Baltimore Mayor's Primary
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Update: Tuesday June 9th, 2020
Originally published: Wednesday June 3rd, 2020
While former Mayor Sheila Dixon appeared to me to have a significant lead in the primary election results after Tuesday, with 25% more votes than the person then in second place, Baltimore City Council President Brandon Scott ("Running for Baltimore mayor, Brandon Scott wants to bring generational change to the city that raised him," Baltimore Sun), as absentee votes continue to be counted, Scott has overtaken Dixon and with each day's counting results, remains in the lead ("Scott's lead over Dixon grows slightly in latest mayoral election results," WBAL-TV) although it is close.
At 39,055 votes, he has about a 400 vote lead.
At 36, he is 30 years younger than Sheila Dixon
After writing "Baltimore City Mayoral candidates views on transportation (and other matters)" in April, I wanted to do a series of pieces about Baltimore's opportunities in changing the guard. I wanted to write them with a retired Baltimore City planner, but I just couldn't get him on the same page as he is too despondent about the current state of politics in Baltimore, and just doesn't believe that the city's leadership has the capacity to dig out.
Obviously, it focused a lot on the ongoing unrest and high crime rate, especially for murder.
In terms of policing, it appears that the leading candidates all seem to favor an approach called "focused deterrence," which was implemented with great effect under former mayor Sheila Dixon.
And the article seem to come down on the side of Sheila Dixon, the former mayor who was forced to step down because of misuse of funds. Only during the mayoralty of Sheila Dixon did the city's murder rate fall significantly. From the article:
The idea of reelecting a former mayor who resigned in a corruption scandal might seem hard to understand for those who don’t live in Baltimore—indeed, it’s hard to understand for many Baltimoreans. But some voters have decided they’re willing to risk a little corruption if it means electing someone who can slow the killing. When Dixon tried to return to City Hall in 2016, O’Malley voted for Pugh, thinking Dixon’s past would keep her from hiring top talent if she won. This time around, “I hear from a number of neighbors who reasoned the same way that they wish in hindsight they had just voted for Sheila four years ago,” he told me. “Because maybe so many people wouldn’t have lost their lives in the meantime.”According to media reports, the election is too close to call ("Baltimore mayor's race too close to call; in-person votes being counted," WBAL-TV). But it appears that Sheila Dixon will win the primary, and because Baltimore is so heavily Democratic, the general election in the fall. In the count so far, she has 20% more votes than the next candidate.
While it's fair to say that I don't favor elected officials misusing funds, on urbanism issues Sheila Dixon was pretty good, especially on sustainable mobility. She was a strong supporter of biking, created the city provided free Baltimore Circulator buses, supported rail transit, etc.
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-- "Social urbanism and Baltimore," 2018
-- "Opinion: What Baltimore and D.C. can do to start working better together as a region," Baltimore Business Journal, 2016
Labels: crime, elections and campaigns, policing, urban revitalization
posted by Richard Layman @ 12:30 PM&Permanent Link
17 Comments:
I do think Dixon will do a great job, for reasons you stated. Also crazy she went down for such a small amount of $$$! Waste of taxpayer dollars to investigate her if you ask me
It's hard to defend bad stuff, but look at what Catherine Pugh was part of.
sorry, off topic:
https://www.thearticle.com/the-failure-of-us-policing?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=dlvr.it
(Starts off well by pointing out that too many police= too many police agencies but shoots himself in foot with Northern Ireland comparison)
RE: Dixon. Sorry, no. Corruption is corruption. You nail people with what you have, not for what they always did. I'm sure it was much larger than 600 in gift cards.
Reminds me of the 50M + stolen in DC from tax rebates. The problem was much larger than one bad actor, and you need to clean house hard.
Baltimore has not hit bottom yet.
very off topic again, sorry:
https://www.ft.com/content/cc1f650a-91c0-4e1f-b990-ee8ceb5339ea
It's a shame that innerspacebaltimore is so nhilistic. I noticed he's not updated the site since Feb, and is pretty negative on baltimoreCityVoters $SOCIAL_MEDIA group. Have you considered reaching out to communityarchitectdaily author Klaus Philipsen? He is writing of similar subjects as Gerald.
