post, to draft Anthony Williams. He was an unlikely candidate. He grew up in Los Angeles, a speechless foster child adopted when he was 3. He was once an alderman in New Haven, Connecticut; when he took the CFO job in 1995, he moved first to Virginia and only later to Washington's Foggy Bottom. Williams had a history of changing course: He participated in anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, enlisted in the Air Force and served, then applied for conscientious objector status and got an honorable discharge. After seven years he graduated with honors from Yale, started an antique map business, then got degrees from Harvard Law and the Kennedy School and worked in Connecticut, Boston and St. Louis. Always dressed in a bow tie, diffident in crowds, he did not seem to have a political touch. But that may have been an asset. In the Democratic primary Williams beat Councilman Kevin Chavous 50%-35%, and in the general he beat Schwartz 66%-30%. The control board immediately delegated power to the new mayor, and in fall 2000, judges returned control of most District departments to the city.

There were still problems. Williams did not get along well with the council, the Police Department's homicide division was in disarray, and the child welfare agency seemed to do little to help neglected children. D.C. General Hospital was closed down. Tourism declined after September 11. But in spring 2002 Williams seemed headed to easy reelection without serious opposition. Then it was discovered that most of Williams's 10,000 election petition signatures were fraudulent. Embarrassed and fined, he launched a write-in campaign. His major opponent was another write-in, Willie Wilson, pastor of a 7,000-member church in Anacostia and a spiritual counselor to Marion Barry. Barry's support turned out to be a dead weight in much of the city; Williams won the September 10 primary 66%-22%. In the general, he again faced Schwartz, also nominated by write-ins; Williams won 61%-34%.

In his second term Williams boasted of adding beds to homeless shelters, putting money into an affordable housing trust fund and fixing agencies which had long been operating under court order; the Corrections Department was freed from court control for the first time in 33 years. He took a cue from cities such as Chicago and sought control of the school system but the city council in July 2004 blocked his plan to turn the school board into an appointed body. Instead the council extended the tenure of the current hybrid board of five elected and four appointed officials to 2008, at which time all school board seats will return to elected status. Williams protested when the Homeland Security Department raised the terrorism threat level in August 2004; streets were closed and 14 vehicle checkpoints were established around Capitol Hill. "This is a living, breathing city; this isn't just a dead, static piece of concrete. We can't continue to close streets without doing death to commerce in this city, to tourism in this city, to a tax base in this city that provides all the services people need." He was pleased when the threat level was lowered in November 2004 and the checkpoints removed. Williams was pleased as well when in September 2004 Major League Baseball decided to move the Montreal Expos to move to Washington, provided the city built a new stadium to replace Robert F. Kennedy stadium, where the 2005 season would be played. Williams proposed a $440 million stadium at Buzzards Point, on the Anacostia River, in a neighborhood of empty lots and little-used industrial sites. But many council members bridled at the cost, and Council President Linda Cropp delayed the project. Finally, the council approved, but only with critical votes cast by council members defeated in the September 2004 Democratic primary.

Those defeats reflected opposition to the mayor and trends in District government in Anacostia, the poor wards east of that river; one of the winners was Marion Barry, who was returned to the council by Ward 8. It was unclear whether the District might try to return to the kind of governance it received in the era of Barry--and risk the same dire consequences. In May 2005 it was also unclear whether Williams would run for a third term in 2006. He told The Washington Post he wasn't sure if he had "the energy, the tenacity, the discipline, the focus" to serve a third term. If he runs, he seems likely to have serious opposition. Possible candidates included: Council members David Catania, Linda Cropp, Jack Evans, Adrian Fenty and Vincent Orange; lobbyist Michael Brown (son of former Democratic National Chairman and Commerce Secretary Ron Brown), former D.C. Democratic party chairman A. Scott Bolden, and former U.S. Attorney Eric Holder Jr.