Election Notes District of Columbia

She waved a broom and promised to clean up the bespattered administration of Washington's Mayor Marion Barry, convicted of possessing cocaine. And if housekeeping seemed somewhat foreign to the stiffly formal lawyer and former electric-utility executive, Sharon Pratt Dixon wasted no time carrying out her pledge. On the day after she decisively won the mayoralty of the U.S. capital, she called for the resignation of 177 of her predecessor's top city appointees.

In the heavily Democratic district, Dixon, 46, had no difficulty in trouncing former police chief Maurice Turner, 55, a Barry appointee who turned Republican only last year after being urged to do so by President Bush -- he of the short coattails. Dixon, long a prominent party leader and former national committeewoman, inherits a city ravaged by crime with a budget deficit that may run as high as $200 million.

The D.C. election also swept Barry out of public life. The disgraced mayor, who is appealing his conviction and six-month jail term, finished a distant third in the race for an at-large council seat.

Meanwhile, Jesse Jackson won his first elective office by becoming the district's "shadow" Senator, providing him with a high-profile platform from which to launch another presidential run. The unsalaried job, which carries no voting privileges, will be used to lobby for statehood. Civil rights activist and law professor Eleanor Holmes Norton won the Delegate seat to the House, also a nonvoting post.