Muriel Bowser describes herself as “a big, whomping Democrat.” Normally, I’d consider that an admission of some kind of guilt. But if I lived in Bowser’s Ward 4, I’d have voted for her back in 2007.

Bowser is the Washington, D.C. city council representative from Ward 4. She stumbled on to my radar in early June, when one of her aides e-mailed me a Bowser press release about an escape from the New Beginnings Youth Development Center in Laurel.