Marie Johns Wants You to Know Who She Is
By Taaq Kirksey
WI Staff Writer
Photos by Joanne Jackson
First and foremost, she wants people to get her name right. “I’m … not Sharon Pratt Kelly,” the mayoral candidate said, forcefully distinguishing herself from the city’s first Black female mayor who had succeeded Marion S. Barry once he was off to jail on drug-related charges.
Things were different then.
The nation’s capital, with more than one agency in receivership, a considerable deficit, and compromising images of its chief broadcast nationally, was the butt of late-night jokes. Kelly, a former electric company executive, charged in with a golden shovel claiming to dig the city out of the rut. Marie C. Johns, a former telecommunications executive, running for mayor in a crowded race, says she is NOT Sharon Pratt Kelly.
Johns has gone from secretary to boss lady, and her rise through the executive ranks at Verizon, Washington, D.C., where she managed a $700 million operation during major breakthroughs in the telecommunications industry, indicates she can handle just about anything.
prepared her for the even tougher job—chief executive of a city poised for further major developments. One of the big issues her administration could address, she said, is the city’s widening racial divide.
She told of jogging recently with a friend of hers, another African American woman, in their Spring Valley neighborhood in Ward 3. A White woman stopped them and asked if they lived nearby. Johns was not surprised. She sees racial tensions often throughout the city. She notices how racially segregated most candidate meet-and-greets are, for instance. The city’s racial divide is something no one wants to discuss, Johns said, but it’s a dialogue she could initiate.
“Race pervades everything,” Johns said. As mayor, she would call for programs that would draw youth—and their families—into diverse groups. She suggests that city-wide arts and recreation teams—drawing kids from every ward into neighborhoods they would not usually see—as an answer.
She’s savvy, and tough, and it’s no wonder a local magazine recently named her one of the most powerful women in the nation’s capital.
Johns believes her management skills and community involvement can carry her mayoral campaign all the way to victory.
At a meeting at The Washington Informer last week, she was quick to tell how decades as a Black female business executive in a corporate environment
Vocational training should have been offered as city officials were planning for major new construction, she said. “We’re not doing the job that we have to do in preparing people to take advantage of the great economy that our city has … we have to widen the net.”
Johns is not very critical of the current administration. “The current administration inherited a burning house,” she said. However, she believes current administrators could have done more for the residents of the District. “The government has got to get serious about investing in our human capital,” she said. City officials could connect resources more effectively, she added.
Johns thinks the District that has allowed its priorities to go awry, pushing policy and incentives that result in massive condominiums taking only months to be completed while public schools crumble under years of neglect.
Addressing another growing gap between prosperous professionals and business owners arriving in the city daily, and long-time residents swelling the unemployment ranks, Johns suggests providing vocational training.
The City’s Divides
“I’m very troubled about the wide and growing opportunity gap in this city and we have to be very serious about addressing it,” Johns said.
she suggests that poor planning on the part of recent administrations made the issue “a more expensive problem to fix.” She mentioned funding the District receives from the U.S. Department of Housing and Human Services improperly allocated or not used. Millions of federal dollars received by the District go unused because housing has become so expensive, even with down-payment assistance, low and middle-income residents cannot afford the mortgage.
Johns sounds like her contenders on affordable housing. D.C. Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp, in her campaign speeches, also suggests building mixed-income communities, where families that can afford to pay market rate can help offset units in the community reserved for “workforce” families – teachers, police officers and firefighters. They also sound similar refrains when suggesting making use of the city’s “air space”—building up more stories as ground space shrinks.
She proposes her administration would serve as a management office that would take care of school maintenance, allowing principals and the superintendent to focus on administrating without infrastructural concerns. “It’s ridiculous if a principal has to worry about the lawn getting cut … we are the nation’s capital and we can’t provide toilet paper for our kids?”
On affordable housing—a concern that affects more of the District’s shrinking middle and lower classes daily—
and a younger sister unable to stay with a mother addicted to crack cocaine. Johns is contemplating the idea of pilot schools and “co-hab housing” for low-income single parents to provide safe environments, computer classes and “to, as a city, help mothers like Karen.”
In addition to co-hab housing, she also would establish stronger communities through monthly meetings between her administration and residents in each ward of the city.
“I believe in managing by walking around … I will be on the front lines,” she said. She also would have a direct hotline to her office where residents can “bring things to [her] attention.”
Johns envisions increasing vertical density in outlying areas such as Minnesota Ave. and Bladensburg Rd. while keeping the city’s classic Federal Triangle skyline intact.
Co-hab Housing
Through her travels through the District’s poorer neighborhoods, Johns found her biggest campaign surprise. She told a “divinely inspired” story of a woman named “Karen” living in Clay Terrace, raising 11 children – including a grandchild, a partner’s child from a previous relationship
Johns’ campaign has been characterized as business-like with the kind of emphasis on smooth transaction and “absolute customer satisfaction” that one might expect from a magnate, not a mayor. If she is uncomfortable with this association, it doesn’t show. With a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Indiana University, the business of managing resources and relationships for many is second-nature to her.
Included in her vision of increased accountability are an “excellent” Department of Contracting and Procurement, Office of Personnel and Office of Public Health to “put work where it makes sense.”
A Policeman’s Daughter
An Indiana native and policeman’s daughter, Johns came to Washington with her husband Wendell on the heels of a telecommunications boom that created the “Baby Bells” which included the former Bell Atlantic.
Working her way through the ranks, she became the president of the company—now Verizon—while expanding her presence throughout the District’s business and philanthropic communities.
As former chair of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce and former director of the National Capital Revitalization Corporation, she is quite familiar with the District’s dollars. She also is quite familiar with public service, having worked with the
“The notion of public service has been a part of my psyche as long as I can remember,” she said. “I want to be your mayor to provide the basics for you.”
Johns was named one of the city’s most powerful women in a recent issue of Washingtonian magazine, an indicator that she has done much despite her self-admitted humble beginnings. While she might not have the visible public service career of her competitors, she is undaunted and hopes that District voters are able to see the forest instead of just the trees. “Put my record against anyone … as a private citizen.”
