Mayor Muriel Bowser has led Washington, D.C., for a decade, serving through tumultuous times and working across political divisions.

In a wide-ranging interview with Baltimore Sun co-owner Armstrong Williams, the Democratic leader discusses how she’s reduced crime, boosted education, secured a stadium deal and found common ground with Republicans to help move the city forward.

This interview was held before Inauguration Day and the tragic plane crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. It has been edited for clarity and space.

Williams: As the nation’s capital, the District of Columbia has been important to the history of America. Let’s talk about how you’re the mayor of a city with such rich history and significance.

Bowser: Yes. Well, we’re unique, and I explained to everybody just how different we are. Not everybody still knows what Washington, D.C., is, so we’re the proud nation’s capital, but we’re also a city, county and state. As mayor, I run the school district and other state functions, and we take care of ourselves. We pay more taxes per capita than any jurisdiction in the union, and we are home to 700,000 people. We can go out the door and see the [U.S.] Capitol [Building], yet we don’t have representation. We do not have senators, and we do not have a voting member of Congress. And that’s one thing that we’d like to change. We know that the president is very keen on having the 51st state, and we think it should be Washington, D.C.

Williams: That did not change when you had Democrats in power. People assumed that would’ve happened when Barack Obama was president of the United States, or Joe Biden, but it didn’t. What is it that people don’t understand?

Bowser: I want to be very clear about this: perfecting our union, honoring the promise of our democracy that every person is entitled to one vote is not a Democratic or Republican issue. And what we have focused on in D.C. is making sure we have our ducks in a row, and we’re ready. We have written our constitution, we have defined our boundaries. We have ensured that there would be an enclave that is the federal enclave, and we have put that in front of the people of the District of Columbia. They have voted over 80% to add us to the union — just like every state has been added to the union outside of the first 13 — so that’s important. We’re more than federal buildings: 700,000 people live here. We have beautiful neighborhoods, great schools [and] small businesses.

Williams: I’ve talked to many people from every socioeconomic background, and they were really proud to see that you met with President Trump, given the acrimonious relationship in the past — not necessarily on your part. You can rise above that because you are the mayor of the nation’s capital first, and it’s important that you work with whoever is president of the United States. Explain why it’s so important.

Bowser: I think we have to rise above the personal, and certainly, we’re all human beings, and people are going to have human and emotional reactions. Nobody likes to hear their city talked about in negative ways. Nobody likes to be singled out by a former president or future president of the United States, but I have a job to do. I don’t have the luxury of living in my emotions. I have to make sure that I’m putting my best foot forward. And frankly, Armstrong, it became very clear to me that my residents are anxious, that they’re scared, and I needed to take the temperature down and depersonalize these issues and say, ‘The president has a job to do, the mayor has a job to do, and if we’re going to be in a battle, let’s be in it. But wouldn’t it be better if we focused on our shared priorities?’

Williams: People also see D.C. as a cultural center of the world. They see it as a tourist center with the monuments and museums that you have. Talk about the cultural aspect of D.C. that is so unique.

Bowser: Part of my job is as a cheerleader for the city. I go around the country, [and] I’ve been around the world attracting business, attracting visitors, attracting new residents to Washington, D.C. Many people will know our monuments and museums, and we’re proud of that. But that doesn’t tell our whole story. Most people wouldn’t know we have more theater seats than any place else in the country except New York City. We have a vibrant theater scene, entertainment scene, restaurant scene, nightlife scene. We have beautiful hotels along the spectrum in terms of what you want to pay. We have two great rivers that we have invested in. We have a sports culture. We’re a sports capital. We love our sports teams. And so you’re always going to find great things to do.

And families live here. We have really invested, [during] my time in office, [in] making this a place where people can raise their families. We have the fastest-improving urban school district in the nation [and] the number-one park system in the nation. Three-year-olds in our city can go to our public schools for free universal pre-K. That has helped us be the fastest-growing state in the nation, even beating Florida, [which] gained a lot of population. We’re now back to levels of our population that are greater now than before the pandemic. That type of growth is important to our future.

Williams: You have a dramatic drop in crime, which [not all] other cities are seeing. What was it that you were able to do, and what did you learn from that to make that change, to make your community safe, to make people secure, and to let them know that you were a law-and-order mayor?

Bowser: The very first thing that I say helped us turn the tide is I took 100% responsibility. And in this city, the mayor is not responsible for a lot of the public safety ecosystem. There are federal partners. There are changes to the law. So there’s a lot that goes into the brew that makes us a safe city. But regardless of who has the responsibility, the people want me to make the city safer.

