While we soak in Barack Obama's historic victory over Senator John McCain (who delivered a moving and honorable concession speech), we can't ignore the change that came to our own backyard. Few of the results caught any of us by surprise. We did, though, rid ourselves of a pesky ANC commissioner, though. Yes, fellow District residents and ping-pong lovers alike, ANC 3F04 commissioner and ardent nightlife opponent Frank Winstead was handed a crushing defeat last......

Like D.C. Wire, we've heard reports of "Write-in Carol Schwartz" pencils being handed out to voters, some of which have then been left behind in voting booths, in violation of electioneering laws. Could this last-ditch pencil strategy be just the ticket for a Schwartz write-in victory? Maybe, but City Desk is reporting that Schwartz has failed to get her supporters out to a number of important precincts. Earlier today Mike DeBonis laid out a persuasive......

We might not have Joe the Plumber or $150,000 in stylish threads, but the final days before a number of local races are decided have gotten plenty exciting. There's internal fighting, a second-time-around endorsement and a drunk-driving charge. Council Divides Over Brown and Schwartz: Not wanting to sit out the increasingly close battle for non-Democratic At-Large seat that's up for grabs, this week members of the D.C. Council started throwing their weight behind either Independent-Democrat......

Over the last month, the safe assumption in District political circles was that the two At-large seats on the D.C. Council would be going Brown-squared come November 4 -- current Council member Kwame Brown would keep his seat and Democrat-turned-Independent Michael Brown would finally get elected to something. But things have recently gotten just a little more interesting. According to a late-September poll, Michael Brown was leading write-in Republican candidate Carol Schwartz for the second......

Maybe every political debate from now on should be held on a night where pretty much everyone has somewhere more important to be. At last night's debate between the candidates competing for two At-large seats on the D.C. Council, the looming second-round meetup between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama pushed moderators Tom Sherwood and Mark Segraves to throw as many questions as possible at the seven hopefuls in an effort to get the......

This year's At-large D.C. Council race just won't go quietly into this goodnight, and neither, she announced today, will longtime Republican Council member Carol Schwartz. Even though she initially said last week that she would not launch a write-in campaign after losing the GOP primary to upstart challenger Patrick Mara, Schwartz today announced that she will now do just that. Schwartz's campaign web site already has the full text up of her speech this afternoon,......

Let's face it -- a local election in an off year and in the midst of a heated presidential campaign won't attract much attention, much less lots of voters. And tomorrow's District primary likely isn't much of an exception. While in 2006 the mayoral battle between Linda Cropp and Adrian Fenty and the contest for the chairmanship of the D.C. Council gave that year's electoral season a certain buzz, tomorrow's choices haven't provoked the same......

D.C.'s primary elections are less than a week away, this coming Tuesday, Sept. 9. By now you should have received your sample primary ballot, and, if you're a registered Democrat, are likely still trying to determine exactly what all those Democratic Party slates are -- stay tuned to DCist for plenty more primary election countdown posts to help you sift through it all in the coming days. The big news on the local primaries front......