Last year, the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore was placed under the umbrella of the Greater Baltimore Committee—with the hope that the combined forces of these two vital civic organizations would help the region be even more competitive on a national and global stage. A refreshed mission called for a fresh face, so urbanist Mark Anthony Thomas stepped in to serve as the 68-year-old organization’s new executive.

The 44-year-old Michigan native’s resumé includes more than two decades of experience in urban economic development in various metro areas, including Los Angeles, New York, and, most recently, Pittsburgh, plus degrees from MIT and Columbia University. On top of all that, Thomas is also a published poet, whose spoken word performances are available on Spotify and YouTube.

Business leaders formed the GBC in 1954 to advocate for redevelopment and renewal in Baltimore. How do you want that founding objective to evolve under your leadership?
Part of my message has been that the way civic and economic organizations have evolved across the country is that they’ve become much more visionary—[bringing together] the thought leaders, the conveners, all of the fragmented ecosystems of a region into a place where big things get done. The merger allows us to provide what I truly believe is the reason [for its existence], but in a way that is very collaborative, ambitious, and that people are excited to be a part of.

GBC’s founders focused on “urban renewal”—which is now a loaded term. How does that complicate its current ability to achieve those goals?
I don’t think it does. There’s a lot of baggage in the way we thought about how cities are designed, who they are for, and how regions deal with issues of displacement. We’ve learned in a tough way that the approaches of the past can’t be replicated. It’s about winning trust and delivering in ways that people feel are inclusive and well thought out. We’re also a more diverse society, so a lot has changed in terms of who gets a voice. I want to ensure our work reflects the voice of all the stakeholders who care about the region’s future.

What issues that the GBC traditionally avoided do you think it must help solve to remain relevant?
The biggest is neighborhood redevelopment. You can’t have an environment where we’re creating a ton of job opportunities and leaving neighborhoods in the conditions we inherited. We have to be hands-on in ensuring all of our neighborhoods are vibrant, thriving, and appreciating and creating inclusive wealth, not the status quo…There’s a role for the private sector and the philanthropic community to make a difference. That’s how I envision the role we’ll play.

You’re also a poet. How does exercising your creative instincts help in your professional life?
Before I had the type of influence I have now, I had to earn it through the things that I wrote in the things that I published…That’s given me a lot of patience in how to build trust and awareness. And you’re going to see that translated into how GBC operates.

Less than two years ago, Kelly Madigan, a former deputy state prosecutor, was appointed to a newly created position that would make her Baltimore County’s first-ever inspector general. As if starting a government agency solo in the middle of a pandemic wasn’t hard enough, Madigan, 44, was also piloting an office created to shine a light on issues that some county employees and elected officials would rather stay in the dark. Despite the obstacles, she’s now expanding her team, increasing their efforts, and working to bring more transparency to local government.

How would you describe the challenges of doing a job that’s never existed before, particularly when it involves scrutinizing local government?
It has been a real challenge for a variety of reasons. To create a brand-new government agency—Baltimore County hasn’t had a new government agency for a long time—that’s always going to be a learning curve…It’s an agency whose mission is to point out fraud, waste, and misconduct. It’s not necessarily a popular position, and sometimes it’s not well-received. So, there have been some growing pains, but I’m really proud of the agency.

How would you describe the level of push-back you’ve received from elected officials over your office’s investigations?
Well, there has been pushback. I’m trying not to take it personally because there is a kind of natural tension. Because part of our role is to point out when someone’s not following policy or procedure or when something’s not appropriate…But I have faith in the process. We treat each and every employee respectfully. I try very hard to be fair to everyone, and when we draft the reports, the reports are factual. They’re not my opinion as to whether something was good or bad. There it is, what the law says, what the facts say. Period.

Which investigations do you think best represent your work?
I think each report is important, and I’m proud of them, and they’re all different. Some identify lots of money [owed to the county]…But our office has also done really important reports where there’s not a dollar-value associated. For example, we did a report this past July about a prominent developer who wanted to build a tennis court in their backyard, and they received preferential treatment. That report is just as important as a report about [purchase cards] or monies not being recovered by Baltimore County for rec and parks.

If you could make one change that would make your job easier, what would it be?
I think it’s really important that the office, as a new office, as an independent office, has access to our own independent counsel…Right now, the county attorney represents the office. And the county attorney also represents the county executive and all other members of the administration…It would help me be more effective with my job to have another person sitting down with the county attorney, talking about the nuances of the statute.

Stephanie Murdock, the president of grassroots nonprofit Skatepark of Baltimore, says she thought by now, skaters from around the city would be coasting across a new skatepark in West Baltimore.

