Marion S. Barry is driving along a street in one of the forgotten neighborhoods of the nation’s capital, when he spots a mob beating a man.
The mayoral candidate steers his midnight blue Chrysler to the curbside and shouts: “Hey man! You have beaten the guy enough.”
The gang stops the beating and turns to the tall, dapper man in tailored African garb. One attacker, looking embarrassed, says, “Marion Barry, I’m going to vote for you.”
Barry was able to capture the attention of the young and downtrodden, his supporters said. And that ability, demonstrated on a warm fall day when Barry stopped the beating in progress, is one reason Barry won his old job back last month.
“He quintessentially represents hope, more so than anybody running in the race and maybe anybody who can run,” says Rock Newman, the manager of former heavyweight boxing champ Riddick Bowe, a staunch Barry supporter and friend, and recently named head of his transition team.
“For the junkies on the street, for the hookers that I just saw out there, for the high school dropout, for the unwed mothers, for the winos, for the person who had a bad marriage, for the person who just bottomed out in business, they can look at Marion Barry and conjure up visions of his worst days, and none of them would have gone through the hurt and pain and humiliation that he went through,” Newman added. “They can look at him and say, if this brother can come back vibrant and strong and wholesome and healthy, maybe I can too.”
Of course, the reasons Barry won the mayoral race are more complicated than that. But conversations with voters and political analysts in this city of about 600,000-not to mention time on the campaign trail with Barry-provided a number of clues to Barry’s stunning and dramatic comeback.
Nearly four years ago, Barry was considered politically dead after being videotaped by the FBI seducing a woman, other than his wife, and smoking crack cocaine from a pipe in a plush downtown hotel.
The highly publicized incident was a most humiliating experience for a man who earned his spurs as a student protester in the civil rights movement under the tutelage of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Barry left the office he had held for 12 years in shame, announcing in 1990 that he would not seek a fourth term. His third marriage ended in divorce. And after an eight-week trial, Barry was convicted of cocaine use and sentenced to six months in a federal prison. Earlier this year, when the one time “Mayor for Life” launched a bid to get his old job back, his candidacy was viewed as the longest of shots. But Barry surprised the city and local political establishment with the primary victory in September, collecting 47 percent of the votes.
He beat the incumbent, Sharon Pratt Kelly, and Councilman John Ray, who failed for the fifth time to win the seat, even in their own wards. And in the November general election, he defeated-53 to 46 percent-Republican Carol Schwartz.
Barry has become the master of redemption. This strategy is effective in the District of Columbia, because the city and many of its citizens have been beaten down by negative images of drugs and mayhem and by its inability to free itself from the iron rule of Congress, which controls the D.C. budget, political analysts said.
While the political establishment sees Barry’s return to power as an embarrassment, many residents, especially young and poor blacks, don’t see it that way.
Barry, 58, professes to be a changed man, one healed mentally and morally by a “God-force.”
Drinking, drugging and womanizing, he says, is the old Barry. The new Barry puts God first and is devoted to his new wife, Cora, his family and uplifting the district.
Many were willing to forgive
“I came back stronger and more spiritually centered than ever before,” said Barry, who married a local political science professor and longtime friend in January. It was his fourth marriage. “I always believed in God, but I was not spiritually centered. I just went through the motions.”
“Now God is the center of my life,” he added. “I understand without his power, I have no power. Without his love, I have no love. My lifestyle has changed. I have friends I don’t associate with anymore. I go home at a reasonable time now.”
Many were willing to forgive.
Along Georgia Avenue in northwest Washington, and Martin Luther King Avenue in the southeast section of the city, green and white Barry posters were everywhere-on telephone poles, abandoned buildings, windows of restaurants, beauty parlors and barber shops.
“He deserves another chance,” said 56-year-old Albert Cone, as he left Sunday morning services at Union Temple, the large, Afrocentric church that Barry attends. “He did nothing to us as a people. The only thing he did was to himself. The incident he went through I am glad he went through it because it made him a better man. He’s a wiser man.”
But in predominantly white areas, people were more skeptical and less forgiving, and the Barry posters were few and far between.
“I just don’t trust him,” said Scott Barney, a 28-year-old white computer consultant, sitting on the grass with friends in Dupont Circle at Connecticut Avenue, watching Rollerbladers. “One minute he is fiscally responsible, wanting to get rid of drugs and guns. Then he ends up in a hotel snorting coke with a prostitute. I don’t see how he can do it again.”
Another plus for Barry, supporters say, is that he is a skilled politician and a diehard campaigner. None of the candidates, they said, understand the budget better than Barry.
And probably his most ingenious act, they said, was tapping into a segment of the populus that had a growing apathy toward politics.
Seeing potential, not problems
In comes the charismatic Barry and his campaign workers, known as the “Fighting 54,” who registered more than 10,000 non-voters before the primary, convincing them that their ballots counted and could make a difference.
“Marion Barry looked at the young people in the District of Columbia, and he didn’t see black males at risk. He didn’t see problems. What he saw was potential,” said David Bositas, the senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in Washington. “Just because they run into trouble with the law does not mean they are a failure, and they should be written off.”
In some circles, Barry is a celebrity, drawing crowds wherever he appears-people who want to kiss him, hug him or shake his hand.
Most of this popularity is due to his nearly three decades as a community activist, civil rights leader and politician in the city. While mayor, he was a “candy man” of sorts, offering summer jobs to the youths, housing for the elderly and mega contracts to minority businesses.
But some African-Americans, like Geraldine Greene, an IBM executive who voted for Barry in previous elections, believe the magic has fizzled.
“He will have problems in Congress, and I don’t think the people realize that,” she said. “The city will suffer under his leadership.”
