An Underdog Campaign With Teeth
Mayoral Hopeful Johns Stumps for Votes With Straight Talk on D.C. Challenges

By Lori Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 7, 2006

It's 8 a.m., and D.C. mayoral candidate Marie C. Johns is prowling the sidewalk above the Van Ness Metro station in a black pantsuit and tiger-striped flats. With a wide smile, she reaches into the stream of stone-faced commuters swimming up from the trains and lands a prize: an undecided voter.

Sixty seconds later, Janet Jalloul, an English teacher at the University of the District of Columbia, walks away impressed by Johns's focus on education. "This is the first time I've ever even heard her name!" Jalloul marvels, adding that Johns will now get her "serious consideration."

With her easy charm, plain talk and thoughtful ideas about the city's most pressing problems, Johns, a retired corporate executive making her first run for elected office, has emerged as a credible alternative to the more experienced front-runners in the Democratic race for mayor, D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp and Ward 4 council member Adrian M. Fenty, according to insiders in the Cropp and Fenty campaigns and other political observers.

Business leaders and some big donors say they are looking closely at Johns, the former president of Verizon Washington. Polls conducted for Johns's opponents show her rising to third place, ahead of Ward 5 council member Vincent B. Orange Sr. and lobbyist Michael A. Brown, though her support remains in the single digits. Johns is wowing crowds almost nightly at candidate forums, winning praise for her intelligence and common-sense style.

"She's offering real solutions that are like a mayor would have to have, not just campaign promises," Capitol Hill resident Rich Carlson said after watching Johns debate her opponents in Ward 6.

Still, with less than four months until the Sept. 12 Democratic primary, Johns remains virtually unknown among the wider pool of D.C. voters, putting her at a huge competitive disadvantage, political analysts say. Despite an aggressive street campaign, a cutting-edge Web site, a video blog, a weekly public-access TV show, countless debate appearances and mobile billboards bearing a catchy new slogan ("Different. Real. Better."), most people Johns meets on the campaign trail don't know her name.

Johns is undeterred.

"It's been an exhilarating experience, going from 'Marie Johns? Who the hell is she?' to people really beginning to pay attention to my campaign," she said. As for the pollsters, "I would ask them to watch our dust as we zoom by."

Johns likes to point out that front-runner status has never been a good predictor of victory in the District. Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) wasn't even in the race by this point in 1998. And in 1990, Sharon Pratt (D) overcame a poor showing in the polls to defeat front-runner John Ray.

Pollster Ron Lester, who helped run Pratt's campaign, said Johns has the same potential.

"Between Adrian and Linda, you probably have half of the electorate committed. And you've got the other 50 percent sitting out there looking for alternatives," Lester said. "Marie kind of needs a perfect-storm scenario, because she's starting out so far behind. But is it possible? Yes."

Poll numbers aren't the only similarity between Johns and Pratt, a businesswoman who at the time was also running her first campaign. The city slouched toward bankruptcy during Pratt's tenure, and Johns's detractors warn that her inexperience in government could endanger the District's hard-won economic recovery.

Lately, Johns has taken to addressing that comparison head-on. At a forum last week at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, she began her closing remarks by saying: "My name is Marie Collins Johns. It is not Sharon Pratt Kelly. I stand on my own record."

What is the Johns record? She says she offers varied life experience, professional success and a lengthy résumé of civic service, as well as an ironclad determination to improve the lives of District residents.

"We're going to touch voters morning, noon and night, and we're going to win by speaking to them," Johns said. "I want people to see my heart. I am truly running to serve."

Johns, 54, was born in Indianapolis, the daughter of a police officer and a secretary. She received a master's degree in public administration at Indiana University, where she and her husband, Wendell, were so poor that they lived for a time in federally subsidized housing, she notes on the campaign trail.

In 1985, her husband was working for a developer who moved his company to Bethesda, and the young couple followed. Johns, who had been working at the Indiana phone company, began her ascent through Bell Atlantic. She retired as president and chief executive of the local office in 2004, after Bell merged with GTE to become Verizon.

Johns and her husband moved into the District in 1999, settling in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Ward 3. Last year, convinced that her management experience made her the best choice to run the city, Johns decided to trade the plush life of retirement for the rough-and-tumble world of D.C. politics.

Her campaign got off to a rocky start. Her chief strategist, veteran organizer Marshall Brown, jumped ship and went to work for Cropp soon after Johns's announcement last July. But Johns rebounded, building a team of experienced women, including campaign manager Leslie Pinkston, who worked for Williams. She also hired Tim Law of mboxcommunications to "rebrand" the campaign. He and Pinkston came up with the new slogan, which Johns said "captured exactly what I want to say."

Johns's platform is focused heavily on fixing the city's troubled school system, which she says is to blame for a host of social problems. She wants to extend preschool to 3-year-olds, take over the day-to-day operations of the school system so Superintendent Clifford B. Janey can focus on education, and expand technical and vocational programs by opening a new campus of the University of the District of Columbia in Southeast Washington.

Johns blasts her opponents -- particularly Cropp, a former school board chairman -- for allowing the system to fall into disrepair.

"These problems are the result of years and years and years of insidious, day-by-day neglect," she said. "And all those in office have to be held accountable."

Over the past few months, Johns's message, retooled campaign and impressive debate performances have drawn the attention of political insiders.

"She's a powerful presence. And she's picking up some steam," said former mayoral spokesman Tony Bullock. "She has a lot of quiet support in the business community, people who are supporting her without wanting to offend" Cropp.

Eydie Whittington, a former Ward 8 council member, said Johns is popular east of the Anacostia River as well.

"I have a lot of respect for her integrity, honesty and passion -- and the fact that she has the nerve to even want to do this," Whittington said. "Cropp and Fenty came in with a bang. That doesn't mean they're going to go out with one."