DIXON HIRES 2 BIG DEMOCRATIC NAMES

Utility company executive Sharon Pratt Dixon, still technically "exploring" her race for mayor, has hired two of the Democratic Party's best-known political consulting firms to help manage her campaign.

Dixon, making the glad-handing rounds at the midwinter Board of Trade dinner last week, confirmed that she has added the consulting firm of Doak & Shrum to her growing campaign stable, which already included the pollster team of Hickman-Maslin.

Dixon also has sent out her first major campaign fund-raising letter in which she says she hopes to raise $100,000 by the end of this month "to get a genuine people's campaign about real issues off the ground."

Meanwhile, Council Chairman David A. Clarke, who is running hard for mayor but has not yet formally announced, has scored his own prize catch, gaining the backing of local advertising and polling executive David Abramson, who has been a principal figure in Mayor Marion Barry's campaigns and other local political moves for 20 years.

Neither Abramson nor Clarke publicly will acknowledge Abramson's defection from Barry, but both privately have told others that the deed is done.

David Doak is a veteran national political consultant who directed Rep. Richard A. Gephardt's campaign for president last year.

That campaign did not turn out so well, but Doak has a long and enviable track record in national political races as well as municipal campaigns in San Francisco and Denver.

Doak managed the 1980 Maryland campaign for President Carter, pulling off a win there when Carter was being slaughtered nearly everywhere else.

Doak managed Charles S. Robb's campaign for governor in 1981 and saw his national reputation cemented when he guided Texas Gov. Mark White to victory in 1982.

Doak handled Gerald L. Baliles' 1985 campaign for governor of Virginia and is close to signing with Virginia Lt. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, who is trying to succeed Baliles.

Doak generally has staked out a reputation of a consultant who isn't afraid of using negative ads to weaken his opponents, but he also is known for the thoroughness in which he establishes the identity of his own candidate first.

Dixon has been sounding a theme that credits Barry for all the good things he has done, but says it is time for new leadership. It isn't clear how Doak's campaign strategy will meld with Dixon.

Doak declined to return telephone calls during the past week.

Shrum, a former speech writer for Robert F. Kennedy, is considered a talented partner of Doak's, a wordsmith who has improved the oratory of dozens of candidates and will likely help soften Dixon's often stiff public style.

"I think Shrum is significant, he has the most imaginative and articulate voice for Democratic candidates in the last 20 years," said Mark L. Plotkin, a District politician and former fund-raiser for several national Democratic candidates. Shrum has written "every major speech -- from McGovern's 'Come Home, America' to Teddy Kennedy's 1980 'Dream' speech at the New York convention. Bob Shrum can add some poetry to Dixon's campaign . . . memorable phrases and memorable thoughts."

Employing "hired guns," however, is no guarantor of success.

Although many political consultants are "Washington based," that is largely only an address that refers to national politics, Plotkin said. Most do not "have a feel for the nuances and rhythms of this city, a sense of history and where it wants to go," Plotkin said. "In that way, they are not connected to this place."

Dixon is the first mayoral candidate to engage a major team of political consultants since council member John Ray (D-At Large) hired Bailey Deardorff in 1982 for his mayoral campaign that year.

Ray spent more than $300,000 in a technically well-managed campaign effort, but emerged in the Democratic primary that year with only 3.2 percent of the vote.

Margaret Gentry, Ray's longtime press spokeswoman who worked in that campaign Most political consultants "do not have a feel for the nuances and rhythms of this city, a sense of history and where it wants to go. In that way, they are not connected to this place."

-- Mark L. Plotkin

and is helping to put together Ray's current campaign for mayor, said Ray has talked with various political consultants but has not yet decided who, if anyone, will be hired.

Clarke, who ran two successful campaigns for his Ward 1 council seat and two for chairman of the council, all out of his home, is known to eschew the trappings of modern political campaigns and likely will have a lean mayoral structure, too. Clarke contends that running in Washington is little more complicated than knowing the intricacies of the city's diversity and having a stack of 3-by-5 cards of people who will volunteer to help.

Clarke, who has had lukewarm reception from the city's business leaders, also waded through the crush of business executives at the Board of Trade, picking up some encouraging words from people who can make the money flow in a campaign.What's Gone Wrong?

Mayor Barry and most members of the D.C. Council are scheduled to be on the hot seat tonight at a downtown hotel, to be grilled about the staggering number of city problems the District faces.

Minor Christian, president of the Food and Beverage Workers Union Local 32, set up the town meeting to give his members a chance to ask questions directly to the city's leadership.

Christian said many of the union's members live in Northeast and Southeast Washington, the heart of the city's drug epidemic and public safety problems.

Barry is due about 5 p.m., followed by council Chairman Clarke and then members of the D.C. Council, most of whom have accepted invitations to appear at the meeting, which will be held at the Downtown Days Inn at 12th and K streets NW. Food for the Homeless

Local union members from the hotel and restaurant industry helped staged a gourmet's feast Saturday for the city's homeless people at the internationally known shelter at Second and D streets NW.

The French menu of beef burgundy, vegetables and chocolatevanilla swirl mousse grew out of a casual comment by Mitch Snyder when he attended the annual Christmas Party thrown last year by the Hotel and Restaurant Workers Local 25.

Ron Richardson, executive secretary of the restaurant workers union, said Snyder commented how great the food was at the party and how sad it was that homeless people could not taste it. Richardson promptly suggested the dinner, which came off Saturday with only about $3,000 in actual costs and hundreds of hours donated by volunteers.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.