Talking politics has bartenders on edge in Trump's Washington DC

The Guardian

2 days ago

Deke Dunne relocated to Washington DC from Wyoming in 2008 to pursue a career in politics. Though a progressive himself, he worked as a legislative aide for Republican senator Mike Enzi and spent many nights at local watering holes, guzzling $10 pitchers and eating wings with fellow broke staffers from both sides of the aisle. Long before he began moonlighting as a bartender, he learned that talking politics in DC bars was always a recipe for disaster.
'When I used to work in politics, I would spend a lot of time in bars near Capitol Hill,' said Dunne, 'so I was exposed to more political professionals. In those spaces, you often find yourself witnessing knockdown, drag-out arguments about politics.'
Today, Dunne is one of DC's most influential mixologists, having abandoned politics almost a decade ago for a hospitality career. Serving drinks in a city that is more ideologically divided than ever, Dunne says he exercises more diplomacy behind the bar now than he ever did working in politics.
There has always been an unspoken rule among Washington DC bartenders, according to Dunne, that political conversations across the bar should be avoided at all costs. It is generally understood that maintaining neutrality is critical to ensuring that guests of all political persuasions feel welcome. But the partisan rancor in Washington during the early stages of Donald Trump's presidential encore has created palpable tension in hospitality spaces, placing undue strain on staff to manage the vibes.
'It's always been an accepted truth in DC that every four to eight years, you get a whole new swath of people in from a different political ideology and if you want to have a strong, viable business, you don't talk politics,' said Dunne. 'Trump broke that rule.'
According to local bar professionals in the nation's capital, the 'tending' part of bartending has never been more challenging. 'Politics in DC is not only something that a lot of people care about, but it's also a lot of people's livelihoods,' said Zac Hoffman, a bar industry veteran who until recently managed the restaurant inside the National Democratic Club near the Capitol. 'When you're talking about work, you're talking about politics. That's just the reality of where we live. It's a company town.'
At Allegory, where Dunne oversees the beverage program, the bar has always taken a progressive approach, which occasionally provokes more conservative-minded guests who stay in the Eaton, the boutique hotel and cultural hub in downtown where the bar opened seven years ago. Its aesthetic and cocktail menu reimagines Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, but featuring a young Ruby Bridges, the iconic civil rights activist who faced a jeering mob when she desegregated a Little Rock elementary school.
'Our very presence as a mission-based bar has sparked many conversations surrounding our concept, but also gender-neutral bathrooms, provocative art and advocacy,' he said. 'We've had people that are clearly uncomfortable with our concept leave and then post a negative review but frame it about something else.'
The resurgent, and often strident, brand of conservatism that dominates the political sphere in Washington today has many of the city's more progressive bar owners on edge. At The Green Zone, a Middle Eastern cocktail bar in Adams Morgan on the city's north side, politics have always been integral to the bar's identity since it opened in 2018. Bar owner Chris Hassaan Francke, whose mother is Iraqi, has earned a reputation for being outspoken about political conflicts, especially those in the Middle East.
But since Trump's return to office, he admits to having toned down some of the rhetoric. 'We changed the name of one of our most infamous cocktails [which contained an incendiary reference to the current president],' said Francke. 'It kills me that I can't always say everything I want to say, but ultimately the safety and wellbeing of my staff [are] more important than that.'
While the city may be under Republican rule at the moment, DC itself is still overwhelmingly liberal (Kamala Harris won over 90% of the vote in the 2024 election), which means that a majority of its hospitality workers are liberal, too. 'I know some bartenders who will say the opposite of what they believe around customers they don't agree with politically,' said Hoffman. 'There are plenty of socialists who make great tips talking shit about liberals with Republicans.'
It isn't only the more progressive venues around town that have become targets. After recent articles in the New York Times and Washington Post championed upscale Capitol Hill bistro Butterworth's as a haven for Maga sympathizers, backlash ensued. According to chef and co-owner Bart Hutchins – who, like Dunne, also left a career in politics to work in hospitality – being perceived as pro-Trump has attracted crowds to his fledgling restaurant, which opened last fall. But it's also created some unwanted operational challenges. For one, a serial provocateur with an air-horn routinely disrupts his weekly dinner service by sounding it through the front entrance, often multiple times a week.
Despite Butterworth's reputation for being a sanctuary for high-profile Trump supporters such as Steve Bannon, not every political conversation at the bar is peaceful. 'I've broken up at least three political arguments since we opened,' said Hutchins. 'It always starts with somebody who's really, really insistent that everyone agrees with them, someone who's watching way too much cable news who's really determined to have their Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow moment.'
Another unfortunate byproduct of being known as a right-leaning restaurant in a left-leaning town, Hutchins says, has been difficulty hiring and retaining staff. 'There have been times where it's been really hard to hire people,' he said. 'Early on, we had some servers self-select out and say: 'I don't want to serve these people.' But a lot of those people have moved on.'
Over time, the staff has found ways to put their political convictions aside for the good of the restaurant. 'Our No 1 rule that's written on a door in the back is: 'Everybody's a VIP,' said Hutchins. 'We're not interested in using politics as a measuring device for whether or not someone deserves great service.'
For DC bars, proximity to Capitol Hill has historically increased the likelihood that the conversations inside them will revolve around politics. And while some bars on the Hill may welcome these spirited conversations, many older, legacy bars prefer that patrons leave their partisanship at the door.
Tune Inn, a well-loved dive bar that originally opened a few blocks from the Capitol in 1947, outwardly discourages political conversations of any kind. 'You can always tell the newbies because they want to come in and immediately start talking about politics,' said Stephanie Hulbert, who has worked as a bartender, server and now general manager at the bar for more than 17 years. 'They get shut down very quickly.'
To keep the peace and maintain nonpartisan decorum inside the bar, she and her staff regularly intervene and admonish guests to keep their politics to themselves. These interventions occur at least two or three times every week, according to Hulbert, which is why the TVs inside the bar are deliberately set to sports channels rather than news outlets. 'I'll argue about sports all day long with you,' she said. 'But I won't argue about politics.'
Despite the heightened anxiety in Washington, Dunne is optimistic that healthy dialogues in more progressive bars including Allegory can effect positive change. In January, Trump's inauguration drew conservative revelers to the Eaton, where inclusivity and multiculturalism is essential to its brand and mission. That led to some uncomfortable conversations with Republican patrons about the bar's progressive ethos.
'I don't know how effective the conversations were, but they were constructive,' he said. 'We found middle ground about the fact that what Ruby [Bridges] went through was tragic. It's common ground you don't find very often around here anymore.'