POLITICS / CAPITAL CONTEST : D.C. Mayor Hopeful Wins Votes by Pushing Reforms

In a race increasingly centered on this city’s crime problem, Democratic mayoral candidate Sharon Pratt Dixon is holding fast to the “clean house” philosophy that led to her surprise primary victory earlier this month.

Dixon is using the same message she used to defeat three members of the City Council and the District of Columbia delegate to Congress in the Democratic primary campaign: charging that her Republican opponent--the district’s former police chief--is “part of the problems” the city faces. During the primary, the 46-year-old district native urged voters to kick out the present city Democratic Administration.

SOFT ON CRIME?: Days after her upset win, Dixon’s opponent, Republican Maurice T. Turner, charged her with being “soft on crime,” and the issue has driven the campaign since. Dixon’s response has been to continue capitalizing on the negative emotions lingering after a tumultuous summer highlighted by Mayor Marion Barry’s trial on cocaine possession charges.

“Her theme has struck a responsive chord; she’s an outsider and people like that,” said Russell Owens, director of national policy at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a black-oriented think tank.

Dixon is not a newcomer to the city’s rough-and-tumble political scene, though. “She’s not a political novice, she’s just not been involved in the Barry Administration or the City Council,” Owens said.

The winner of the Democratic primary generally wins the mayor’s race in this city, where significantly more than two-thirds of the voters are Democrats. But Turner, who became a Republican just a few months ago, is well-respected and could prove to be a viable opponent, said the joint center’s research director, Milton Morris.

Dixon’s experience in private business drew voters to her camp, as did the fact that “she was the first and only one who came out and demanded that Barry step down and get out of the election” after his January arrest at the Vista Hotel, city public affairs specialist Michael Simpson said.

But the Washington milieu “goes way beyond an anti-Marion Barry sentiment,” said Stephen Raiche, chairman of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for Ward 3E, a mixed-race area that Dixon captured. “She tapped a very strong anti-D.C. government sentiment.”

Dixon also offers voters a varied and diverse background.

“She’s very aggressive and very determined,” said Dixon’s aunt, Aimee Pratt, who helped raise Dixon and her sister after their mother died when Dixon was 4. “Instead of jumping rope when she was young, she’d play ’20 Questions.’ ”

Dixon graduated with honors from Howard University’s law school and went to work at the practice of her father, now-retired Superior Court Judge Carlisle E. Pratt. Later she became the first black woman to be named a vice president at Potomac Electrical Power Co., where she worked for 13 years.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND: Her political education blossomed with former husband Arrington Dixon, a past district council chairman. She was vice chairwoman of the D.C. Law Revision Commission, which transferred the local criminal code from Congress to the city, and served on the Democratic National Committee for a dozen years, part of that time as treasurer.

Dixon’s daughter, Aimee, 21, accompanies her on campaign appearances and her son, Drew, 19, helps in fund raising.

If she is elected, Dixon says, she will cut the city payroll by 2,000 jobs to help reduce the city’s runaway budget deficit. She also has proposed a capital growth fund to help minority businesses get established.