Instead, Murdock and about 30 supporters of the planned Easterwood Park skatepark, amid the wind and rain, rallied outside City Hall on Monday, demanding the city build the park as promised.

Backers of the skatepark challenged the city to explain why, after years of work to make the skatepark a reality, the city government suddenly opted in July not to build it, and instead said it would use the money to improve existing features at the park. Some went further and named state Sen. Antonio Hayes as the reason for the impasse.

“We’re going to get this park, and we’re going to get it now,” Murdock told supporters Monday.

City funding for the skatepark dates back to the fiscal year 2020 budget, which included $300,000 to study improvements to Carroll Park and examine the potential for building a small skatepark at Easterwood Park. The city earmarked $850,000 in the fiscal year 2022 budget to build Easterwood’s skatepark. Of that total, $350,000 came from city capital funds and $500,000 came from state bond money.

However, in July, the city’s Department of Recreation & Parks called community activists Murdock and Marvin “Doc” Cheatham into a meeting. During the meeting, backers say they were ambushed with news that the city no longer intended to build the skatepark.

Nevertheless, skatepark supporters say they’ll continue to fight to build the park. Activists framed the issue as one of racial equity. Baltimore has three public skateparks, they say, but none are located in Black neighborhoods.

Chrissy “Sosii” Brown, a skateboarder from Ashburton, says building the park in Easterwood gives Black skateboarders easier access to a sport that they regularly travel long distances and negotiate risky situations to participate in.

“This is the plight of the Black skater, having to take risks just to skate,” Brown says, “having to travel long distance by foot, board, or public transportation just to skate…having nowhere to skate in our own neighborhoods.”

Cheatham says he started pursuing building a skatepark in West Baltimore about eight years ago at the behest of kids from Easterwood. He says those kids wanted the skatepark so that they didn’t have to travel outside of their community to skate.

After years of work, Cheatham told the rally, halting as he became emotional, he felt particularly blindsided by the city’s sudden opposition. He says that, initially, it wasn’t skatepark backers’ idea to build the park in Easterwood. They chose the park at the behest of the Department of Recreation & Parks.

Consequently, Cheatham blames Hayes for pressuring the city into abandoning plans for the skatepark.

“I’m saying the city has to reconsider the injustice that they’re doing. If not, recall Antonio Hayes,” Cheatham says about the senator who is running for re-election next month. “Because he’s the culprit in all of this.”

In June 2019, Hayes signed a letter praising the project and urged the city to financially back the construction of the skatepark in Easterwood.

“We are requesting the support and assistance of the Skatepark of Baltimore to provide a desperately needed and comparable recreational option to youth and young adults in this West Baltimore neighborhood,” Hayes writes in the letter, which was provided to Baltimore by skatepark supporters.

Skateboard activists are unsure why Hayes is now working against the project, but some at the rally said his motive is retribution for Cheatham’s persistent criticisms.

In a telephone interview Monday evening, Hayes said he previously told supporters the city isn’t abandoning plans to build the skatepark altogether.  Still, he says, the surrounding community prefers repairing Easterwood’s playground, building a walking trail, and maintaining the park’s basketball courts instead of building a skatepark.

Hayes also insisted surrounding communities decided to nix skatepark construction. No one who lives around Easterwood Park, he says, supports building the skatepark. If skatepark backers were given 24 hours, he says, they couldn’t find 10 supporters who live within two blocks of the park.

“This is something Doc has created in his head that the community wants as a matter of equity,” Hayes says.

Despite the city altering plans to upgrade Easterwood without a skatepark, that course of action isn’t sure. Any attempt to use the funds for park improvements without a skatepark faces the potential for a protracted fight throughout the bureaucratic process to reallocate money intended for the skatepark.

The Department of Recreation & Parks can’t arbitrarily use money earmarked for the skatepark, says Murdock, a city employee who previously worked for Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke. To reallocate those funds, the Department of Planning would first have to sign off on the change.  The Board Estimates, which consists of the mayor, city council president, comptroller, city solicitor, and the director of public works, would then need to grant final approval to reallocate the skatepark money.

That process grants skatepark supporters time to flex their political muscles and potentially garner enough support to convince the city to build a skatepark in Easterwood again.

“I told my neighborhood two weeks ago I would give my life for this skatepark,” Cheatham says.

[Editor’s Note: The Baltimore City Council is meeting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, January 18 to discuss the Baltimore City Urban Homesteading Program for legacy residents. You can stream it live, here.]

In November, City Council President Nick Mosby introduced legislation to revive Baltimore’s ballyhooed dollar-house program—the fondly remembered urban renewal scheme launched roughly 50 years ago—at least in name.

