Lisa Gore didn’t win her bid to knock off At-Large Councilmember Anita Bonds in last year’s Democratic primary, but she made enough of an impression (and earned enough votes) to win a lot of friends in D.C.’s progressive community. These days, those good feelings have curdled into suspicion and anger.

That’s because Gore is currently exploring a bid against lefty darling and current Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George next year, half a dozen sources around D.C. politics tell Loose Lips. Gore has begun building out a campaign team and discussing potential endorsements with her past supporters ahead of an announcement sometime in the coming weeks, according to several of those sources. 

Gore, currently the chair of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 3/4G and a Hawthorne resident, did not respond to several calls seeking comment. She finished second behind Bonds in the at-large race a year ago, earning about 28 percent of the vote.

Gore’s consideration of this move has broadly been viewed as something of a betrayal among D.C. lefties. Many saw Gore as a political ally after she embraced a variety of progressive causes in the at-large race, and would’ve happily supported her had she pursued some other bid for office. In fact, several sources told LL that there are still efforts underway to persuade Gore to abandon a campaign in Ward 4. 

A challenge to Lewis George sets up a potentially nasty, intra-movement fight that most would like to avoid. And many politicos suspect that, at the very least, it benefits the interests of Mayor Muriel Bowser, who has long resented the success of a socialist-backed candidate in her home ward, even if her political operation didn’t directly encourage it.

LL has heard rumors for months that the Green Team has been recruiting candidates to challenge Lewis George, without much success. Some sources, including Bowser’s supporters and critics alike, began to wonder if anyone would step up to run given Lewis George’s dominant showing against Brandon Todd four years ago and her impressive fundraising haul to open her reelection bid.

Gore’s emergence as a challenger when she has no obvious ideological differences with the incumbent has only encouraged speculation that Bowser’s allies have promised her support. But Gore has no public ties to the mayor and LL has yet to see any evidence of coordination between the two.

“I’m curious if Lisa is going to be running a people-powered campaign, a campaign for working-class people, or if she’s going to be running a campaign for big business interests in the District,” says Makia Green, an organizer with several progressive groups who supported Gore last year but has become disturbed at the prospect of her running against Lewis George. “Everyone wants to stay focused on our values, but having, potentially, Lisa run could really muddy the waters and shift the focus to personalities.”

Alex Dodds, the communications chair for Lewis George’s reelection campaign, says the councilmember and Gore have spoken directly about her potential run, noting that “if a close ally doesn’t feel like the councilmember is living up to her values, she’s open to having a conversation about that.” Dodds declined to discuss the content of that exchange, however.

“Janeese and Lisa have been collaborators on a bunch of stuff … and her policy platform was really similar to Janeese’s, so it has been sort of surprising and puzzling to see this,” Dodds says. “If Janeese and Lisa agree on what the work should be, then it really does feel like a disservice to the movement that we’re having this conversation.”

It remains to be seen whether Gore plans to position herself as a moderate and embrace the critiques of Lewis George’s conservative, tough-on-crime critics, or whether she’ll take a more tempered approach. Some sources have speculated to LL that Gore could emphasize her background as a special agent with the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General to portray herself as a friend to law enforcement and contrast herself with Lewis George, who came to prominence as a critic of the Metropolitan Police Department and was the Council’s sole vote against a summer crime bill backed by Bowser and other moderates.

It’s unclear whether these attacks would be effective—Gore’s own 2022 campaign website notes that she investigated “public corruption, procurement, contract fraud, and other financial fraud schemes” in that role, not exactly the territory of a beat cop. Similarly, that same website trumpets many public safety policy positions that would not look out of place on Lewis George’s campaign materials, stressing the importance of more mental health services and violence interruption as alternatives to law-and-order policing.

“Lisa knows that we must confront violence directly and believes that DC-wide, public health, justice-first approach is the best path forward,” Gore wrote as part of her policy platform. 

That past might not stop Gore from trying to run to Lewis George’s right, of course. Consider that she attended a recent public safety walk in the ward organized by Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto (one of many the judiciary committee chair has recently convened around the city) alongside Lewis George. She later praised Pinto in a social media post for “actually listening to residents and the agencies working on this issue day in and day out,” but did not mention Lewis George.

“We need and deserve more leadership on this issue,” Gore wrote, cryptically. 

This has only encouraged speculation among Lewis George’s backers that Bowser is somehow involved in this effort, considering her own rhetoric these days. (Herroner’s decision to unveil her latest crime bill rolling back some of the Council’s police reform measures at the Fourth District station on Georgia Avenue NW Monday further fueled these rumors.)

Bowser and her family remain very influential in the ward, particularly in the Maryland-adjacent communities around Gore’s neck of the woods, such as Barnaby Woods, Colonial Village, and Shepherd Park. Lewis George’s 2020 victory was a sign that the ward has changed enough that the Green Team may not be as dominant there as it was in Adrian Fenty’s days, but there is little doubt that the establishment has an interest in re-asserting its primacy in Ward 4. 

With Elissa Silverman off the Council, there’s a credible argument to be made that Lewis George is Bowser’s least favorite lawmaker these days. Many see her as the new leader of the Council’s progressive bloc (and most won’t say it on the record, but many hope she’d consider running for mayor someday, perhaps as soon as 2026). Just as Bowser and the rest of the city’s political establishment lined up behind At-Large Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie, despite some past disagreements, it’s not hard to imagine them doing the same with someone like Gore. LL would not be particularly surprised to see independent expenditure groups crop up as the primary draws closer for the purpose of attacking Lewis George, all backed by the very same figures, after such an approach helped oust Silverman.

Progressives expect, however, that Lewis George is a much stronger candidate this time around. She can point to concrete achievements on the Council—engineering the expansion of SNAP benefits was a recent, somewhat unexpected win—and she’ll have plenty of money of her own, thanks to public financing. Plus, Lewis George is running in a ward race, where progressives have been able to use their superior organizing to beat even well-funded candidates.

Then again, most left-leaning strategists didn’t see McDuffie as much of a threat when he first announced his bid against Silverman, and look how that turned out. Crime has undoubtedly worsened in the city since then, and that could upend the political calculus. Ward 4 could easily become the testing ground for whether a reformer like Lewis George can survive.