“Barry didn’t bring corruption to D.C. He changed who benefited from it.”
By A very good summary of the career of the late Marion Barry by Adam Serwer. One of many telling details:
Johnson resisted that impulse and appointed Walter Washington, who was easily defeated by Marion Barry in the city’s second elections in 1978. Rep. John McMillan, the Dixiecrat who chaired the House Committee on the District of Columbia until 1973, sent Washington a truckload of watermelons to “celebrate” his receipt of Washington’s first city budget. McMillan “treated the city as if it were his plantation and turned the District Building into a fiefdom for his own patronage jobs,” applying “applied taxes to construction projects at the behest of the white business community,” Jaffe and Sherwood wrote.