At the time, his team hailed the bill—which is part of a larger legislative package dubbed “House Baltimore”—as having the potential to close the “city’s racial wealth gap” and shrink the “gulf between rates of white and Black homeownership.” 

“For so many working-class Baltimoreans, the American Dream has been a myth at best, and in reality for many, it has been a nightmare,” Mosby, who did not respond to interview requests, said in a statement from his office touting the legislation.

But what Mosby proposes is an altogether different enterprise than its namesake, according to Robert Embry, who created the original program as commissioner of the Baltimore Department of Housing and Community Development. 

“I don’t think [Mosby’s plan] has any analogy to the dollar-house program of the 1970s,” says Robert Embry, now president of The Abell Foundation. “It doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. It’s just different.” 

The most significant difference between the initiative proposed by Mosby and the original dollar-house scheme was Embry’s emphasis on creating a cost-neutral program. The original required public financing, Embry says, because banks wouldn’t provide mortgages for properties included in the program since they cost more to fix than they were worth. 

However, Embry saw an opportunity to create a program that kicked into city coffers through public financing. Baltimore supplied debt to rehabilitate the vacant homes through a combination of funds from a federal rehabilitation loan program and capital provided via the city bond issue. Baltimore then loaned that money to homebuyers at a higher interest rate. (In other words, if the city issued bonds at four percent, it then loaned those funds to the dollar home purchaser at five percent.)

“So, the city made a little money,” Embry says. “Plus, it took a house costing the city money to board up…and put it back on the tax roll. The city was getting not only the increment on the bond money, but getting property tax from a building that was not paying any tax.” 

By comparison, Mosby’s plan requires homebuyers—who would essentially lease the homes from the city for two years for $1 per year—to secure private debt to fund rehabbing the homes. 

The broader “House Baltimore” legislative package includes grant funds up to $25,000 to repair homes. (Mosby, and council allies, propose spending $200 million from one-time federal funds via the American Rescue Plan Act, intended to offset costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic).

One issue with that is that rehabbing a vacant home can cost upwards of $80,000 or $100,000—far exceeding the proposed $25,000 grant. Meanwhile, banks still aren’t likely to provide mortgages for properties included in the program since they cost more to fix than they are worth. It’s the same issue Embry overcame with public financing, which is not part of the current proposal.

Nneka Nnamdi, of Fight Blight Bmore, told the Baltimore Sun in late December that her organization does not support the legislation. She said there’s no assurance the initiative and homes will be affordable to those the legislation is aimed at, adding that there is not a provision for the city to offer low-cost mortgages, as there was in the original dollar-housing plan. “We can’t trust the banks to do this,” Nnamdi said. “The banks will protect their interest, but they will not protect the interest of the people.”

Mayor Brandon Scott has not weighed in publicly on the proposed legislation from Council President Mosby, which is not expected to garner support among the City Council’s progessive members. Scott has said he plans to introduce a housing initiative, using part of the $641 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding, this year.

Another significant difference between the dollar-house strategies is the target homebuyers. In the years following President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, an abundance of initiatives intended to provide housing for the city’s poor took root in Baltimore.

At that time, Embry says, Baltimore needed an influx of wealthier residents, particularly people who lived outside the city and could afford a home. “We wanted to attract more middle-income people to the city who were paying more in taxes than they were consuming in services,” he says, “so I began the dollar-house program.”

Mosby’s legislation, however, makes it clear its goal is to boost homeownership among long-time residents, particularly Black working-class residents who have never had the opportunity to own a home. Specifically, the legislation identifies first-time homeowners and legacy residents of disinvested neighborhoods. The act also includes preferences for families making less than 80 percent of the area median income, roughly $83,000 a year.      

Additionally, there’s the location of the vacant housing stock targeted by the program. Properties sold via lottery in the 1970s were in city-owned clusters in historic neighborhoods around downtown, including Federal Hill and Otterbein. These areas were initially slated for demolition as part of a defunct proposal to extend I–95. Among others, those initial programs attracted a young Baltimore developer named Bill Struever, who got his start rehabbing homes in Federal Hill.   

Mosby’s reinvented program, according to the bill, covers properties in disinvested neighborhoods traditionally “overlooked by investors and revitalization initiatives, or historically subject to redlining.” For properties to qualify under the proposed dollar-house program, the surrounding neighborhood must have assets, including public markets, public spaces, transit corridors, and emerging real estate development activity.    

Despite differences, those who worked to revive the dollar-housing program, in one form or another, see potential in Mosby’s plan, even if it’s not their design. Former Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke was the most recent legislator, before Mosby, to push for a dollar-house revival. Since leaving office, she continues to work with various advocates for neighborhood-driven redevelopment.

