DC Matters

DC’s most captivating election ever?

On this date in 1978, Marion Barry won a mega-close mayoral primary election like no other.

It’s most interestingly viewed via the lens of the siege/hostage situation at the District Building just 18 months earlier.

That day in March of 1977, then At-Large Councilmember Marion Barry was hit by a ricocheting shotgun blast, staggered bleeding into the Chamber, and was ultimately evacuated from a Chamber window via a fire department ladder truck. Media coverage was extensive.

Mayor Walter Washington was the intended target of the siege, & was in the District Building as it began. The perpetrators ended up at the Council end of the hall outside the Chamber by mistake. The mayor was evacuated, & ran a high-profile command center after that.

The siege perpetrators barricaded themselves in Council Chair Sterling Tucker’s office, with hostages. WHUR reporter Maurice Williams was on his way to a Tucker press conference when he was shot & killed. Tucker himself was returning from a community mtg when he got the news.

In the end, despite thus being at the center of the siege story in some ways, by being on his way back to the District Building instead of in it when the siege occurred, he was less present in the media coverage of the siege than Marion Barry or Walter Washington were.

18 months & 1 day after the siege ended—on this date in 1978—these 3 men faced off in the mayoral primary election. Fewer than 3K votes separated them. Barry beat Tucker by just 1,356 votes. Could the slightest shift in time/place on siege day could have changed DC history?