TOUGH JOB: Communications Director, DC Councilman Marion Barry

Washington, DC Councilman Marion Barry is looking for a communications director. The Washington Post’s Monica Hesse looks at what interested candidates might expect through interviews with Barry’s former press secretaries. Their advice includes:

- “You have to be high energy,” says Linda Wharton Boyd, who was Mayor Barry’s communications director from 1997-1999. “There’s never a dull moment. . . . You have to hit the ground flying.”

- Make sure you’re a step ahead of him,” says Andre Johnson, a former Barry communications director. “He has a memory like a photo. Never promise him something and then forget to do it. Because he will not forget.  And he will haunt you.”

- Raymone Bain served as Barry’s press secretary in the mid-1990s and went on to represent many celebrities, including Michael Jackson.  She says Barry always appreciated her willingness to speak her mind.  “It was either Mrs. Barry or I who was saying, ‘You can’t say that; this is not the way to say that,’ ” Bain says.  Barry’s fourth wife, Cora, was his communications director.  Bain recalls one event where members of the community were airing their grievances, and he breezily responded, “Oh, well. People in hell want ice water, too.”  “I thought,” she says, “I would die.”  (Washington Post)