She says that few examples of programs like the original are still talked about with reverence decades after they ceased operating. If done right, she says, the reinvented dollar-house program should and could again serve as a model for other cities.          

“There are examples, but this would help put us on the map again in a positive way,” Clarke says. 

All in all, the new program may struggle to live up to the memories of the original, but that doesn’t mean the current proposal is inferior. It’s just hard to live up to a program that many residents don’t fully understand, and can now only view through the warm patina of nostalgia.   

“I don’t think a lot of people understood it,” Embry says. “They thought the city was giving away houses for a dollar that were getting fixed up. And why don’t we do that with all the vacant houses? It was one of the few, if only, efforts to attract middle-income people back to Baltimore. I think its popularity, and even knowledge of it, is mainly a middle-income phenomenon.” 

Bree Jones counts herself among a generation of young Black Americans, spurred to activism by high-profile killings of unarmed Black people, who demand accountability on issues involving race, violence, and equality in the U.S.

Her activism, however, isn’t focused on police brutality. Instead, Jones aims to set right injustices exacerbated by traditional real estate development and redevelopment patterns in urban areas.

In 2018, she launched her equitable real estate development firm, Parity, which renovates vacant homes and resells them for affordable prices to existing residents, aiming to break the typical gentrification cycles by focusing on communities, starting in West Baltimore.

What is Parity’s mission?
I founded Parity to be a developer that is equitable, community-led, and that puts the outcomes of low-to-moderate income Black and brown people at the center of its outcomes, rather than as an afterthought.

You say development often happens to, and not with, communities, particularly communities of color. What does that look like?
When development happens to people, it lands on top of neighborhoods that were already struggling from racist policies, like urban renewal, which tore through Poppleton with the Route 40 “Highway to Nowhere” [in the late 1970s]. The residents tried to engage in that process. They tried to advocate on their own behalf. They tried to bring the developer to the table. They tried to bring the city to the table, and some things were promised that weren’t fulfilled. Like, yes, we’re going to demolish your homes, but we’ll give you a place to come back to. But the reality is people who are displaced can’t come back, because the developer is renting those units at a much higher price.

What are the biggest challenges for a firm like Parity?
The biggest challenge is going up against structural racism. It’s kind of like a big, knotted ball, and we’re trying to carefully unravel it without inadvertently causing additional harm. Parity is working on acquiring 96 abandoned buildings in West Baltimore across 10 contiguous blocks, because we recognize in order to shift a neighborhood you have to get all the vacants.

Describe the moment you conceived flipping the script.
Trayvon Martin was murdered the year I was graduating from college. That was such a pivotal moment in my trajectory, because in some ways the world that I had known, or been taught about in school, came crashing down. I realized what institutional racism really looked like. [At the same time,] I found a small grassroots organization in my hometown, New Rochelle, that taught me about critical race theory, and that’s the first time I learned about redlining. It just so happened this multi-billion-dollar developer was starting to build 2,000 luxury rental units. All of these things converged, it was like a fire that was ignited within me, around racial and social justice.

Franca Muller Paz sets a punishing pace striding uphill east on Orleans Street. Neither the oddly muggy October evening, nor the fact she’s decked out in a face shield and surgical grade face mask, slows her stride.      

She doesn’t have time to dawdle. Despite her days starting at 4 a.m., time remains an invaluable commodity as she balances her obligations as a teacher at City College with running a campaign for Baltimore City Council. On this recent autumn evening, after teaching classes all day, her canvass starts with feeding volunteers, briefing them on COVID-19 safety measures, and then covering what she wants emphasized to voters at doors.   

After that, it’s time for Muller Paz to speed from Paul Laurence Dunbar High School up a few blocks to the Douglass Homes to visit housing rights activist Rev. Annie Chambers. Once she checks in with Chambers, Muller Paz pushes onto the primary reason she’s hoofing it up and down Orleans Street in the heat—to introduce herself to as many voters as possible before dark. 

“I’ve always been a marcher,” Muller Paz says during a brief pause waiting for a traffic light to change at Aisquith and Orleans streets as she heads toward her canvassing turf at Pleasant View Gardens.  

The setting sun isn’t the only factor pushing Muller Paz’s tempo. After roughly three months of campaigning—an extremely short period of time for electioneering—her bid to serve on the City Council has entered the home stretch. In-person early voting began this week and runs through Nov. 2, with Election Day itself slated for Nov. 3.  

If Muller Paz sways enough votes before polls close on Election Day, she’ll make history as the first Green Party candidate elected to city office. She’d also likely join Odette Ramos, the Democratic nominee in District 14, as the city’s first Hispanic elected officials.  

