TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/020590/0205107.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 6.6 KB | 147 lines

                                                            NATION, Page 19

Run, Barry, Run


While Washington's indicted mayor takes a cure in Florida, who
inherits the mess he left behind?

By JULIE JOHNSON -- With reporting by Jerome Cramer and Michael
Riley/Washington


    The U.S. Conference of Mayors opened its midwinter meeting
in Washington last week, ironically with drugs as the focus of
discussion. Conspicuously absent was the conference host,
Washington Mayor Marion Barry, who shortly before was captured
on a grainy FBI videotape apparently sipping cognac and smoking
crack cocaine from a pipe. Three days after being charged with
possession of cocaine, Barry retreated to the Hanley-Hazelden
Center for drug and alcohol abuse in West Palm Beach, Fla.,
declaring that he sought healing in "body, mind and soul."
Behind him, the still stunned capital wrestled with questions
about the propriety of his arrest and the political future of
a battered city.

    Even as a loyal remnant of Barry's once formidable
constituency pleaded for sympathy for the man, attention
shifted to his sometime ally, Jesse Jackson. Jackson moved to
Washington last summer amid calls for him to challenge his old
civil rights compatriot. Yet three days before Barry's arrest,
Jackson used Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to launch a
national campaign for D.C. statehood -- a campaign that could
put him into the U.S. Senate rather than the District Building.

    Jackson, who spoke with Barry by telephone after the arrest,
almost immediately came under intense pressure to run for mayor
from the same Washington power brokers who earlier shunned him
as a carpetbagger. But Jackson was wary, suspecting that his
political opponents were hoping to bury him in a no-win job.
Jackson's public statements have been typically coy and evasive
-- prudent politicians "never say never," he declared -- but
privately, for now, he is heeding the counsel of friends and
his wife Jackie to stay out of it. Settling into the mayor's
office would mean being tied down by the Lilliputian strings
of Washington's troubled municipal bureaucracy. Speaking before
the Barry arrest, Jackson said, "It's just too small a stage
for me." And his friends note that Jackson is well aware that
Capitol Hill has as much to say about the District's budget as
does the mayor. He would be tugged this way and that by members
of Congress, some of whom he outpolled in his 1988 bid for the
Democratic presidential nomination.

    Jackson, who can stall until the July filing deadline for
the September Democratic primary, has made it clear he will not
challenge Barry -- and the mayor has not ruled out a
rehabilitated run for a fourth term after he emerges from
Hanley-Hazelden, as farfetched as that may seem. Barry, 53,
pleaded with reporters to "back away" while he recovers from
an unspecified "problem" that aides say centers on alcoholism.
But even the tearful news conference that preceded his retreat
to Hanley-Hazelden seemed calculated. The mayor, sweating
profusely and looking to wife Effi for support, artfully
excluded any mention of drugs. Barry's disappearance extricated
him from legal wrangling over a possible plea bargain and from
defense preparations that may hinge on the FBI videotape.
Investigators, protesting that the tape needs enhancing, have
resisted showing it to Barry's lawyer.

    Even if Barry is convicted on the misdemeanor charge of drug
possession, he could continue to hold office if he is sentenced
to less than the one-year maximum term. And precedent exists
for the jailhouse election of a municipal official. In 1903
Boston's four-time mayor, James Michael Curley, was elected
alderman from jail. In fact, an us-against-them argument could
appeal to Barry's populist base in a city fractured along
racial and class lines.

    Many Barry supporters have long asserted that the mayor's
problems with federal prosecutors were racially motivated.
Cathy Hughes, a Washington businesswoman who owns a radio
station and is host of a popular call-in talk show, scoffed
that the best prosecutors could come up with was "a
multimillion-dollar misdemeanor charge." Hughes, who is
informally polling listener support for Barry, said, "The
community is saying to him, `Get well, come home, we're
waiting.'"

    One target of the criticism is U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens,
formerly a White House deputy counsel. His public statements
hinting at a plea bargain in exchange for Barry's resignation
have sparked criticism that he is an overzealous Republican
prosecutor. Even controversy-shy N.A.A.C.P. Executive director
Benjamin Hooks cited a "pattern of harassment of black elected
officials by law-enforcement authorities."

    The FBI sting came after repeated investigations into
broader corruption among Barry associates had failed to snare
the mayor. The FBI's inability to pin a charge on Barry
bolstered the belief among some in Washington that Hazel Diane
(Rasheeda) Moore lured the mayor to the Vista International
Hotel only after authorities pressured her to do so.

    One law-enforcement official conceded that the FBI "had
leverage" over Moore. Reportedly Moore told a grand jury last
year that she had not used drugs and was only a casual friend
of Barry's. But she renewed talks with authorities after a
drunk-driving arrest in Los Angeles on New Years' Day; once
before, she served six months in prison for unauthorized use
of a motor vehicle. Another explanation for her cooperation is
that she feared being charged with perjury for her grand jury
testimony about Barry and Charles Lewis, a convicted drug
dealer. In December 1988 the Washington police were about to
arrest Lewis, when Barry turned up in the man's hotel room. The
bust was aborted, but police reportedly found traces of cocaine
in the room. Last summer Lewis told federal investigators he
had smoked crack with the mayor.

    After the Lewis incident, Barry is said to have joked among
friends that they would never again see him in a local hotel.
Why he went to the Vista to visit Moore remains a mystery. For
now, however, Washington's mayor is checked into a very
different residential facility. For 28 days, his routine will
be filled with exercise, tough-love group therapy and chores
such as vacuuming and mopping.

    Meanwhile the District is left to fend for itself, its
neighborhoods echoing with gunfire from drug dealers, its
hospitals increasingly overburdened by abandoned, drug-addicted
newborns and many other babies who die before their first
birthday.