D.C. voters passed Initiative 77 by a more than 10-point margin in June 2018. It was designed to gradually increase the minimum wage for the city’s tipped employees to the same rate for non-tipped workers, whose minimum is slated to reach $15 an hour next July under a local law enacted in 2016. But not all tipped workers, who are paid a minimum of $3.89 an hour now, supported the increase, creating an unexpected schism that led the D.C. City Council to repeal the initiative.

“I still have a hard time getting by on the minimum wage,” said Samantha Cusumano, a D.C. barista. “I get why the servers and bartenders are against this, but they’re forgetting it affects a lot of other people.”

On one side were those who opposed the repeal, and on the other were servers and others who feared that the increased wage would lower the amount they made in tips, as well as raise costs for restaurants. Some district servers organized to voice their concerns, launching the campaign “Save Our Tips” before the June 2018 vote.

The more than 2,000 restaurants in Washington employ over 55,000 people — D.C.’s third-largest group of employees in the private sector. Restaurant owners contend that changes like I-77 will increase their labor costs to a point that could demolish their bottom line.

“The biggest takeaway over the debate of Initiative 77 is that this really is a bipartisan issue,” said Michael Saltsman of the Employment Policies Institute, a fiscally conservative think tank. He argued that this new financial pressure would force restaurants to close their doors completely or embrace automated technologies — like tablet computers for ordering — to reduce labor costs.

A July poll by the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of Americans favored raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. That same month, the House of Representatives, which flipped to Democratic control after the 2018 midterm elections, passed the Raise the Wage Act to bring the federal minimum wage to $15. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has publicly said he won’t bring the bill to the floor of his chamber.

Complicating the policy debate is the rising cost of living. The average cost of living in D.C. is 39 percent higher than the national average, making it almost impossible for some tipped workers to earn a living.

“Things change so fast around here,” said Dia King, who relies on tips as a valet driver at an upscale hotel in downtown Washington. “There’s always something new and interesting and fun to do in D.C. But not all of us can afford it.”