At the moment, however, that’s all hypothetical. Muller Paz and her turquoise clad troops still must clear more obstacles than an Olympic hurdler.

While there’s anecdotal evidence the campaign’s momentum has shifted her way, based on fundraising and campaign activity, Muller Paz remains a heavy underdog.   

A major reason Muller Paz’s bid is considered a long shot is the candidate, who has never sought elected office before, only had a relatively short time to introduce herself to the district’s voters after kicking off her campaign in July. 

In recent instances locally, where upstart candidates defeated incumbents, those challengers previously held elected office and started campaigning long before the election.  

Arguably the biggest obstacle in Muller Paz’s path to victory is party affiliation in the district. Democrats in District 12 make up about 81 percent of registered voters, and she’ll need to convince a large chunk of voters to reject their party’s nominee, Councilman Robert Stokes Sr. 

In the past three presidential General Elections, district voters cast a median of roughly 13,000 votes. If turnout is in that ballpark, and the makeup of the electorate reflects party affiliation in the district, about 10,500 Democrats will cast ballots in District 12.  

In that scenario, Muller Paz—assuming she overwhelmingly wins the 15 percent of voters in the district registered as unaffiliated, or with a third-party—will need to pull more than 5,000 votes from Democrats to earn a majority. That number drops if Republican candidate Eugene Boikai overperforms, opening the potential to win with a plurality of votes.   

Green Party officials say there’s too many variables to project precisely how many Democratic voters they’ll need to convert to win, but agree Muller Paz will need to earn “thousands” of Democratic votes to emerge victorious. That’s still a tall order considering Ian Schlakman, the Green Party’s candidate for City Council in District 12 four years ago, received 1,827 total votes.  

City operatives and activists familiar with the district all doubt Muller Paz has a path to victory. That’s predicated on the expectation that Democrats will back the party nominee.  

They’re also skeptical the district’s majority Black voters will support a Latina candidate, especially when she’s running against a Black incumbent. Politicos skeptical of Muller Paz’s electability cite the results of the 2011 Democratic primary.  In that race, Ramos, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, ran a serious campaign, but only earned about 23 percent of the vote. She lost to then Councilman Carl Stokes, no relation to Robert Stokes Sr., who carried the day earning nearly 50 percent of ballots in the crowded field. 

Conventional wisdom is that once Carl Stokes decided at the last moment against running for mayor, Ramos’ bid was doomed regardless. Nonetheless, her heritage, various politicos say, served as a liability in the contest. They expect a similar dynamic to play out in 2020.    

Mueller Paz’s campaign, however, does have some advantages. 

Arguably, its biggest leg up stems from a dramatic shift in the Green Party’s election strategy, which provides her candidacy with resources previous party efforts lacked.

Following the 2018 election cycle, when the local Green Party failed to win a single race after fielding its broadest slate of candidates ever, party loyalists decided to go a new route. 

Baltimore Green Party co-chairman Owen Silverman Andrews says watching third-party candidates in Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Seattle win races in recent years sold the party on the strategy that worked in those cities. That blueprint calls for pumping all of the party’s resources into a single contest. It’s what Silverman Andrews calls going, “narrow and deep.” 

By focusing its efforts into Muller Paz’s campaign, the Green Party provides her with an unprecedented level of organization and fundraising support. Bolstered by the party’s ability to tap into a national network, Muller Paz’s campaign has raised more than $100,000 from 1,400 donors since July. 

“We’ve funneled it all into one City Council race, and given that we’re a smaller party than the two corporate-funded parties, we have to be strategic in how we deploy our resources,” Silverman Andrews says.

By comparison, Robert Stokes Sr., who did not return multiple phone calls seeking comment on this story, has essentially eschewed electioneering. 

The few pieces of campaign material featuring the incumbent’s name, such as signs or mailers, have come from City Council President Brandon Scott’s mayoral campaign. His most recent campaign finance filings reported the campaign raised $0 ahead of the general election.

At the same time, the incumbent has dealt with a personal tragedy that would understandably make campaigning difficult. His older brother, former Councilman Edwin Johnson, died in September. Johnson gave Robert Stokes Sr. his start in politics when he hired his brother as a campaign coordinator in 1984. 

While the incumbent’s lack of campaigning seems a curious choice at first, and would seem to portend an upset this fall, there’s a rationale behind the decision. It’s a strategy often used by candidates with a substantial edge in factors like voter registration. Actively campaigning in those scenarios, the reasoning goes, only helps the challenger by drawing attention to the fact there’s an alternative in the race. 

