WASHINGTON (AP) ? Divisive and flamboyant, maddening and beloved, Marion Barry outshone every politician in the 40-year history of District of Columbia self-rule. But for many, his legacy was not defined by the accomplishments and failures of his four terms as mayor and long service on the D.C. Council.
Instead, Barry will be remembered for a single night in a downtown Washington hotel room and the grainy video that showed him lighting a crack pipe in the company of a much-younger woman. When FBI agents burst in, he referred to her with an expletive. She "set me up," Barry said.
Barry died Sunday at 78. His family said in statement that Barry died shortly after midnight Saturday at the United Medical Center, after having been released from Howard University Hospital the previous day.
The year was 1990, and crack cocaine had exploded in the district, turning it into the nation's murder capital. In his third term, the man known as the "Mayor for Life" became a symbol of a foundering city.
Federal authorities had been investigating him for years for his alleged ties to drug suspects, and while he denied using drugs, his late-night partying was taking a toll on his job performance.
The arrest and subsequent conviction ? a jury deadlocked on most counts, convicting him of a single count of drug possession ? was a turning point for Barry. He had been elected to his first term as mayor in 1978 with broad support from across the city. With his good looks, charisma and background in the civil rights movement, he was embraced the dynamic leader the city's young government needed. The Washington Post endorsed him in each of his first three mayoral runs, although the 1986 endorsement was unenthusiastic.
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