Is Leggett Just Too Likable?
Critics Would Make an Issue of Candidate's Lacking Enemies

By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 31, 2006

This is one of a series of articles profiling candidates for Montgomery county executive.

Fearful that a student rights rally at Southern University was going to explode in the spring of 1967, some students descended on the Baton Rouge, La., hospital where Isiah Leggett was recovering from surgery for a burst appendix.

We're getting you out of here, they said. You have to help calm things down.

Leggett was not just the student body president. He was also respected by the administration. And so before the nurses could stop the students, they pushed his wheelchair out the front door.

Within a few hours, Leggett and college administrators were negotiating a settlement of student complaints about living conditions. The administrators were "rather pleased that he was able to come back to bring that stabilizing force to the students," remembered Franklin D. Jones, then a junior.

Now, nearly 40 years later, Leggett, 61, known as "Ike," still enjoys a reputation as a stabilizing force as he runs for Montgomery county executive. Throughout his public career, which includes 16 years on the County Council and two as Maryland Democratic Party chairman, Leggett has become known as a low-key conciliator, a diplomat-cum-politician.

In the process, Leggett, who has a smooth voice, heavy eyelids and moustache, has become something of a rarity: a politician with few enemies.

Even his Democratic primary opponent, council member Steven A. Silverman (At Large), talks about how much he admires and respects Leggett, and his campaign has distributed bumper stickers that say, "I like Ike, but I'm voting for Steve!"

"It's true that everyone likes Ike," said Gail Ewing, a former Democratic council member, who is staying neutral in the race. "He is the statesman."

But he does have critics who suggest that a politician without enemies is as questionable as a skinny chef. Although his supporters see him as a gracious consensus builder, his opponents see a flip-flopper who lacks the decisiveness to be a top executive, a position in which it's impossible to please everyone.

"There are some people who are better at walking the middle line and some who want to take a stance and make a difference," said Cheryl C. Kagan, a former state delegate supporting Silverman. "Ike has been the master of walking the line and being a consensus builder but not necessarily taking the tough stance on controversial issues."

Leggett has been accused of ducking a vote on the intercounty connector, the fiercely contested highway project that would connect Interstate 270 in Montgomery County to Interstate 95 in Prince George's County. In 1997, he recused himself from voting on the proposed roadway while on the council because he owns property along the right of way. Critics also accuse Leggett of changing his stance on the also contentious Purple Line debate. He supports it, but he voted against a precursor called the Georgetown Branch Trolley.

Leggett is aware of the criticism. In campaign literature, he's combating it with a slogan: "Decisive leadership for Montgomery County." And he makes light of it at campaign events.

At a recent event in Silver Spring, Leggett brought up seemingly contrasting roles he played in college: He was at once the brigade commander of the ROTC and an antiwar demonstrator who was once arrested. At times, he said, he remembered thinking, "I'm really demonstrating against myself."

Growing Up in the Old South

Leggett was born into poverty in Alexandria, La., the seventh of 12 children (a 13th died shortly after being born) who grew up in a three-room shotgun house.

"Not three bedrooms," he said. "Three rooms , period."

For a time, the house at 3161 Wise St. didn't have running water or electricity, Leggett said. And although his parents both worked -- his mother was a short-order cook, and his father rebuilt fences and did odd jobs -- neighbors sometimes brought over dinner because food was scarce.

He went to segregated schools that used hand-me-down textbooks from the white schools and that didn't provide transportation to its students.

"If you didn't know my background, you would think I always lived in a house like this," he said, sitting in the living room of his 4,564-square-foot Burtonsville home, which sits on five acres and has a tennis court in back.

"I do understand what it's like not to have health insurance, or not to have adequate housing," he said.

But he did have people looking out for him. Siblings, many of whom have gone on to careers in the military, education and health. Neighbors. Teachers. Coaches. And a principal at Peabody High School who pushed his students.

"We were not taught to hate as a result of what you don't have," said Jewel Limar Prestage, one of Leggett's political science professors at Southern University, who also is from Alexandria. "We were taught to appreciate yourself as child of God."

Which is what Mary Leggett had been telling her children all along.

One day when Ike Leggett was about 11, he was picking up balls on the driving range where he worked, and a golfer told him to back up a bit and then stand still.

Leggett complied, thinking the man wanted help judging the distance. Then the golfer fired away, using him as a flagstick.

He could have refused to stand there and told the golfer off. But this was Alexandria circa 1956, and a black child did not speak to a white man like that.

Thwack .

The ball landed nearby. But Leggett didn't flinch. His mother had told him since he was a baby that to survive the Deep South, he would have to stay cool and be smart.

Thwack .

Don't get mad, she'd say. Don't complain. Work hard. You will rise above this place.

Thwack .

You're going to go to college, she told him, and be successful.

When he went home that evening and told his mother what had happened, she said, One day you are going to own that golf course.

Paying for College

She had often told him that he was going to go to college. But she never said how he would pay for it.

Leggett's high school football coach told him about Southern University's work-study program, where students received a stipend for campus jobs. So a couple of weeks after his high school graduation, he took the bus to Baton Rouge, went to the office and asked to be admitted to the program.

Applications were due weeks ago, he was told. The program's full.

Dejected, he slumped out of the office, not knowing what to do. He didn't have enough money for the bus home, and he didn't have a place to sleep or anyplace to go. So he turned around and walked back into the office. Please, he began, trying to be as polite as possible.

Again, he was turned down. He went back a few more times during the day, until finally the assistant business manager took pity. "I am sick and tired of seeing your face," Leggett remembered her saying.

The woman, Betty Johnson, who still works at Southern, said she doesn't remember the details. But she did recall giving Leggett a job "on buildings and grounds."

Politics Then and Now

When Leggett first ran for County Council in 1985, his campaign was markedly different from the one he is running today. Now he is showcasing his childhood poverty, and pictures of him are displayed prominently on campaign literature.

Then, he refused to distribute pictures of himself.

He wanted voters to see his experience -- decorated Vietnam veteran, White House fellow, first in his class at Howard law -- not his skin color, said Bruce Adams, who ran on a slate of candidates with Leggett that year and is now supporting him.

The low point of his council tenure came in 1991, when a former aide brought sexual harassment charges against him. Leggett refused to settle with the woman, who was found to have multiple-personality disorder, and a Montgomery jury took 90 minutes to clear him. But the accusations embarrassed him and cost the county several hundred thousand dollars in legal fees.

Shortly before the trial, he had quadruple-bypass surgery. These days, he said, his health is fine, and he plays tennis Sunday mornings before church.

Leggett has been trumpeting some of the legislation he helped pass while on the council.

Silverman's campaign has seized on an issue that Leggett steered clear of: the intercounty connector. Leggett says he supports the roadway. But at a roast to mark his retirement from the council in 2003, Douglas M. Duncan, the current county executive, who is staying neutral in the race, joked that Leggett is "the guy who owned property along the ICC route just so he wouldn't have to vote on the ICC," according to a video of the event.

More recently, Silverman's campaign released an e-mail from Anne Ambler, chair of the county's Sierra Club chapter, which said Leggett "at least promises not to pursue the ICC if we can elect a gov who will reevaluate the transportation priorities."

Ambler confirmed that she had written the e-mail, but she said she was merely trying to dissuade someone from voting for Robert Fustero, another Democratic candidate for county executive, who is considered a long shot. She said it is "wishful thinking" that Leggett would take a stance against the intercounty connector. Still, Ambler hopes he will change his mind.

Staff writer Ann E. Marimow and staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.