"Sharon Pratt Kelly"(January 30,1944)

Formerly Sharon Pratt Dixon and now known as Sharon Pratt Kelly,was the third Mayor of the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1995.She was the first African American woman to serve as mayor of a major American city.She is to date the only woman to have serve as mayor of  Washington D.C. She campaigned and was elected and inaugurated mayor as Sharon Pratt Dixon,on December 7,1991,she married James R. Kelly,3 a New York businessman,and changed her to Sharon Pratt Kelly.After their 1999 divorce she Sharon Pratt Kelly.Despite her historic election,her administration of Washington regarded as a failure.The city was facing a projected $ 1 billion budget deficit at the close of her single mayoral,term,far greater than that of her predecessor Marion Barry,with Sharon being criticized for mismanagement and inability to deliver the reforms she had in her initial campaign.In addition,Sharon had strained relations with the D.C. Council and allowed the popular Washington Redskins football franchise to relocate to the suburbs.Washington City Paper would later characterize her mayoral tenure as "one of the most ignominious periods in Modern D.C. history.Sharon was born to D.C. Superior Court judge Carlisle Edward Pratt and Mildred "Peggy"(Petticord) Pratt.Three years later,Benaree,was born.After she lost her mother to breast cancer at an early age, her grandmother,Hazel Pratt,and aunt,Aimee Elizabeth Pratt,helped raise the girls.Sharon attended D.C. Public Schools Gage ES,Rudolph ES,MacFarland B Junior High School, and Roosevelt HS, (1961 with honors).She excelled at baseball but deemphasized that in adolescence.At Howard University she joined ALPHA Kappa Alpha sorority (1964),and earned a B.A. in political science (1965).She received J.D. degree from Howard University School of Law in 1968.Sharon met and dated her future husband there.Sharon married Arrington Dixon (1966) and bore daughters in 1968 and 1970.They divorced after 16 years.Her political energies were drawn to national rather than local politics.Sharon was a member of the Democratic National Committee from the District of Columbia (1977-1990),the first woman to hold that position She was DNC treasurer (1985-1989).She directed the failed 1982 mayoral campaign of Patricia Roberts Harris.At the 1983,she was made Vice President of Community Relations at Pepco,the D.C. electric utility.Sharon became the first woman and first African American to serve in that role.The same year, she won the Presidential Award from the NAACP. Upset with the decline of her hometown,Sharon won announced at the 1988 Democratic National Convention that she would challenge incumbent mayor Marion Barry in the 1990 election.She 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 early 1990.Shortly thereafter,the race was joined by three longtime D.C. Council members.Sharon criticized her opponents on the council,referring to them as the "three blind mice"who"saw nothing, and did nothing as the city rapidly decayed."She was the only candidate who called on Marion to resign from office,and ran specifically as an outsider to his political machine with the campaign slogan of "Clean House."Following a series of televised debates during the last few weeks of the campaign,Sharon received the endorsement of The Washington Post.The day the endorsement appeared,her poll numbers skyrocketed,with many political observers attributing the rise specifically to the Post's backing.On the eve of the election,polls showed John Ray  holding the lead,but Sharon gaining ground fast and a large margin of undecided voters remaing.Even with the smallest campaign staff and least money,She won the election,defeating second-place Ray by 10% Sharon then defeated her Republican challenger,former chief Maurice T. Turner, Jr.,in the November 6 general election and was sworn in as mayor of Washington on January 2,1991.Once in office,her grassroots,campaign reform posture met her resistance.Sharon made good on her promises to clean house,requesting the resignations of all Marion appointees the day after election;however,as she began to slash the city employment payroll,her political support began to weaken.In Particular,she angered labor leaders who claimed she had promised not to fire union employees,and made no friends among other employees when she began mandating unpaid furloughs and wages freezes citywide.Even after removing Marion cronies for her administration,she was also unable to retain her own high-level staff members;three city administrations,two chiefs of staff,three deputy mayors for economic development,and two Department,of Finance chiefs had passed through her cabinet by the end of her term.Sharon also frustrated D.C. Council with her expensive proposal to temporarily move the city government to the building at One Judiciary Square,ten blocks away from Washington's incumbent city hall,the District Building,while the latter  underwent renovations.When she moved her office and administration departments to One Judiciary Square in 1992,the Council refused to leave the District Building, they had approved the proposal that spring;in February 1993,after accusing Sharon of deliberately neglecting maintenance in order to force them out,they voted to take full and exclusive control of the District Building.According to the Washington City Paper,Sharon "was never able to get control of a city government still loyal to Marion,and she often mistrusted the advice she got from aides.In the spring of 1992,just over a year into her term,Marion loyalists mounted a recall campaign,which unsuccessful,weekended her administration and forced her to tread more carefully with the public,backing away from her reform efforts.She also faced racial opposition because she is light skin-skinned black,often cited hallmark of elite African Americans in the District,distancing her from poor and working-class blacks in the city.Sharon drive achieve D.C. statehood in order ti improve the District's financial and political standing created fierce opposition from Republican members of Congress,who unleashed a barrange of attacks on the District as a "national disgrace"of "one-party rule... massive dependency,hellish,crime...and relenting scandal."The attacks brought unwelcome negative press to DC,and the ultimate failure in the House of Representatives of DC statehood legislation depleted her capital with the federal government with the federal government.She also lost standing with the DC Council when she supported Council member Linda Cropp to serve as acting Chair after the suicide of  John A. Wilson May 1993; instead,the Council chose John L. Ray.As fiscal year 1994 began for DC government (in October 1993),DC faced  a $ 5 million budget defcit, with financial experts predicting  a cumulative $1 billion deficit by 1999.Sharon had begun her term having extremely good realtions with Congress,successfully lobbying them to increase federal aid for D.C.  by $100 million and to authorize the sale of  $ 300 million in deficit reduction bonds.In early 1994 Sharon admitted that the District could not pay its bills,Congress comissioned a federal audit of the finances by the GAO. In February 1994, in the face of a ballooning deficit,  she faced heavy criticism when the Washington Post reported that Sharon regularly spent taxpayer funds on makeup for cable telvision apperances.Sharon was reported to have set aside &14,000 of city money to pay her makeup artist.In the weeks following, she came under fire for other inappropriate uses of city funds,including  the addition of bulletproof glass and a marble fireplace in her office and a series of 1993 televised town hall meetings that she had promised would be paid with private financing.The stories were seized by her opponents in that year's mayoral race particularly the comeback of Marion Barry.Sharon is now involved in Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness planning through her privately held company,Pratt Consulting.