Daily Times

The mayor and congressional delegate may top the ballot in Washington, D.C.’s primary on Tuesday, but the real drama for voters has to do with waiters, waitresses, bartenders and busboys.

Incumbent Mayor Muriel Bowser is expected to glide through to the nomination with no significant opposition, and the majority of incumbents on the D.C. Council are predicted to secure the Democratic nomination. The same goes for Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington’s long-serving non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives.

The actual election in November is even more of a formality in the District of Columbia, where the Republican Party holds little sway.

The greatest question mark surrounds a divisive ballot initiative that would change the way that restaurants and bars pay their tipped employees. Initiative 77 would eliminate the “tipped minimum wage” — the two-tiered system under which restaurant and bar owners pay servers, bartenders and bussers a lower hourly wage with the expectation that they will be compensated with tips from customers.

Currently, these employees can make as little as $3.33 per hour; however, the employer is legally required to make up the difference if the employee’s salary plus tips add up to less than the current minimum wage of $12.50 per hour.

Published in Daily Times, June 19^th 2018.