Washingtonians Get to Know Democrat They Picked Over the Mayor.

Four days before the vote, a worker hurrying into the Anacostia Metro station during the morning rush said he was unhappy with Mayor Vincent C. Gray and would vote for his leading rival. “I kind of like that one,” he said, fumbling for a name. “The lady. She’s real good.”

Muriel E. Bowser, a seven-year member of the City Council, may not have been a household name before her upset victory on Tuesday, even to some of her supporters, but overnight she became the face of cleaning up Washington city government, as well as the efforts to bridge the divisions of class and race that often are a bitter subtext of its politics.

The low turnout — only one in five registered Democrats voted in the primary election — reinforced the degree to which she remains largely unknown. Asked on Wednesday how she would introduce herself to Washingtonians who have little sense of her other than as anti-Gray, Ms. Bowser repeated her campaign theme to unite the city.

“We are a wonderful, growing city, and I’m going to be very supportive of that progress,” she told reporters at the National Press Club. “But I’m going to use every piece of apparatus and energy in the government to make sure we’re building a stronger middle class and a pathway to that middle class — that’s schools, that’s housing and that’s job training.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/03/us/washingtonians-get-to-know-the-council-member-they-picked-instead-of-the-mayor.html?hp