This Campaign Isn't Politics as Usual

Cheh Assembles Breast Cancer Fundraising Team After Treatment

D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh is busily dialing up old friends and businesspeople these days, trying to raise money for her latest campaign.

Cheh, a Democrat who represents Ward 3, is up for reelection to a second term in 2010. But that's not why she's contacting potential contributors. This time, her fundraising is more personal.

Breast cancer.

For months, it was hard for Cheh to say those words, to admit that the lump she was feeling each time she took a shower might mean that she had cancer. She was hesitant to see a doctor despite being the freshman council member who in 2007 co-sponsored controversial legislation to require girls to be immunized against the human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer. (HPV vaccinations are scheduled to start in the fall.)

"I wanted to be in denial," said Cheh, who recently underwent a lumpectomy and radiation treatment.

Now, she said, "I want to be a poster child for early detection."

Cheh formed Team Cheh to raise money for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer, a two-day, 39-mile trek May 2-3. Her colleagues on the council plan to join her along the way.

Council members also rallied around Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) after he disclosed last month that he was suffering from kidney failure. He had a kidney transplant Feb. 20. The response to Barry's and Cheh's medical crises offers a window on a part of council life that can extend beyond politics.

"This is really a family," Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) said of the 13-member council.

Cheh, 58, is the married mother of two grown daughters. She grew up in Linden, N.J., the youngest of three children of an Irish American mother who did clerical work and a Hungarian immigrant father who was a factory worker. Her mother didn't finish high school; her father finished the seventh grade.

"I wanted to be a veterinarian, and I heard you had to get an education to do that," Cheh said. "I yearned to have a degree of -- for lack of a better word -- respectability."

Her interest in veterinary medicine ultimately gave way to a legal career. She has bachelor's and law degrees from Rutgers University and a master of law degree from Harvard University.