Marion Barry, iconic political figure, dead at 78

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Marion Barry, the longtime mayor of Washington, DC who had a remarkable political comeback after a 1990 FBI sting videotaped him smoking crack cocaine, died early Sunday. He was 78.

Marion Barry death details

The D.C. City Council issued a statement confirming Barry’s death.

Barry’s family said the former mayor died shortly after midnight Sunday at the United Medical Center, after having been released from Howard University Hospital the previous day.

No cause of death was immediately released, but spokeswoman LaToya Foster said Barry collapsed outside his home.

Barry had battled kidney problems stemming from diabetes and high blood pressure and underwent a kidney transplant in February 2009.

Political career

He was one of the most powerful politician figures in his generation, despite personal ups and downs.

Barry who is most known as the former Mayor of Washington, D.C., also served on the D.C. Council for 15 years and had been president of the city’s old Board of Education.

“He dominated the city’s political landscape in the final quarter of the 20th century. There was a time when his critics, in sarcasm but not entirely in jest, called him “Mayor for Life.” Into the first dozen years of the new millennium, he remained a highly visible player on the city’s political stage, but by then on the periphery, no longer at the center.”

But in 1990 something would shake up his political career. Marion Barry was arrested on drug charges in a sting by the FBI and D.C. police after having been lured to a Washington hotel room by a woman with whom he’d previously had a relationship with.

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