Barry Lost Powers but Not Confidence

After a year in which Congress took away virtually all of Marion Barry’s power to govern the nation’s capital, the besieged mayor remains convinced that voters who elected him four times are still on his side. “If I was to run, I would beat the four people that have been mentioned [as possible challengers],” he said. But Barry admitted in an interview that as long as he’s in office, other Americans won’t forget the videotaped spectacle of him smoking crack cocaine in a downtown hotel in 1990, then being interrupted and arrested by FBI agents.