Sharon Pratt

Sharon Pratt (born January 30, 1944), formerly Sharon Pratt Dixon and Sharon Pratt Kelly, is an American attorney and politician who was the mayor of the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1995, the first mayor born in the District of Columbia since Richard Wallach who took office in 1861 and the first woman in that position.

Sharon Pratt was born to D.C. Superior Court judge Carlisle Edward Pratt and Mildred "Peggy" (Petticord) Pratt.

After her mother died of breast cancer, her grandmother, Hazel Pratt, and aunt, Aimee Elizabeth Pratt, helped to raise Sharon and her younger sister.

Pratt attended D.C. Public Schools Gage ES, Rudolph ES, MacFarland Junior High School, and Roosevelt HS (1961, with honors).

She excelled at baseball but did not pursue the sport in adolescence.

At Howard University she joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority (1964), and earned a B.A. in political science (1965).

She married Arrington Dixon in 1966 and has two daughters with him; they divorced after sixteen years.

She received a J.D. degree from the Howard University School of Law in 1968.

She was a member of the Democratic National Committee from the District of Columbia (1977–1990), the first woman to hold that position.

At the 1980 Democratic National Convention, she was a member of the Ad Hoc Credentials Committee, member of the Judicial Council, and co-chairman of the Rules Committee.

In 1982, she ran Patricia Roberts Harris' mayoral campaign in the D.C. election.

In 1983, she was made Vice President of Community Relations at Pepco, the D.C. electric utility.

She became the first woman and first African American to serve in that role.

The same year, she won the Presidential Award from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

She was DNC Treasurer from 1985 to 1989.

Upset with the decline of her hometown, Pratt announced at the 1988 Democratic National Convention that she would challenge incumbent mayor Marion Barry in the 1990 election.

Pratt was the only candidate to have officially announced her plans to run for mayor when Barry was arrested on drug charges and dropped out of the race in early 1990.

Shortly thereafter, the race was joined by longtime councilmembers John Ray, Charlene Drew Jarvis and David Clarke.

Pratt criticized her three main opponents, referring to them as the "three blind mice" who "saw nothing, said nothing and did nothing as the city rapidly decayed."

She was the only candidate who called on Barry to resign from office, and ran specifically as an outsider to his political machine.

Following a series of televised debates during the last few weeks of the campaign, Pratt received the endorsement of The Washington Post. The day the endorsement appeared, her poll numbers skyrocketed, with many political observers attributing the rise specifically to the Post's backing.

On the eve of the election, polls showed Councilmember John Ray holding the lead, but Pratt gaining ground fast and a large margin of undecided voters remaining.

However, even with the smallest campaign staff and least money, Pratt won the election, defeating second-place Ray by 10%.

As Washington is a heavily Democratic city, her victory over the Republican candidate, former police chief Maurice T. Turner, Jr., in the November 6 general election was a foregone conclusion.

She campaigned and was elected and inaugurated mayor of DC as Sharon Pratt Dixon, but when she married James R. Kelly III, a New York businessman, on December 7, 1991, she changed her name to Sharon Pratt Kelly.

She was sworn in as mayor of Washington on January 2, 1991.

Once in office, Pratt's grassroots, reform posture met resistance.

She made good on her promises to clean house, requesting the resignations of all Barry appointees the day after her election; however, as she began to slash the city employment payroll, her political support began to weaken.

She angered labor leaders who claimed she had promised not to fire union employees, and began mandating unpaid furloughs and wage freezes citywide.

She took great pains to remove all of Barry's political cronies, even though these layoffs hurt her administration as well.

Kelly faced criticism due to accusations of being elitist, thus distancing her from poor and working-class blacks in the city.

Kelly was at odds with several D.C. Council members with her proposal to temporarily move the city government to the building at One Judiciary Square, ten blocks away from Washington's incumbent city hall, the District Building, while the latter underwent renovations.

When Kelly moved her office and administration departments to One Judiciary Square in 1992, the Council refused to leave the District Building, although they had approved the proposal that spring.

In the spring of 1992, just over a year into her term, Barry loyalists mounted a recall campaign, which, although unsuccessful, weakened her administration and forced Kelly to tread more carefully with the public, backing away from her reform efforts.

Kelly's drive to achieve D.C. statehood in order to improve the District's financial and political standing created fierce opposition from Republican members of Congress, who unleashed a barrage of attacks on the District as a "national disgrace" of "one-party rule...massive dependency, hellish crime...and unrelenting scandal."

In February 1993, after accusing Kelly of deliberately neglecting maintenance in order to force them out, they voted to take full and exclusive control of the District Building.

According to the Washington City Paper, Kelly "was never able to get control of a city government still loyal to Barry, and she often mistrusted the advice she got from aides."

After their 1999 divorce, she resumed her maiden name, Sharon Pratt.

Pratt is a member of The Links.

Initially her political energies were drawn to national rather than local politics.