Gerry is burned out. I always marvel at people who can keep at it, keep their hope, and persevere over decades. It's hard.
("Nihilism" is a tough moniker. But I did find it frustrating in the back and forth. Because he has so much deeper knowledge than I do about the nuts and bolts of transit specifics. I got the big picture for Baltimore, not the details.)
Again, it's tough to keep the faith for so long after so many years. As charlie says, Dixon's graft shouldn't be forgiveable and could be worse than what she was charged with.
charlie said Baltimore has a ways to go to hit bottom.
In my back and forth with Gerry, I was thinking about this, and again, thought about the difference between DC. The demographic variability in DC, yes, higher income people living in the core attracted to urban living despite the disadvantages present in the inner city at that time, provided social, organizational, and community capital to help the city forward. (Plus they had income.) Probably Baltimore lost a lot of that, especially as HQ operations for many businesses (like McCormick) moved out of the city.
The Klaus suggestion is very good. I've cross paths with him a few times. I'll reach out. Also, Al Barry if he is still around.
In the meantime, we need to respond to the MTA regional transit plan
https://rtp.mta.maryland.gov/
Comments are due 6/18
https://rtp.konveio.com/connecting-our-future-regional-transit-plan-central-maryland
I will try to do a post by the beginning of next week.
WRT "off topic" (1) that's how we communicate. (2) I can't expect readers to be as diligent as I and always go back to the specific relevant entry, the way I do, using comments as a form of updating/augmenting a post.
Speaking of off topic, what do you think about the primary? W2, W4?
I saw a comment on W4 that made the point that the shift to George was more about "youth", younger residents (compared to old line residents).
I was thinking along those lines that the younger voters are maybe less inclined to "go along" that a person in a suit isn't enough.
Plus in general, Muriel doesn't have much coattail effect. And Racine clearly is amassing power.
Granted, lots of people work in government before they run for office, but if Pinto wins, that's 4 people on Council with some fealty.
And I think the Racine connection is more important that the "progressive" connection, if Pinto wins. Grossman, supported by Silverman, was a distant third.
It reminds me a bit of the Amazon funding issue in Seattle. The business interests "won" two seats. But one of the seats they supported the same candidate the progressive groups.
So to me, they won only one seat.
It happens that KR is "progressive" at some level. But maybe the KR and progressive "win" in W4 is more about KR.
Granted NI is an extreme case, but there was an interesting comment on a Post article, paraphrasing a point from Battlestar Galactica.
"the police serve and protect citizens. The military engages the enemy. When the police become militarized the citizenry becomes the enemy."
The Germany article is bracing. It shows the value of valuing government. (Although they have their eastern/Alt Right problem.)
If the US had the German rate, we'd have about 32,000 dead instead of over 100,000.
One thing though, in China and Taiwan, the people who were isolated were provided with food and support I think.
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wrt the health care staff and cash crisis because of postponement of care cf.
"The call was backed by financial incentives: the ministry promised hospitals €560 a day for every bed they kept vacant for a potential Covid patient and €50,000 for each additional intensive care bed they created."
and important point about initiating testing early, catching cases much earlier than say Italy.
again off topic:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/05/protests-washington-dc-federal-agents-law-enforcement-302551
Reading that linked Baltimore blog, I realize I don't know ***t about Baltimore so I should keep my mouth shut. My point about plenty of room below is that the city does have a lot of positives -- and they can disappear. So things can get worse.
In Cleveland, at one pointe they just bulldozed several blocks and turned it into corn fields. That is land value destruction at the scale I'm talking about.
Re: racine. Yeah, he's been a very busy boy. The only problem I see is he is angling for a cabinet job, not only being Mayor. Look, DC has changed and everyone wants an ivy league mayor but in reality you've got a lot of crap that fancy folks don't want to deal with. I don't see him on rat patrol. Former GF knew him when he was at Venable.
Can either racine and/or a Dixon bring government service up to that German level? Clinton and Tony WIllaims at least underwood that on some level.
I think it was when I first moved to DC, but in researching it, was a couple years after, I was enamored with the book _Reinventing Government_.
The reality is that it came out in 1992.
https://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-reinventing-government-book.html
But yep.
Suzanne and I were talking about this stuff today and she had a great turn of phrase.
