Sharon Pratt Dixon had never sought elective office before she jumped into the Democratic mayoral primary in Washington. With less money and a smaller staff than any of her four rivals, she was at the bottom of most polls a few weeks ago. But Dixon had a message: after 12 years in office, outgoing Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr. had left the city a fiscal and moral mess. And she had a promise: "I'll clean house with a shovel, not a broom."
Some shovel. In a stunning upset, Dixon managed to bury four opponents who had long experience in government. Enjoying the support of blacks and whites alike, she won 35% of 122,000 votes, a record turnout for an off-year election. Barry, a dedicated opponent of Dixon's, offered the sharpest post- election analysis of her victory: "Sharon Pratt Dixon represented drastic change."
A lawyer and former vice president of Potomac Electric Power Co., Dixon, 46, had demanded Barry's resignation as soon as he was arrested in January on a charge of drug possession. She turned the campaign into a referendum on his legacy, even as her opponents avoided attacking the mayor by name, mindful of his continuing popularity with some constituents. In a city where close to 85% of the voters are Democrats, Dixon is heavily favored to defeat her Republican opponent, former D.C. police chief Maurice T. Turner Jr., in the November election. If so, she would be the first African-American woman to be elected mayor of a major American city.
"She was the only candidate who created a perception that she was different," says local political analyst Mark Plotkin, "and that the other candidates were part of the problem and she was the one to solve it." She led strongly among white voters, but also did well in middle-class black districts.
While Dixon's last-minute surge of support was helped by a series of editorial endorsements from the Washington Post, another candidate got by nicely without its approval. Eleanor Holmes Norton, former chief of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, became the Democratic nominee for the District's nonvoting seat in Congress. The Post withheld its support after the news broke just before election day that Norton and her husband had not filed city tax returns from 1982 to 1989.
During the campaign, Dixon frequently attacked bloat in the District's 47,000-member public work force, vowing to fire 2,000 managerial-level employees to offset the city's projected $93 million deficit. She may have trouble delivering on her promise, which would require the consent of the D.C. city council. That body could include none other than Marion Barry, who is running as an independent for a council seat in November.