WASHINGTON -- As she finishes the fried croaker special at the Florida Avenue Grill, a downtown soul-food hangout, Marion Wilson heaves a heaven-have-mercy sigh. The majority-black city where she has lived for decades may be about to elect a majority-white City Council.
The prospect leaves her in a state of glum disbelief.
"They're not concerned with what's going on down here -- with the people who are working and barely surviving," she says about the white candidates. "I wouldn't vote for any of them."
As Election Day approaches, Washingtonians are poised to elect the first majority-white council since the district gained home rule in 1974.
And the city is divided: Some voters argue that competence, not color, is the issue. Others insist that their candidates must represent the experience of the urban black residents who make up most of the district.
And so an ordinary race for a largely powerless local seat has taken on a racial supercharge.
The campaign has even drawn the fascination of onlookers from far outside the district's borders: Today, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who lives in New York, is expected to appear at a rally for Malik Shabazz, an African-American council candidate who is campaigning to "save Chocolate City" from a mostly white council.
Whether the council scale tips to seven white and six black members depends on what happens to two "at-large," citywide seats. The outcome of most of the other council races is largely decided.
In the primaries, Democrat Phil Mendelson and Republican David Catania, both white, made powerful showings, and political oddsmakers gave them good chances to win.
The development may seem stunning from the outside, but political analysts have watched this trend emerge in recent years as black residents have increasingly stayed home on Election Day.
Many feel disenfranchised, fed up with a government that they feel answers to Congress instead of to their needs, says University of Maryland government professor Ron Walters.
"When David Catania, a white Republican, could do so well, that was a sign that in a city that is predominantly black and Democratic, people are not voting," says Walters. "It's a systematic pattern in this city."
Further diminishing turnout, over the past three decades Washington has lost 180,000 people, 77 percent of whom have been black.
Many of those residents were part of the middle-class voting base that helped elect black candidates -- an older, politically active, well-educated crowd.
Now, in a city that is about 63 percent black, only about 42 percent of all its elected officials are African-American, says David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political Studies.
Most of the candidates -- black and white -- insist that race is not an issue. They urge voters to judge them by their views and experience.
The federally appointed control board is expected to restore sweeping powers to the council over the next two years, and many candidates are eager to portray themselves as the right statesmen for the job.
"The voters are not totally colorblind. They talk about it, but it's clear to me that their first and foremost concern is competency," Mendelson says.
Still, noting that voters are interested in his stand on the issues, he often mentions his support for Mayor Marion S. Barry Jr.'s signature causes, including the survival of the University of the District of Columbia.
Throughout the campaign, the race issue has been slow to fade. On a recent Sunday, a minister at a northeast Washington church introduced at-large candidate Sandra Seegars as a black woman who could help rescue the council from a white majority.
Last year, her critics accused her of turning her back on fellow blacks by launching a Marion Barry recall drive.
But when it came to the campaign, Seegars says, the color of her skin, not her past opposition to Barry, is the headline.
"I told the folks at the church, I don't want you to vote for me because I'm black, but because you think I can do something for the city," Seegars says.
"I told them, 'Remember, everyone who's black is not good for you, everyone who's white is not bad for you.' "
Others are not shying from the topic. Shabazz, a 32-year-old lawyer and activist, is making "the black agenda" the cornerstone of his campaign.
"No one else even mentions that word -- 'black' -- in their literature," Shabazz says. With a majority-white council, he contends, "blacks will be slightly overlooked, they won't be given the adequate attention and concern they deserve."
L "We need a majority-black, competent City Council," he says.
Meanwhile, critics have renewed attacks on Shabazz and another African-American council candidate, Mark Thompson, both of whom made slurs against Jews at a Howard University event in 1994.
In a side skirmish, some residents attacked Seegars for campaigning with her initials, "S.S.," saying it was offensive because it suggested Hitler's police force.
The issue of the council's racial makeup caught fire when the retiring Mayor Barry hinted last month that he could not support two white Democratic council candidates, saying the council should reflect the city's population.
The episode sparked accusations that Barry was injecting race into the campaign. Barry later reversed himself, hugging Mendelson twice at a news conference to prove it.
To some political analysts, the possibility of a majority-white council shows that the district's black voters feel so disillusioned that they have muted their own political voice.
To others, however, it proves that Washington politics are, refreshingly, not driven by skin color.
"There are racial dynamics in the way people vote, but that does not mean that black people only vote for black people," says Jamin Raskin, an American University law professor and expert in district politics.
Raskin points out that the city elected the late Dave Clarke, a white politician who transcended racial division as a much-loved City Council chairman.
Still, even Raskin concedes that one reason white candidates have done so well here is that the white vote is so potent.
In the September primary, the ward with the highest number of whites also cast the most ballots, even though it is not the most populous ward.
Some district experts call the whole situation a fluke. Because Washington's electoral rules allow only half the at-large seats to go to the majority party (in this case the Democrats), the field is split.
That gives Catania, the Republican who rose to the seat in a special election last year, an edge as a known quantity with a tested political record.
"It may turn out that in the mix of things we have a majority-white council, but it's not like we're electing a council for life, and I could easily see a change in the next election," says Charles Harris, a political science professor at Howard University.
Harris suggests that more harm than good has come from the chronicling of the council's racial makeup: "I don't think this topic ought to be as high in the public as it is.
"If we're trying to bring the races together, then we have to be careful about what we make a big issue."
But folks at the Florida Avenue Grill say it is naive to think that voters will be unaware of who is black and who is white on their council.
It is, they say, inevitable.
"The vote depends a good bit on race whether we want it to or not," says Ed Featherston, a 69-year-old restaurant manager and a city resident for six decades.
"Let's face it. This is America."
Pub Date: 10/28/98