It was a game of legislative chicken, and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser blinked first.

Faced with a likely defeat in the D.C. Council, Bowser withdrew her nominee to lead the D.C. Office of Unified Communications on the eve of Tuesday’s confirmation vote.

Karima Holmes led the agency, which handles 911 and 311 calls, from 2015 to 2021 and returned to the post earlier this year. She dealt with increasing scrutiny from critics and lawmakers this year over dispatching errors, some of which resulted in deaths, but Bowser insisted that Holmes was making important strides at improving the agency’s performance.

“During her service to the District, [Holmes] filled critical agency staffing positions and oversaw significant technology upgrades that improved residents’ customer experience. Director Holmes was the right leader at the right time for OUC. She improved morale in a high-stress agency that had previously suffered from chronic under-staffing. Under Director Holmes’ leadership, OUC consistently offered compassion and expertise when handling more than one million 911 calls each year – one of the highest call rates in the nation. It is with regret that we are withdrawing her nomination,” said Bowser in a statement.

Bowser’s decision represents a rare defeat on a nomination for a cabinet position; lawmakers have historically deferred to the city’s mayor on their picks to run government agencies. But it also reflected the political reality that Holmes’ nomination was likely to be voted down, despite a last-minute lobbying blitz that included public shows of support for Holmes by Bowser and some OUC employees and their union leaders, who over the weekend emailed lawmakers urging them to confirm her.

Holmes’ fate worsened last week, when Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who chairs the council’s judiciary committee, said he would vote against her confirmation. “The public and many members of the council have had concerns about the leadership and operations of the Office of Unified Communications for some time, most recently stemming from multiple incidents where errors led to delays in emergency services arriving on scene and, tragically, loss of life,” he said in a statement.

Council Chairman Phil Mendelson quickly followed suit in saying he would vote against Holmes. “There has been a lot of public scrutiny with regard to the operations of the OUC and the candidate,” he said Monday.

During Holmes’ two stints leading OUC, the agency was criticized for how it pinpoints and dispatches firefighters, ambulances, and police to emergency calls, and in September the D.C. Auditor said she had made “minimal progress” in addressing those shortcomings.

Much of the drumbeat of criticism against Holmes came from Dave Statter, a former journalist who uses his Twitter account to meticulously catalogue OUC’s responses to 911 calls and to raise concerns around what he says are errors that have resulted in people dying. Some of those examples were on display during a September council hearing on OUC’s performance, where family members said mistakes by dispatchers led to fatalities.

In her statement, Bowser said she would “begin a nationwide search for a new director” while Holmes remains at OUC as interim director for the next 60 days.