By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 15, 1998; Page B01

The question posed to a room full of politicians was an easy one: Will you vote for Hilda Mason?

The answer proved not so easy.

Mayoral candidate Anthony A. Williams and five candidates who hope to join Mason on the D.C. Council responded with a profound and awkward silence at Mayor Marion Barry's news conference last week.

It was a telling moment for the former civil rights firebrand who has received a quarter of a million votes in seven general elections spanning more than 25 years. She is the longest-serving elected official in city history, an 82-year-old great-grandmother who introduces herself to one and all as "grandmother to the world." Now she is a pivotal figure in an election controversy, because her defeat on Nov. 3 could lead to an unprecedented majority-white council in this majority-black city.

This year, many of those who know and love her best question whether she should retain her at-large council seat for a sixth term.

"I worry that her continued pursuit of public office will erase much of the legacy of her life that is positive and strong," said Jim Ford, Mason's former education policy lieutenant.

In the corridors of One Judiciary Square, sad anecdotes are accumulating. A council source said that this summer, Mason arrived unexpectedly at a committee hearing. She inquired if she was on that committee. Learning she was not, she departed.

It is not uncommon for her to forget names, faces and her responsibilities, according to those familiar with the council. She relies increasingly on her staff and her husband, Charlie, 87.

Asked in an interview which committees she serves on, Mason named education and human services.

She paused, and said: "Charlie, what other committees am I on?"

"Well, you're on the Jack Evans committee," her husband said.

"Yes, judiciary," Mason said.

In addition to the Judiciary Committee, which Evans chairs, she's also on the local, regional and federal affairs committee, but the Masons didn't recall it.

Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who is supporting Republican incumbent David A. Catania in the at-large race, said, "I would hate to see the genuine affection so many feel for her to be diminished by her failure to accept that her time on the council should come to an end."

Council member Sandy Allen (D-Ward 8) took a different view: "If you ask any of us, at some point our memories aren't there. There are times we lose focus. . . . I would not say Mrs. Mason has lost her effectiveness."

Mason sweetly but firmly denies anything is amiss.

"I don't forget anything," she said.

When asked about occasions when she has seemed to reverse her positions, she said: "I'm only 82 years old. I can make a quick change, can't I?"

History Has a Say

Voters will be able to pick two winners from a field that includes Mason, Catania, Democrat Phil Mendelson, Umoja Party candidate Mark Thompson and independents Sandra Seegars, Malik Z. Shabazz and Beverly J. Wilbourn. In the heavily Democratic city, Mendelson is favored to win. By law, the second seat is reserved for a candidate who doesn't belong to the majority (read Democratic) party.

Incumbents Mason and Catania appear to be in the best positions to claim that seat. If Mason, who is black, loses, and Catania and Mendelson, who are both white, win, then the council will have a white majority for the first time. According to a Washington Post poll, most white and black residents prefer that the council reflect the racial makeup of the city, which is 63 percent African American.

Another consequence of Mason losing her seat would be the exclusion of the Statehood Party from the council for the first time since home rule. Mason won a special election in 1977 after party founder Julius Hobson Sr. died in office.

Her prominence is invaluable to a party that is otherwise nearly invisible, with about 4,000 registered voters. Party officials say the decision to run was Mason's.

"There are people running around saying people twisted her arm, which is ridiculous, if you know Mrs. Mason," said John Gloster, D.C. Statehood Party chairman and a candidate for mayor.

Mason said she considered not running this year. She said several Statehood Party members, whom she will not name, offered to run, including some she said she would have stepped aside to support.

"Then, at the last minute," Mason recalled recently at her home in Shepherd Park, "they decided they couldn't" run.

Lifetime of Devotion

The Howland in her name comes from a northern white woman who helped southern black girls, including Mason, get educations, Mason says.

"It's from that sense of anonymous generosity that I think she gets a lot of her commitment and passion and love for the city," said John DeTaeye, interim associate minister of All Souls Church, Unitarian, on 16th Street NW, where the Masons were married in 1965. "But it's not a sentimental love, it's a demand for justice, for the 'least of these' in the city."

Hilda and Charlie met on the picket lines, and their interracial relationship -- Charlie is white, a Harvard man who went on to Howard University Law School -- was considered quite avant-garde in the mid 1960s. The couple was among the coterie of black and white progressives whose omnivorous vision of a better world included peace and civil rights and women's rights around the world -- and democracy for D.C.

"There was nothing we thought we couldn't do," recalled Sam Smith, now editor of Progressive Review. "We solved every single problem, including some that haven't been thought of."

Mason, who won election to the school board in 1972 before joining the council, carried that spirit into office, albeit in her soft, grandmotherly way, which informed her public persona even then. She was an effective advocate for school funding. She also plunged into national progressive politics of the day. She joined the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, chaired by the late Michael Harrington, and helped lead the nuclear freeze movement.

But her chief mission was local, in neighborhoods and schools. She kept a grueling daily schedule attending meetings and events. She and her husband liberally donated to churches and charities.

Two years ago, when the public schools had reached their nadir and were being managed by an emergency board of trustees, Mason stepped down from 16 years as chairman of the education committee. By then, she had given Ford a large role in running it. Mason says she wasn't forced out, though some colleagues had been pushing for a change.

"I don't think you have to stay chairman all your life," she said.

The move was viewed by many as a sign of Mason's waning influence. And if she was in decline, it meant the eclipse of the progressive spirit that animated the beginning of home rule. Mason is the last on the council from that era, staking out positions more radical than the cool young reformers who now hold sway.

When she voted against the new convention center this year, she did so not for the fashionable reason that it ought to be built elsewhere than Mount Vernon Square. She says the $685 million edifice shouldn't be built at all with public funding, and the money should go to housing, education and transportation.

The city "is no longer actively pursuing the things she is an icon of," Smith lamented. "She's a symbol -- but a lot of the vigor has gone out of the symbol."

For her part, Mason says she is committed to winning this election. Though she suffered what her staff said was a mild heart attack on Sept. 15 and was briefly hospitalized, she says her doctors have given her the green light to continue her political career.

"I ran because I want full democracy for the residents of the District of Columbia," she said.

The risk, according to admirers such as Ford, is "that what people will remember is the last few years of public visibility rather than the last 40 or 50 when she was a very courageous person who accomplished a lot."