Trayon White talks to supporters in Ward 8 the day after a special election that was too close to call. (Abigail Hauslohner/The Washington Post)

All of the candidates in the race for the late Marion Barry’s seat on the D.C. Council tried to convince voters that they were best suited to carry on the legacy of their beloved “mayor for life.”

But one in particular appears to have harnessed the energy, passion and fears that define the city’s poorest ward and fed Barry’s popularity decade after decade.

Longtime Barry protege Trayon White emerged from a field of 11 candidates Tuesday night in a surprise showing that nearly knocked off LaRuby May, the candidate backed by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s political machine. With just 152 votes between White and May, the race was so close that the outcome will remain uncertain until more than 1,000 provisional ballots are evaluated in coming days.

White’s rise to near victory against an establishment-backed candidate who outspent him 16 to 1 is a testament to how deep Barry’s legacy runs in a ward that did not abandon him amid drug and corruption scandals — even when the rest of the city did. It is also an emblem of Ward 8’s mistrust of outsiders, underscoring a tension with the rest of the District that has outlasted the death of Barry (D) and continues to challenge the power brokers at city hall.

[Marion Barry: The most influential local politician of his generation, dies at 78]

“We need somebody who’s going to be for us here in these trenches,” said Rossalyn Parks, who volunteered with White’s campaign. “I don’t care how much money you got. I want to know if you’re going to be out here helping me to do the things I need to do to survive on a daily basis.”

For decades, Barry was a beacon for those living in poverty: giving voice to a sense of injustice and invisibility, providing an ear to ordinary citizens, and delivering small-scale patronage and services to the city’s most marginalized.

On the campaign trail, White promised to do the same.

“That’s why I ran” for the council, he said. “I got to get to the table of resources, because it’s hard for me as a community activist, as a young man, to fight for the people when I’m not at the table.”

White has visited community organizations and dropped in at public-housing projects. With long, curly eyelashes and a mane of dreadlocks hanging down his back, White, at 5 feet 2, usually stands the shortest among his supporters, including ex-convicts and teenagers from some of Ward 8’s roughest streets. Yet he often commands their respect.

The day after the polls closed, White passed by Congress Heights, where young men on the sidewalk ran up to embrace him, and neighbors called out from their front steps to get the news on the vote.

“They still counting?” one woman asked, incredulous, as White reassured her that the contest was still “neck and neck.”

At his old high school, Ballou, teenagers coming off the practice field also lined up to hug him, and the football coaches joked that they would be “like Baltimore” and stage a riot if White doesn’t win.

Located east of the Anacostia River, Ward 8 has long been physically and financially cut off from an increasingly affluent capital city and the people who run it. The average household income here is 17 percent of what it is in the District’s northwest corner, Ward 3. Last year, more than 42,000 people in Ward 8 relied on food stamps.

Wrapped up in White’s appeal, and closely intertwined with suspicion of May, are fears of gentrification. Residents of the ward say they want more jobs, resources and suitable development opportunities. They lament that while those living in Dupont Circle and Georgetown lobby for dog parks and pothole repairs, single mothers in Southeast Washington struggle to put food on the table.

May’s mayoral endorsement — and nearly $270,000 raised — might have given her the allies and resources to get out the vote (her signs and fliers are everywhere in Ward 8), but it rubbed some residents the wrong way.

“To me, it’s almost like she pushed her money in my face,” Parks said. “Like, ‘I got all this money, you have to vote for me,’ ” she continued. “The normal person of Ward 8 is like, ‘I don’t even have $3 in my pocket. And you expect me to vote for you because you raised all this money?’ ”

‘Got my life together’

White grew up in a troubled Ward 8 household where there wasn’t always food to eat, where drugs and violence cast a pall outside his window and where his school uniform was rarely cleaned.

“There were often times when we couldn’t go outside because our neighborhood was beefing with another neighborhood, or between one family and another family in the courtyard,” he said.

