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But his detractors were few when he moved to Washington. He started the Free D.C. Movement and organized a "mancott" of city buses. Militant and charismatic, he railed against the police as an "occupation army." In 1967 he established Pride Inc., which found jobs for unemployed black youths. Says former aide Audrey Rowe: "Marion was somebody who really deeply cared." This compassion helped Barry build a political base, and he soon hung up his dashiki to run successfully for the school board. In 1974 he won a city council seat.
| Supported by blacks, Hispanics, white liberals and gays, Barry won his first mayoral victory in 1978, defeating two Establishment blacks. He balanced the city's budget, fostered a downtown building boom and founded a successful summer youth-jobs program. But by his second term, the climate had changed; Barry became more arrogant and less responsive. "Whether you want it or not, a divine-right monarchy sets in," says an adviser. Scandals erupted, convictions flowed, an imperial mayor was born.
His personal vulnerabilities became more obvious. A constant element in the Barry saga has been his eye for pretty women. To discover the real Barry, a SNCC friend advises, "cherchez les femmes." Old friends marveled at his audacity. "He got his face slapped a lot," says college buddy Kenneth Cole, "but he also got dates" -- and a reputation for womanizing. More recently, speculation about drug use has hounded him. One grand jury probed his links to a convicted drug dealer but turned up nothing. Another grand jury is investigating his ties with convicted cocaine dealer Charles Lewis, whom he visited repeatedly at a downtown Ramada Inn last December. During one visit, a police stakeout of Lewis was aborted. Barry dismisses suspicions: "It hurts some with all the good work I've done. It's McCarthyism. There's no substantiation."
Beyond these questions, there are enough scandals to spawn a TV mini-series. Two deputy mayors and ten other top city officials have been convicted of corruption. The mayor's second wife served time for misusing federal funds while at Pride Inc.; Barry himself was not implicated. (Barry's first wife divorced him in 1969 on grounds of abandonment.) Once he visited a Washington topless club to solicit campaign contributions. Another miniscandal broke after he pulled up in his Lincoln Town Car to the Capitol Hill apartment of a 23-year-old model and strode to her door, walkie-talkie in hand, wearing a jogging suit and a cap emblazoned with MAYOR.
During his second term, Barry carried on a "personal relationship" with convicted cocaine dealer Karen Johnson, who never implicated him. Johnson now works for the city, as does Barry's second wife. More fundamentally, an insider claims that minority business contracts, about one-third of the city's $140 million contract treasure chest, fuel the sleaze. "The contracting process is the conduit by which the resources of the city are funneled into a revenue stream that constitutes the lifeblood of Barry's invisible empire," says a city official. "What you've got is a bunch of guys who don't mind wasting a million bucks to make sure one of theirs gets $200,000."