Several hours had passed on a recent Saturday before a Charles Allen supporter walked by a table of Ward 6 residents hoping to recall the D.C. councilmember and called them “stupid racists.”
It had been an otherwise quiet morning at Eastern Market. One woman muttered, “Go home,” while another stopped and politely said, “I don’t agree.”
But the group, whose members want to oust Allen over policies they say fueled the city’s rising crime, collected more than 80 signatures that day from a range of Capitol Hill denizens, including an independent who tends to vote for Democrats, a Republican National Committee staffer and plenty of true-blue liberals, some of whom had voted for Allen in the past.
