Ex-Richmonder gets set for White House

WASHINGTON -- Two weeks before the inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama's domestic policy adviser was back in Richmond, her hometown.

Melody C. Barnes, 44, with mom Frances, was trying on an inaugural gown -- a strapless, cobalt-blue number designed especially for her to celebrate the inauguration and her own first day working in the White House.

Barnes started on Obama's campaign in August, leaving a job as senior vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress. She says the magnitude of her new role as director of the Domestic Policy Council hit her in December when she walked up the driveway during a White House tour.

Thinking ahead to Tuesday, she added, "I'm sure it will go to another level when we sit down at our desks the first time."

In her new role, Barnes will coordinate the administration's domestic policy -- heavily focused on the economic stimulus plan -- and work to keep myriad federal agencies on the same page when it comes to new initiatives.

Barnes, who friends call a strategic wonk, said she never planned to work in the White House.

Obama's is the only presidential campaign she has worked on -- unless you count the time she sold cupcakes for 1972 Democratic candidate George McGovern when she was 8.

Barnes grew up on Richmond's North Side. Her parents, Charles and Frances, still live on Seminary Avenue, where the family moved from another home in North Side when Melody was a year old.

Barnes' parents fed her political interest from a young age. Frances says her daughter was a voracious reader. Charles would take young Melody on weekly library trips to restock her bookshelves. A love of history turned into a passion for politics.

"Since middle school, she wanted to work in Washington. We thought it would pass with age and time, but it never did," Frances Barnes said.

Melody Barnes counts a high school trip to Washington with a program called Presidential Classroom as a moment that sparked her career path.

"I was just excited about it. I guess there's something in your DNA," she said.

In law school at the University of Michigan, she worked with academic leaders to increase diversity on the campus. After graduating in 1989, she went to work in the New York law firm Shearman and Sterling. But the pull to public policy became too strong.

By 1992, she learned of a rare opening at the House Judiciary Committee -- and went for it. In her first Washington job, in a town of strong egos and sharp elbows, Barnes, who stands 5-foot-2, developed a reputation as being steady under pressure.

"With lots of people screaming, 'You've got to do this and do that,' she stays calm," said Robert Raben, who worked with Barnes in the mid-1990s.

Later, as chief counsel for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Barnes became known as the "bankruptcy goddess" for her deft work preventing a bill that Democrats saw as a boon to the credit card companies, said Michael Myers, who hired and shared an office with Barnes.

"Her desk would be just immaculate. She just had everything under control," Myers said.

When Obama tapped Barnes as his Domestic Policy Council director Nov. 24, Kennedy called her "a rare talent with [an] impressive intellect" that "will serve President Obama well."

Former co-workers say she will bring confidence to the White House, where domestic policy input will come from Cabinet secretaries and key interest groups that helped Obama win the fall campaign.

"You've got to be tough, firm and collaborative and work in a collegial way, and she'll be perfect at doing that," said Winnie Stachelberg, a senior vice president at the Center for American Progress.

David Sutphen, who joined Barnes in Kennedy's office in 1998, said Barnes knew when to flex the muscle that comes with working in a high-clout office.

" 'Mel' did a good job of using that judiciously," he said. "She would never scream at you, but it was quite clear if something wasn't up to par."

Sutphen called Barnes a demanding and effective boss, who is "uniformly consistent with how she interacts with people."

Barnes said that sense of fairness and her passion for civil rights comes from a warm family and diverse community upbringing in Richmond's North Side.

Barnes, who is black, attended a segregated elementary school in first grade, and has said she experienced racism as a child and discrimination when applying for a mortgage in Alexandria in the 1990s.

On Capitol Hill, she found a meritocracy.

"People judge you based on the way you carry yourself," she said. "For me, I was there to do a job."

Friends say she still refers to Richmond as home, and that during a policy debate it's not uncommon to hear her say, "We Southerners think. . . . "

She travels to her childhood home for birthdays and holidays -- and the occasional shopping trip to her favorite clothing boutique on River Road.

A wedding proposal capped her trip to Richmond at Christmas. She and her fiancé, Marland Buckner, whom she met 10 years ago through mutual Washington friends, plan to wed in June.

Once a lobbyist for Microsoft, Buckner, 42, now owns his own lobbying firm. Washington-based Global Strategic Partners received $110,000 in lobbying fees in the first nine months of last year, according to Senate records.

Buckner has lobbied on immigration, trade, and education issues, records show. He said he will follow White House rules "to the letter" to avoid any conflict of interest due to Barnes' new job.

And, he said, he won't trade on his relationship to attract clients.

"I'm very up front," and "that's not how I do business," he said.

A Los Angeles native who grew up in Saskatchewan, Canada, Buckner did graduate work in American political thought at the College of William and Mary. He'll be joining a family passionate about education.

Barnes' father, Charles, 73, is an Army veteran who worked as a civilian at Fort Lee for 38 years and still substitute teaches. He's "rather hawkish," Melody Barnes has said. "We have great debates."

Frances Barnes, 74, grew up in South Boston and was a teacher and curriculum administrator for the Richmond school system.

Frances is still getting used to her daughter's new life. They used to talk once a week. Now it's more e-mail.

Not that Mom minds. "We're elated," she says.

This is the same woman who wouldn't let Melody start private violin lessons as a girl until she had finished a year-long commitment with a private piano tutor.

"We don't stop things midstream. We finish them through," Frances Barnes said.

But before Melody begins her new duties, mother and daughter were together in Richmond for one last shopping trip. They were fitting the gown the label Msiamo designed for Barnes, who was named by Washingtonian magazine as one of the capital's 10 best-dressed women in 2007.

The dress isn't the only thing Barnes will take from Richmond to the inauguration and the White House.

"I take my neighborhood and my block and the people I grew up with," she said.

Contact Neil H. Simon at (202) 662-7669 or nsimon@mediageneral.com.