Sharon Pratt Kelly
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Sharon Pratt Kelly (1944–), formerly Sharon Pratt Dixon, was mayor of Washington, D.C. from 1991 to 1995.
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[edit] Early life and career
Sharon Pratt was born January 30, 1944 in Washington. She received both undergraduate and law degrees from Howard University, following the career path of her father, a superior court judge, and was a professor in law at Antioch College before returning to Washington in 1977.
In 1983 she was made Vice President of Community Relations at Pepco, the local power utility, becoming the first woman and first African-American to serve in that role. The same year, she won the Presidential Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Pratt directed the failed 1982 mayoral campaign of Patricia Roberts Harris and married Arrington Dixon, a Democrat on the D.C. city council. Her political energies, however, were drawn to national rather than local politics. She was a member of the Democratic National Committee from the District of Columbia from 1977-90, the first female to hold that position. She served as Treasurer of the DNC 1985-89.
[edit] Mayor of the District of Columbia
Pratt was sworn in as mayor of Washington on January 2, 1991, the first African-American woman to serve as mayor of a major American city. Early in her term, she married James R. Kelly III, a New York businessman, and changed her name to Sharon Pratt Kelly.
Upset with the decline of her hometown, Pratt announced that she would challenge incumbent mayor Marion Barry in the 1990 election at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Pratt was the only candidate to have officially announced her plans to run for mayor, when Barry was arrested on drug charges and dropped out of the race in 1989. Shortly thereafter, the race was joined by three longtime D.C. Councilmembers. Pratt criticized her opponents on the council referring to them as the "three blind mice" who "saw nothing, said nothing and did nothing as the city rapidly decayed." She promised to "clean house with a shovel, not a broom." Following a series of televised debates during the last few weeks of the campaign, Pratt received the endorsement of the Washington Post. Within a matter of days, Pratt's grass-roots campaign staff grew from eight volunteers in their teens and twenties to over a one hundred volunteers. The night before the election, poll numbers showed Pratt in a horserace for second-place. On Election Day voters showed up at the polls carrying brooms and shovels. Pratt ulitimately won the election by a healthy double-digit margin.
Once in office, Pratt's grassroots, reform posture was met with resistance. As she made good on her promise to slash the city employment payroll, her fragile political coalition began to weaken. Her efforts to achieve D.C. statehood in order to improve the District's financial and political standing upset the status quo and resulted in a barrage of negative press. In an ironic twist, much of the mainstream press suggested that in spite of her anti-patronage reform policies, Pratt was an aloof, out-of-touch corporate insider. Washington, D.C., is a predominantly African-American city, so it was particularly damning when the media began to portray Pratt as a fair-skinned elitist. In the second year of her term, Barry loyalists mounted a recall campaign, which, although unsuccessful, weakened her administration.
In the 1994 Democratic primary, Kelly finished a distant third, losing to the ever-popular Marion Barry.
[edit] Post-Mayoral activities
In 1999, Sharon Pratt and James Kelly divorced. Pratt is now involved in Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness planning through her privately held company, Pratt Consulting. As recounted in George Mason University economics professor James T. Bennett's 2006 book Homeland Security Scams, Pratt received a $236,000 federal grant for "bioterrorism consulting" though it is unclear what expertise she has in the field. Pratt justified the grant by saying someone who appreciates how to pull the players together deserves the dough
She resides part-time in New York City and in Washington, D.C. She is the mother of two adult daughters, Drew Dixon Williams and Aimee Dixon, and the grandmother of Dixon Bathrus Williams, who was born in September 2004, and Carlisle Hastie Williams, born in September 2006.
[edit] References
| Preceded by Marion Barry |
Mayor of Washington, D.C. 1991–1995 |
Succeeded by Marion Barry |