Raised for a time by his grandmother, White said he got into stealing cars in his early teens, ran into trouble with the police and was sent to live in a cramped apartment with his cousins.

When a beloved teacher who had taken an interest in him died in a car crash, White said he started attending church and began “changing on the inside.” With the help of the church, White’s grades improved. He became involved in student government, and he started thinking about college.

“I went back home, got my life together,” he said.

Soon, White also became a mentor to kids like him, coaching youth sports and helping boys in Ward 8’s public-housing projects find the money and guidance to graduate from high school, attend the prom and navigate disputes with their peers.

He founded a nonprofit group called Helping Inner City Kids Succeed.

Last year, he helped mobilize community members in the search for 8-year-old Relisha Rudd, whose disappearance from the District’s largest homeless shelter prompted widespread anger over the city’s treatment — and neglect — of its poorest residents.

[ The day a social worker discovered Relisha Rudd was missing ]

Mentored by Barry

When Barry died in November, after serving four terms as mayor and a cumulative 15 years on the D.C. Council, he had left no clear heir.

White sought to grab that mantle by talking about Barry’s mentorship of him. In 2011, White ran for a seat on the District’s State Board of Education and won. He was reelected in 2012 with help from Barry, who campaigned alongside him. He resigned from the seat last year after accepting a job working with at-risk youths through the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Of Barry, White said: “[He] said the way I carried myself was the same way he carried himself when he was young.”

Barry’s son, Marion Christopher Barry, also ran for his father’s vacant seat. But White convinced more voters that he is the one who can keep the legacy alive. The younger Barry finished the race in a distant sixth place.

“One person can carry his DNA, and another person carries his spirit,” White said. “It’s a big difference.”

White’s campaign manager, Sirraya Gant, said White’s performance Tuesday shouldn’t have been such a surprise to the city’s political scene, considering his successful past elections.

He also has earned bona fides within Ward 8’s nonprofit service community.

Supporter Gregory Baldwin said White has helped his nonprofit, Helping Hands, at Thanksgiving and Christmas, when it provides turkey, clothing and coats to poor families.

“Trey comes from the struggle. He understands the struggle,” Baldwin said.

White also promises to understand the nuances of what many in Ward 8 want — the right kind of economic development, for instance.

In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security moved its sprawling headquarters to Ward 8, but the development led to more bitterness than pride for some residents there.

“You’ve got this big, fabulous agency in our ward, and we’re not qualified for those jobs,” said Parks, a retired secretary. She said she worried that May would bring more “big condos that we can’t afford” and jobs local residents can’t get. “I’m wary, and I’m afraid,” she said.

White says he aims to use his position on the council to foster better educational and job opportunities for young people in the ward.

‘This isn’t just a trial run’

First, though, the vote count must be completed.

White and his supporters say that a sizable proportion of his support at the polls came from young people — otherwise known as the “nontraditional” voters who are often ignored. White speculated that while other campaigns focused on senior citizens — so-called “super voters” — his campaign mobilized up to 600 disenchanted youths.

“I’m a link to a generation that people don’t really understand,” he said. “We got people who were 18, that were still in high school, to vote.”

According to the D.C. Board of Elections, “special” or provisional ballots account for people who registered to vote on the same day they voted, those who had to register a change of address and those who voted in the wrong precinct.

Many of those ballots will need to be validated through additional documentation from the voter before next Friday’s deadline. White’s ability to mobilize special-ballot voters for a second time will be critical if he is to win.

White says he believes he knows who those voters are and how to get them moving.

The day after the election — and a night of competing victory parties — White’s team gathered at the IHOP on Alabama Avenue SE, a regular hangout. Volunteers and friends, including young men whom White had coached in football, stopped by to visit as the group drank coffee and plotted their next move against the ­mayoral “machine.”

Wednesday was a day to “breathe” after months of campaigning, they concluded. But the race wasn’t over. White said he’ll appeal — and he’ll run again — if May wins.

“We’re running again even if we win,” he added. “This isn’t just a trial run.”