So, we decided that we needed to see certain changes to the law. We have to go out there, show the council what will work, what has worked and what we need changed. We have to sell it to the community and we have to get it done. And so I give a lot of great credit to the Ward 2 council member who helped spearhead that legislation through the council.

We also had to put heat and light and attention on the part of the system that is not a local responsibility: the federal prosecutor, the judges. What could they be doing to make our city safer? We had to focus on our young people and say, ‘How are we doing with prosecutions and supports for young people and families?’ We have to support our police officers — not denigrate our police officers — and build back the numbers that we need.

And because we did all of those things in partnership with community, we have seen a 35% decrease in violent crime in our city. And we needed to. We had one very bad year. And that very bad year colored the perceptions of our city in a way that is very negative when you’re growing and you’re attracting people to your city. So, the turnaround has been remarkable. Probably last year this time, if I was at a community meeting or sitting down with you, all you would want to talk about was crime. Now, people have seen that we put in the work that needed to be done, and we’re going in the right direction. But I always caution people [that] we don’t want to take our foot off the gas.

Williams: When you look at places like Maryland and Florida and other places, you have these school shootings where kids are able to penetrate the system, kill their peers, kill themselves. But that doesn’t happen in Washington, D.C.

Bowser: Thank God. Why? I don’t know. It shouldn’t happen anywhere.

Williams: What is it that you do here? You’ve never had to face that crisis.

Bowser: Well, we had somebody shoot at one of our independent schools, which was shocking, and it was a wake-up call to all of us to make sure our systems were as hard as they have to be.

Williams: But what are the systems?

Bowser: I think you find in a lot of urban school districts, we mitigate for weapons. You don’t walk into one of our schools with weapons, and that’s not always the case across the country.

Williams: And you do that through law enforcement.

Bowser: We have a private contract [with] security. We have, and let’s face it, I didn’t go to school where I had to walk through a metal detector,

Williams: Nor did I.

Bowser: And I wish that we didn’t live in a country where that was necessary, but that is the case in a lot of our schools with kids of a certain age.

Williams: What about the home life? What about the kids, the exposure to drugs? What about the internet? It just seems as though so many of our young people are in such crisis. I mean, where is the responsibility? Where does it lie? It doesn’t lie in law enforcement because they’re at the end of it, but what about the homes? What about the students? What about the activities? What are we not doing?

Bowser: Well, I think the government does a lot. And when you say it doesn’t lie with law enforcement, in some ways, I was like … the government can’t do it alone either. We do need community, we need church, we need family, and we need — I think, in my humble estimation — a focus on values where we have put a high value on education, a high value on life, a high value on personal integrity. And I think we have to have a community and a culture where it’s OK to talk like that.

Williams: The education system in America is in crisis, but your school system is one that … continues to make progress. What is it that the district does differently than Baltimore and other areas where education is in crisis?

Bowser: Our taxpayers have allowed us to invest an incredible amount of money in turning around our schools. I give great credit to [former] Mayor [Adrian] Fenty, as you know, who had a hard fight for the mayor to be accountable for the schools. They call it mayoral control, but it is mayoral accountability and council oversight. [For] almost 20 years, since 2007, we’ve had mayoral accountability of our schools. It used to be literally a school board would be pointing fingers at the mayor and the council, and the school board had all the money, and the schools would open late, and the textbooks would be in a warehouse somewhere, not getting to the students, and the vendors weren’t paid on time. And guess what? People were fleeing the schools. Now, we have seen our population grow in our schools year over year.

We recovered from the pandemic faster than any school district in the region. We also became very focused on a landmark agreement during the Fenty administration between the teachers and the district. We pay for performance, and we have a system that says that if you aren’t performing as a teacher, you can’t work here. And so we have attracted the best and the brightest. We pay them for performance. We have the best paid teachers, for sure, in the region and probably greater than a lot of places in America. And as a result, our kids are just getting a high-quality education.

Williams: But you’re also very open to other options, school vouchers, whatever it takes for the child’s learning. You don’t push against it.

Bowser: We have a robust system of choice here, but … our traditional public school system, in a lot of respects, [is] outpacing our non-traditional options. … We’ve also invested a tremendous amount in our buildings. When children and families walk into our schools, they know that D.C. cares about education.