Another edge for team Muller Paz is their candidate has proven to be an energetic, if raw, retail campaigner who’s leveraged relationships she’s built in the community as a teacher at City College, and through her involvement with the teachers union.

By comparison, her opponent has not proved himself a particularly dynamic campaigner. That’s reflected in the fact Robert Stokes Sr. won both his primary races by a combined 576 votes despite being raised in the district, attending Paul Laurence Dunbar High School—which boasts a powerful alumni network—and having worked in East Baltimore politics since before Muller Paz was born.      

All of this is making some of Robert Stokes Sr.’s allies uneasy.   

During a recent appearance on WEAA’s “Real Questions with David Brown,” Carl Stokes said he was aggravated at the number of his fellow Democrats supporting Muller Paz. 

He called that support for his successor’s challenger, along with organizations that generally support Democrats, such as the AFL-CIO, The Sierra Club, and Clean Water Action, “politricks.” 

“I think the present council person is being targeted…as a test to see if, and… I’m really measuring my words, because I do want to invoke race,” Carl Stokes said. “His challenger, I guess by some, could be called brown, but in truth is white, and it is the white portion of the 12th District that is supportive of this candidate.” 

During a recent interview, Muller Paz, who was born in Perù and whose family moved to the U.S. when she was a child, steered away from directly addressing the role of race and identity in the campaign.

The residents she speaks with while canvassing, Muller Paz says, routinely express the same concerns. The most common anxieties all voters share with her, she says, can be divided into two “buckets.” At the top of the list are intertwined issues of crime and youth investment. The second bucket, she says, consists of frustrations about lack of constituent services, such as trash collection. 

If elected, Muller Paz says she will help to address those issues by supporting a $15 minimum wage, backing increased funding for schools and recreation centers, and pledging to adopt a constituent services model like the one used by Councilman Zeke Cohen in neighboring District 1.    

But those are all concerns for after the election. For now, Muller Paz, the Baltimore Green Party, campaign staff, and volunteers must stay focused on winning the election. 

While one city political operative said it would take “a miracle” for Muller Paz to win, the candidate, party activists, and volunteers alike are more optimistic, and give her a puncher’s chance to flip the deep blue district green.  

A drive around the district, which stretches from lower Charles Village to Upper Fells Point, shows why there’s growing optimism in Muller Paz’s campaign, and provides reason to believe a victory will take slightly less than divine intervention. 

Her distinctive turquoise signs—featuring the candidate’s smiling bespectacled face and “¡FRANCA!” in white letters—are ubiquitous in the district, hanging on doors, windows, and yards rather than jammed on light posts, in median strips, or slapped on vacant buildings. 

But signs are not votes, and a Muller Paz win would rank among the greatest underdog stories in the long, if not august, annals of Baltimore political history. 

As the campaign heads to a close, there’s more uncertainty than certainty. But one thing the candidate does know for certain, if she loses, it won’t be for a lack of hustle. 

“I feel like I can say we put everything on the table,” she says. “Everyone that has worked on this campaign has done it with their whole heart.” 

Entrepreneur Bob Wallace believes his roughly 30 years of business experience provide him the skills Baltimore needs in its next mayor. Wallace, an independent and father of five, said he isn’t beholden to party orthodoxy, and if he’s elected as “mayorprenuer” in November, he pledges to secure $1 billion in outside investment in his first term. His bid to be the next mayor, however, is an uphill struggle in a city that’s been dominated by the Democratic Party throughout the past 50 years. 

Here’s what Wallace had to say about running as an independent, priority policies, and how his career in business would translate to City Hall. 

How long have you been considering running for mayor, and what made you decide to get in the race?
I’ve actually been considering it over the last three election cycles. Every cycle I always think, and hope, that the leadership will take our city to a whole new level. Every time I’ve been disappointed. So this time, given the out-of-control crime that we have in the city, the violence, the poverty, the dysfunction, the distrust between our police force and the communities, the lack of competence in our leadership, I just said enough is enough. We’ve got to do something now, because if we don’t change our leadership we’re going to get to a point of no return, where I think we’ll become a shell of a city. 

What makes you think the talents that allowed you to succeed as an entrepreneur will translate to government, which has ostensibly a much different objective than business?
Although the objective may be different between a government and a corporation, I would argue that the mechanics are the same. How do you take limited resources and mobilize, organize, and position them to achieve an outcome? That’s what entrepreneurs do and I would argue that’s what the government does. So my idea of being a “mayorpreneur”—that’s a term that I came up with—I think, is very applicable.  In terms of applying the skills of problem solving, bringing people together, and executing on strategy, the idea of giving people hope, and giving them faith, and giving them a destination point that everyone can agree to, and march toward—I believe that those are the skills that the government needs more now than ever before.  

