CLARKE HOPES TO BECOME WHITE MAYOR OF D.C.(Main)

Byline: Christopher Matthews

David Clarke is an odd case.

He's a blunt-talking politician in a city too often dominated by its smoothies. He's a working stiff in a capital overstocked with yuppies. He's a genuine local in a city best-known for its presidents, senators and other transients.

Clarke is also a paradoxical figure in local District of Columbia politics. If he were black, he might be the odds-on favorite to succeed the troubled Marion Barry as mayor of this capital city.

He is not. But if it was "God's choice," as he put it earlier this year, to make him white, Clarke's life experience has been more attuned to the streets and neighborhoods of the inner city.

He grew up in D.C., went to George Washington University and studied law at Howard, the country's premier black university. Going to a predominantly black law school is consistent with Clarke's background. Where most other D.C. whites live in the more affluent section of the city, he has spent his entire life in areas where African-Americans constitute the plurality.

Judged by his upbringing, where he went to school, who he spends his time with, Clarke's cultural background puts him squarely in the majority of the community. His shared roots with the District's blacks help explain Clarke's extraordinary success at the polls.

At 46, he has the best political resume in town. He has served on the D.C. city council for 16 years. For eight of those years he represented a district that matches the city's 70 percent black majority. For the past eight years, he's served as council chairman, the city's second-highest elective post.

In all these years of service, Clarke has won a reputation as a hard-working, no-nonsense lawmaker. In a city where the mayor, Marion Barry, makes national news as the defendant in a well-publicized drug and perjury case, the council chairman's record has been flawless.

Clarke has but one hurdle to cross. He needs to convince his fellow Washingtonians that a white man can be an effective mayor of this racially sensitive city. He needs to convince black voters, with whom he has spent his life, that he deserves to be treated as a hardworking leader in the community. He needs to sell white voters the idea that city's majority would accept a white man as mayor.

Here is how he made his case:

"It is clear that I am a white person. It is not my choice. That's God's choice ... just as it's God's choice whatever anybody might be.

"Many people in this community, to get where they've had to go ... have had the experience of having to do more just to stand equal. They've had that experience of having to do extra. I understand that ... and I've accepted it in my own life.

"I can say, 'Well, I'm white and it's a black city. I've done my time and I'll go away.' I can't do that. I've got a unique experience to offer. I grew up in the city. I've been able to come up through the ranks. The people of the District of Columbia can either accept it or reject it."

Clarke says there is an "openness" within Washington's majority/black community to his candidacy. What has hurt him in the mayor's race, ironically, was the arrest this January of incumbent Mayor Barry for drug possession. Barry, who faces trial on this and other drug charges this June, has portrayed himself among supporters as a victim of the white establishment. Barry's desperate efforts to save himself have added a sharp, new edge to the city's racial divisions. Even without the summer-in-the-city atmospherics of Barry's upcoming trial, race would still have been a hurdle for Clarke.

Whether that hurdle is three feet high or 10 depends on one's perspective. Whatever David Clarke believes inside, he's running like a man who thinks he can make the leap.

Chris Matthews is a Hearst columnist.