The new Barry, one that looks trimmer and energetic, has worked hard to lure voters not sold on his campaign and recovery, promising to reduce crime, improve race relations and reduce unemployment, among other things.
One campaigning Sunday, he hit all the stops, shuttling between churches and social events and walking door-to-door in two neighborhoods soliciting new supporters.
Flanked by his wife, Barry mingled for about an hour with a crowd gathered at the ritzy Phillips Restaurant on the waterfront for the birthday party of an entertainment executive. People asked how everything was going. He responded with a smile, a nod or an OK, and took sips from his glass of soda.
A message to Congress
Later, Barry and Cora were chauffeured to the other side of town, near the Maryland border, to meet with voters and connect with a van carrying the “Fighting 54.”
“Come out, come out wherever you are for the next mayor of Washington, D.C.,” shouted Ramon Bains, Barry’s press agent, into a handheld intercom as they cruised to the middle of Highwood Drive, a street of mostly black professionals who live in mid-sized brick homes. “The next mayor is in your house, on your street, and he is worried about you. So come out and meet the next mayor of Washington, D.C.”
Within minutes, the quiet street came alive with commotion. Residents appeared in their windows, at their doors and on their porches and decks. Some headed down steep steps to the street.
Barry walked onto one property, Cora headed to the next one. They greeted homeowners, asking if they were registered and willing to vote for Barry. If they said yes, as most of them did, the Barrys asked permission to place a poster on their property.
“I hope I can get your vote,” Barry said to Allan McDonald, a white, middle-aged man, who walked down 38 steps to meet the candidate.
McDonald, a former police officer, offered some advice.
“There is a lot of talk about more policemen,” he said, “We don’t need more policemen. We need policemen to do more. They need to form standards. There are too many officers, sergeants, out in the field supervisors who ride the boat, get the paychecks and don’t do a thing. If we were to motivate these people to perform, we could cut the police force.”
Barry agreed. McDonald promised support, and Barry and the “Fighting 54” moved on.
For some people, a vote for Barry was a message to Congress for not granting the District home rule (status as a state), for the FBI sting and what appeared to be a double standard applied to Barry. They said the same standards were not imposed on former Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, who traded guns with Iran but ran for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia.
“Everyone makes mistakes, but we are not treated the same, and I think that is the main reason why a lot of people are behind him,” said Rob Bailey, who attends Union Temple.
Barry’s past plays as much of a role in his comeback as the strategies he incorporated during the mayoral contest.
Able to recreate himself
In the 1970s when he first ran for political office, he demonstrated the ability to recreate himself: The self-proclaimed militant discarded his daskiki and black power attire for a business suit; he dumped the militants for business and white supporters.
He described himself to Leon Dash, a Washington Post reporter, as a “situationist. I do what is necessary for the situation. If I walk away in a daskiki now, people would say I’m crazy.”
Barry was born in rural Mississippi on March 6, 1936.
He was named after his father, a sharecopper, who died when he was four. His mother, Mattie, moved the family to Memphis, where she took a job as a domestic and remarried a butcher, David Cummings.
One of 10 children, Barry grew up in stark poverty. He picked cotton every spring in Mississippi and Arkansas to help with finances.
Although his home had few books besides a Bible, he earned a scholarship to LeMoyne College, a small, predominantly black school, where he majored in chemistry and was active in the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity and the NAACP; he became the president of the college chapter.
While earning his master’s in chemistry at Fisk University in Nashville, he formed an NAACP chapter. And in 1966, he helped coordinate the city’s first lunch counter sit-in. Later that year, he met with Dr. King at Shaw College in Raleigh, where he and other students organized the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, or SNCC.
The organization, which played a major role in the civil rights movement, named Barry its first national chairman. He moved to Washington in 1960 and seven years later split with SNCC, which he felt was becoming too radical.
Barry started Youth Pride, a grassroots program funded by the Department of Labor, which provided more than 1,000 jobs for black youths to clean streets and kill rodents. Barry’s ideology moved more towards the mainstream by the time he entered politics in the 1970s, joining the school board in 1972 and the city council in 1974.
Four years later, in the Democratic mayoral primary, he defeated incumbent Walter Washington. He easily defeated the GOP candidate to become mayor.
His three terms in office received mixed reviews. While praised for sparking downtown development, reducing unemployment and crime, his tenure was scarred by indictments of several aides and even himself.
Fateful night in January
On the night of January 18, 1990, Barry headed to the Vista International Hotel to meet with Rhasheeda Moore, an old acquaintance. It was obvious from FBI tapes that Barry’s main interest was sex. But Moore pursued another one of Barry’s weaknesses, his drug addiction. The mayor grabbed the pipe and inhaled a long drag. Within seconds, police rushed into the room to arrest him.
“I embarrassed myself, embarrassed my family; I hurt myself,” said Barry, looking back at that day.
When asked how did a seemingly successful man falls victim to drugs, Barry responded, “The disease has no boundaries, no color, no class. I have the same insecurities that a mechanic might have-to be liked and loved.”
He declined to discuss his recovery, but he said he has “recognized his insecurities” and has filled the psychological hole he had.
“I’m not in need of being liked by everybody,” he said. “If I like myself, fine. And if I like me, and God likes me, and I make the right decisions, then I am happy.”
Barry supporters saw him as a shoo-in to win the Nov. 8th general election.
In a city in which Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 11 to 1, few believed Schwartz, who was trounced by Barry in 1986, could pull the upset.
Another reason why some political analysts predicted Barry’s victory was that some Democrats who voted against him in the primary agreed to stick with the ticket.
“I am not voting for (Schwartz),” said real estate attorney Robert Cooper, who voted for Ray in the primary. “I am voting for Barry. At this time, Marion is talking the talk and walking the walk, saying all the things he needs to say.”