So tell us about why you decided to run as an independent? For the last 50 years the Democratic Party has been the dominant party in this city. Why are you running as an independent as opposed to running in one of the party primaries?
I started out as a Democrat. I come from a family of multiple generations of Democrats going back to [President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.] So that’s my base. I’ve also been a Republican because I felt what was missing, especially in the minority community, is economic opportunity. I felt the Republican party, at the time, had a platform that encouraged entrepreneurship, business development, and job creation. I remind people that if you look at the civil rights movement, Dr. King, Malcolm X, and those leaders, you’ll find that their focus pivoted from civil rights—voting rights and basic human decency—to economic rights and opportunities. That was the same path that I’ve taken as African-American leader. 

Now I’m an independent because if you look at the Republican Party, and look at the partisan bickering and fighting that goes on, I feel that an independent can get more done as a leader. As an independent, I’m not bound by party doctrine. I’m not bound by party methodologies or stuck to some particular ideas that have never worked. We’ve had Democratic leadership in Baltimore for 40-50 years, and I would ask the people, what have we gotten from that? How has it moved the needle? How has it made Baltimore better? It’s not about parties. What I’ve learned is to put people over profit. To put people over party, and put people over politics. As an independent, I can do just that. 

One of the problems that candidates have found when they are not running within the Democratic Party is that it’s hard to get their message to resonate if you don’t have a D next to your name. How do you overcome that?
I’m not the first political leader to go down this path. The first African-American congressman for the 7th District, Parren Mitchell, was a Democrat, but he was not supported by the Democratic establishment. So he had to run as if he was an independent. And he won. Another leader was Judge William H. Murphy Sr., who was the first African-American elected to the [then Municipal Court now District] court in Baltimore. Judge Murphy had a D after his name, but he too was not supported by the Democratic establishment. So he had to run as if he was an independent. He was also successful. [Editor’s Note: Both Mitchell and Murphy won their seats after winning Democratic primary elections.] So I’m not creating a new model here. I’m following in the steps of giants, steps of great men and women. 

We have a ground game that most folks don’t realize. I call it “a stealth game” because they think, “Bob Wallace is a businessman and he’s never been engaged at that level.” Well, that’s not true. I’m from Cherry Hill. Most of my employees are from the neighborhoods. My wife’s family, their roots are in East Baltimore and West Baltimore, and there are many of them in the neighborhoods that are supporting us and building a ground game in those areas. So even though I’ve been a business and tech entrepreneur, we have a ground game that is really mobilized and makes a big difference. 

If you had to select a top policy priority if you’re elected mayor, what would that be? And where do you think we would get the resources to accomplish that?
I have a seven prong platform, and it’s based upon two tiers. The first consists of crime, education, and jobs. If we get those three things under control, then everything else will flow smoothly from there. One of the reasons businesses do not come to Baltimore City, or that they leave the city, is because of crime and violence. So that’s number one. Then education. In our school system we have 79,000 kids and many of them are not graduating with skills to compete in the job market. That’s unacceptable. Then third is jobs. My goal is to create 100,000 new jobs in Baltimore City in my first term. My Part B of that is to attract $1 billion in new investment to Baltimore City in my first term, because I believe that economic development is going to be key to us building an economy that will lift all people and give everyone the opportunity to be safe and to prosper. 

Let’s start with the $1 billion. What do you do to make that happen? A lot of people always say they want to bring things here, but they never seem to show up.
That’s very true, but if you look at my background, I’m a businessman who has built relationships and businesses all over the world. There are some structural changes that need to occur in city government. One is the tax situation. Property tax rates in Baltimore City are double that in other jurisdictions. We’re just not competitive. So if I’ve got money to invest, why would I come to Baltimore when I can get half the tax in surrounding counties? I have a plan that would look at reducing the property tax rate within two tax cycles, about six years. In terms of the resources necessary to do it, there are a couple of possibilities. One is to work with the government to attract state resources to the city. The second is to work with the feds to attract our fair share of federal resources.

But we have another option no one talks about except for me…if you look at the balance sheet of the city of Baltimore, we’ve got about $4.4 billion of assets. So one option we have is to take some of our assets and do a sale leaseback approach to that asset. So let’s say I have a parking garage or some other asset that’s worth $100 million. Why can’t I package that, sell it to investors, lease it back from them over a 20-30 year time period so we get the cash flow we need to operate our city, they get the returns they need to make their shareholders hold, and we get the asset back at the end of the 20-30 year time period? We have options here that we’ve never tried before, to my knowledge, because we haven’t had business-minded leaders in the past. 