Williams: I want to come back to your meeting with President Trump. He was impressed with you, with your intellect, your calmness, your kindness, but your focus and your love for this city … The other thing is, which is interesting, is that they can’t really put you in a box. They can’t make you out to be a progressive. They can’t put you in a box where they see you through the prism of … a Black woman. You are the mayor of Washington, D.C. You are the mayor of all people. You’re not the mayor of tribalism in groups. You are the mayor of the people. Why is that so significant in your role as a leader?

Bowser: I think it’s significant for all leaders. I’m not just the mayor of the people who voted for me, and similar to the president, he’s not only the president for everybody who voted for him, but he’s going to be the president of the United States of America. If I’m being the most hopeful, generous and optimistic, I hope that he sees these four years as a way to gain people to support him. The way that you do that is [how] I’ve always done it: I keep my promises. I do what I say that I’m going to do. I tell people what I’m dealing with and why I am making decisions that I’m making, and I try to make the best decisions that are going to help the most people the fastest. That’s just how I lead. And the other thing is that when you win, you have the opportunity and the obligation, in my view, to make the tent bigger.

Williams: People were worried we were going to lose the [Washington] Capitals, that the mayor was going to lose Washington businesses. I remember people dismissing the possibility that the Commanders could ever come back to D.C., and there’s no way the [federal government was] going to deed that land to the District of Columbia. But Mayor Bowser, you’re a beast.

Bowser: Thank you.

Williams: So, talk about it. I don’t think that people really understand the significance and how unprecedented this is — the possibility of the Commanders coming back to this city.

Bowser: Well, Washingtonians do. We saw our team pack up and decamp and go someplace else. Our championship team, we’ve been missing them for over 20 years, and we are very excited about the possibility of them coming home. I made a promise 10 years ago that RFK [Stadium] land had to be controlled by the District. We have to control our destiny. And I’ve worked tirelessly with my very capable team to get that done. And — in the midnight miracle or whatever they call it — we got it done. I kind of chuckled at some of the stories that were written that made it seem like some surprise or accident or fate and something that came together in the midnight hour. But in fact, it was the result of many, many months of work and making connections and building relationships.

Williams: But what you just said is a very important message … you’re going to have to build alliances to achieve your goal, and you are willing to meet people like [U.S. Rep. James] Comer and other Republicans. It’s not about whether they were Republicans or whatever it was. [It was about] whatever achieved the goal of bringing the team back to the district.

Bowser: Well, the very interesting thing is my first meeting with Congressman Comer was to meet him before a hearing that he had asked me to come to about public safety. And so I said, ‘Before I go to the hearing, I want to sit down with you. I want to let you know how I’m going to approach this hearing, who I am and who the district is. And, by the way, this is how you can help us.’ And I said, ‘You can help us by helping us work on RFK and return-to-the-office. And he said, ‘I’m going to help you.’ And he did.

Williams: What are your challenges as you face 2025 for the district?

Bowser: I think we are very focused on our comeback, and I laid out an action plan for downtown, a comeback strategy, and a lot of it is hinged on the new way of work. So, our downtown is not going to go back to the way it was in 2019, but we want more people in the office. We want that vibrancy back, and that will mediate any concerns we have about incoming revenues. So we’re very focused on that. We’re also very focused on delivering for RFK. So the Congress did a great thing in giving us control for 99 years of RFK. Now we got to deliver. We’d love to come to a deal with the team and develop the parcel of 177 acres in the district. We stay focused on public safety, and we’re going to continue to do that.

Williams: But you also indicated and hinted it’s revitalization.

Bowser: Absolutely.

Williams: And it’s redevelopment. It can change the district. Can you imagine what you can do with that property that has been neglected for so many decades?

Bowser: I can imagine.

Williams: Well, what are you imagining?

Bowser: I’m imagining a mix of uses. So, right now, there is a stadium there that hasn’t been used in almost 10 years. We’re going to take that down. Our proposal will include a stadium. If we come to terms with the team and we’re going to have our own parks and recreation facility, an indoor complex for our kids and D.C. residents, then we’ll have housing. We’ll have an almost 30-acre park there that connects to the Anacostia River. We’ll have an entertainment district, and we will have other commercial development that creates jobs not just for D.C. but for the entire region that creates more tax revenue and creates vibrancy. Keep in mind that when you’re on that parcel and you look to the west, you see the United States Capitol. You keep looking, [and] you see the Washington Monument. There’s really no more iconic vista for a sports arena, in my opinion, than right there.

Armstrong Williams (www.armstrongwilliams.com) is part owner of The Baltimore Sun.