Anthony Williams steps from the chilly comfort of his campaign sedan into a humid Washington night. He has come to a rundown D.C. recreation center in what used to be Marion Barry country for a mayoral-candidate forum. Barry won't be here; after his genuinely baroque political career, the man who immortalized the words "Bitch set me up" has finally stepped aside. In his place stands Williams, who--if polls are right--will win the Sept. 15 Democratic primary (more important than the general election in this one-party town) and become mayor.
While most of the residents are dressed summer casual, their bare legs sticking to plastic chairs assembled on the center's basketball court, Williams is wearing a gray suit, a gray shirt and his trademark bow tie (also gray, though with a few zany paisley figures). "Welcome to forum alfresco," he quips in a typical bit of Ivy League drollery. No one laughs. But Williams is being himself, and the crowd seems to appreciate it. Somehow, in fact, this Yale-talking geek has inspired a city desperate for inspiration.
No one could have predicted his rise. After all, when Williams (who was raised in Los Angeles) first came to the D.C. area in 1993 to become chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he and his wife actually settled in the Virginia suburbs--a choice that now generates bad-natured ribbing from opponents. More important, when he did move to D.C. to become its chief financial officer in 1995, he quickly alienated himself from Barry's African-American establishment.
By congressional mandate, Williams couldn't be fired by Barry. With the help of a presidentially appointed financial-control board, Williams used this power to begin dismantling the bloated government Barry had built over two decades. Barry had more or less used D.C. agencies as a jobs program; this governing strategy created a loyal black middle class but eventually ruined city finances. Williams issued pink slips for the first time in years. In many parts of the city he was hated.
He was used to the sentiment. In 1980, still a Yale undergrad, he won a seat on the New Haven, Conn., board of aldermen and quickly took on two sacred cows: black organizations using city money to develop minority-owned firms. Williams thought they were spending the money inefficiently, and he sponsored a bill to cut them loose. Later, as an official with the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Williams worked to bring developers into struggling neighborhoods--neighborhoods sometimes suspicious of a bean counter wearing a bow tie. (Williams adopted the bow tie because he liked the look of a couple of Nation of Islam guys who worked in the office--though he says the choice was strictly sartorial, not religious.) Still later, when Williams worked at St. Louis' Community Development Agency, two black businessmen angry with his handling of their contracts sent him to the emergency room. They yelled "Uncle Tom!" as they busted his nose.
Moreover, even as he challenged black establishments, Williams gathered friends in white ones. He became close to a Yale instructor named Stan Greenberg, who would later become Bill Clinton's pollster (and whose firm now works for Williams' campaign). Greenberg's wife Rosa DeLauro, a Congresswoman from Connecticut, also became a friend. Other prominent New England families helped advance his career.