In a nonbinding Democratic primary that was less about the presidential election and more a cry for national attention regarding their lack of Congressional representation, the District of Columbia chose frontrunner Howard Dean in the nation’s first primary election yesterday.

With 42 percent of the vote, Dean led a field that included only four of the nine Democratic candidates. The Rev. Al Sharpton—whose campaign trails far behind in the national polls—finished a strong second with 35 percent of the voters.

Dean and Sharpton were joined by Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich and former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun, while the other Democratic hopefuls asked to have their names taken off the ballot in hopes of not stirring up controversy with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, which have traditionally hosted the nation’s first primaries.

But although yesterday’s contest—whose nonbinding results do not directly determine the delegates that will represent D.C. at the Democratic National Convention—ostensibly trumped Iowa’s and New Hampshire’s traditional bragging rights, the event garnered little attention either from candidates, voters or the Harvard community.

District resident Stephen P. Bosco ’03-’04 said yesterday that he wouldn’t be on the edge of his seat watching a primary which lacked “virtually all of the leading contenders.”

But Bosco, who is Republican, said he would still check the results.

“I’m curious to see how the D.C. voters are reacting to such an early primary. I am interested in seeing the turnout,” said Bosco, who added that his mother—a registered Democrat–planned to vote yesterday.

He said that the city had done a poor job of publicizing the primary, and that he himself only found out about the event from his mom over winter break.

Less than 10 percent of eligible voters cast their ballot, a figure in line with past presidential primaries held later in the course of the campaign, when the outcome of the election was clearer and voters may have been more apathetic to the outcome of those contests.

Washington D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams declared that the primary drew the national attention to the city that had been the contest’s original goal, illuminating the larger issue of its lack of voting representation in Congress.

“I think we have gotten some national spotlight. We have gotten exposure, gotten some of the candidates talking about, and that’s victory for us,” said Williams, who graduated from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1987. “The fact that we had the primary that people paid attention and participated is a victory in itself.”

And he defended the decision to challenge the traditions so coveted by Iowa and New Hampshire.

“Tradition? Slavery was tradition. The civil rights movement…came because people ignored the tradition and changed the status quo,” Williams said. “We are not so much interested in our role in the electoral process or being ahead of Iowa or New Hampshire. What’s motivating us is getting on the national stage in the need for full representation. That’s the point we are making.”

But David C. King, associate professor in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, criticized D.C.’s initiative to host the nation’s first primary, calling it a “non-event.”

“The city and the candidates haven’t taken it seriously so why should anyone else? This doesn’t in any way help them in gaining representation or a seat in Congress,” he said. “All this says is ‘Ignore Washington; ignore D.C. politics,” and I think they are getting what they deserve. If they want to be taken seriously they need to take things like this seriously, time them in accordance with the rest of the nation and make their electoral vote matter.”