We were talking about this generally, and how the BLM criticized Bowser, because to their way of thinking, she isn't big on alternative approaches to policing.
Suzanne commented that people like Bowser came out of previous government agency service, are more administrative oriented. And administrators.
I then piped up about Barry, how he came out of the activism side of things originally, and that after the anti-war period petered out by the 1980s, people weren't looking for activist politicians.
Populists are activists of a sort, but we have to differentiate between the campaign side and the governing side. Obviously, the Trump Administration has been all about the wealthy and big business (at least in terms of reducing regulation, but favors went to certain sectors over others, and there has been an incredible amount of cronyism or kowtowing required that is typical of other countries, but had been less of an issue here in the past).
The last thing you'd expect of a Bowser is to be visionary in general or proactive.
Maybe Williams isn't as great as we think, just that DC had declined so much that a focus on "blocking and tackling" seemed revolutionary?
But people want more now. Obviously the activist mayor in Minneapolis was somewhat flummoxed by what happened there.
There are the AOCs etc. But their challenge will be to not only be activist but remain activist in the context of needing to work with others to get important legislation passed.
Although it is important to serve as the shining light to extend the discourse (Overton window stuff, although I had a similar idea c. 1988, although not linked to the implementation element, more about extending the range of what's possible, and by extending that range, ending up with more than would have been likely at the outset).
Don't know enough about Racine. Judging by what I see externally with the AG office, I'd say the answer to getting up to the German level is no.
You remind me of a conversation I had at CSPI c. 1990. The guy ran the agriculture project, had run for Congress in Iowa but lost, but felt his work had helped set up Tom Harkin to get elected to the Senate.
We were agreeing on the point of "who would want to be mayor of Washington? Why even run for the office?"
Yep, people like Racine aren't likely to be interested in the block and tackling.
Obviously, I write a lot of pie in the sky stuff about what could be done.
With a Mayor like Joe Riley, who strived (although at the same time he sucked in terms of annexation and maintenance of suburban design outside of the core, could have been better on cruise tourism, etc.), with the fact that DC is a city-state so it doesn't have to get authority from a state legislature and governor all the time to do something innovative (unlike NYC), that (until the pandemic) is pretty wealthy, and is growing (these days) if you're content to be mayor and not want to be a Senator or Cabinet Secretary, it's probably the best mayor job in the country, at least from the standpoint of being able to do stuff.
SLC has a new young mayor, she's still under 40 I think. Her background before Council was environmental work, air quality. So AQ was one of her top priorities getting elected.
Her first six months: (1) needing an emergency shelter because the state program to distribute homeless services reduced capacity by 25% figuring there would be programmatic improvements to reduce demand. The shelters were full practically the day they opened.
(2) earthquake. (Not a huge deal for the city, but still, many buildings were impacted. They thought the water system could be damaged.)
(3) pandemic
(4) impact of pandemic on city budget, planning and the economic response
(5) George Floyd protests and the initial unrest (SLC unrest made the third paragraph on the front page of a story in the NYT).
AQ isn't on the agenda...
wrt
(4) impact of pandemic on city budget, planning and the economic response
I should have written
(4) impact of pandemic on city budget, planning and the economic response, shrinking not expanding, with a longer term forecast of reduced growth compared to before, when Utah had been one of the nation's better performing economies.
Scott wins.
https://www.wbaltv.com/article/brandon-scott-2020-baltimore-mayor-primary-election-winner/32731774
A fresh 36 year old mayor is probably a good look for Baltimore, you are right about that. Hopefully he can do a number of great things!
PS OT i saw on 4th st ne between h and i someone bought up five rowhouses in a row (quite an accomplishment!) and is adding matching popups to all of them! I'll send you the vid right now. Looks pretty cool imo. Thoughts?
Will look later and respond. Have a presentation soon. Thanks again for thinking of me. (Interestingly, that's the block where I lived when I first moved to Washington in 1987.)
Nice! Have they put up a plaque on the block honoring you living there yet?
I always lived at 8th and I ... I miss it, esp after we put the 3rd floor up it was HUGE with a roofdeck. Never got to live in it w/ the 3rd floor just sold it after. Made BANK off it tho
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