Baltimore is about 20 years behind Washington, D.C. I believe that if we get the right leadership in Baltimore City—someone who is not afraid to go against what’s been done in the past and says we need to change the structure, we need to disrupt this institution to make this city more attractive to investors, capital, entrepreneurs, and businesses, I believe we will see the same dynamic D.C. experienced and their growth and prosperity. 

Baltimore is a great asset. We have wonderful institutions, our cost of living is reasonable, we’ve got great neighborhoods, Johns Hopkins, Morgan State University, University of Maryland. We’ve got so much going for us. What we’re lacking is the leadership in City Hall and a plan. And the political courage to do what’s hard and what’s not popular. I’m willing to do that. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and space.    

Shortly after sunrise, on most mornings during this peculiar pandemic-stricken summer, strollers, joggers and dog walkers in Baltimore’s Roosevelt Park go about their routines to the odd rhythm of maple, polyurethane, and aluminum repeatedly cracking against concrete.

The awkward beat is augmented by a unique fusion of frustrated grunts and exasperated exhales followed by the occasional profane exclamation spicing up the cadence. That odd mix of sounds may seem exotic, but anyone who has spent time on city streets, suburban cul de sacs, or in public parks, should recognize the cacophony as the sound of skateboarding.

In the early morning hours, however, it’s not the stereotypical teenaged, mayo boy, Mountain Dew enthusiasts, who create the clamor.

It’s a gaggle of early-morning pushers consisting mostly of professional men in their 30s and 40s. Guys who, prior to COVID-19, spent early-morning hours commuting to work, coaxing reluctant children to get dressed for school, and queuing for Starbucks.

Jarret Jeffery, 35, a married father of three who teaches in Prince George’s County, is among the most dedicated of Hampden’s early-morning skaters. Since schools closed, Jeffery has used the time he would’ve spent driving to work on his board.

“That huge chunk of time that I have now, I’ve been throwing that into spending time with family and skateboarding,” Jeffery says.

Fittingly, Jeffery, bespectacled, about five feet, five inches tall, and wearing a pair of mid top Vans with duct tape on the left front toe, approaches skating with the methodical nature of a science and math teacher.

He occasionally heads to the skatepark with a list of tricks he’s working on, and checks them off as he practices. Doggedly, and adroitly, Jeffery works on moves repeatedly, tweaking his technique after each failed attempt until he lands the maneuver.

On a recent morning, he skated alone on an elevated ramp, diligently practicing his front-side boardslide. Over and over, Jeffrey cruised up the nearly vertical wall of the ramp, pushed his board’s front wheels over the ramp’s metal coping, and used the slick bottom of his board to slide along the ledge before rolling back down the ramp “fakie,” aka with his dominant foot on the front of the board.

“These last few weeks things have just been clicking, and I think that’s because I’ve been consistent with my practicing, and taking breaks too, because I’m an old dude,” he says with a laugh.

John Rohrer, 42, a nurse, and married father of a toddler, skated as a child and again as a teenager before picking up the sport again about six months ago.

An avid biker and Hampden resident, Rohrer says that, as a result of the pandemic, the convenience of the skatepark—especially with a baby at home—has turned skating into his current exercise of choice.

“It’s a good core workout, and it’s quick and easy cause it’s right up the street from my house,” Rohrer says. “I’ve done a lot cycling my whole life, but a lot of fun bike rides, for me, take a lot longer. So this is a lot more conducive to get my activity itch scratched, and it reminds me of being a kid, I guess.”

Rohrer’s not too interested in pursuing the board flips and grinds associated with street skating. Riding a wider board with larger wheels, he focuses on cruising the skatepark’s banks and maintaining momentum over obstacles because he enjoys the speed.

“The park is a lot different from where I skated in high school so it’s a big learning process,” he says, “and way more balanced than I remember. It’s just really fun to go fast, simply put.”

At the other end of the park, 48-year-old Ben, who asked not to use his last name, skates the park’s “bowl” in near isolation.

The discipline of skating in a bowl dates back to the sport’s early days in the 1970s, when pioneering pushers—particularly in drought-stricken southern California—cruised along the walls of empty swimming pools like surfers riding a concrete wave. Cruising in bowls, however, has taken a backseat to other styles of skating in terms of popularity, particularly street skating.

Ben, who said he first began skating between 1985 and 1991, is one of the few pushers at the park who prefers to coast in the bowl, which is set on an elevated perch above the rest of the park.

He rides a wide board, with a single kicktail, and larger wheels—a style popular in the 1980s when “vert” skating was the sport’s most popular discipline that went out of vogue about the time Ben stopped skating.

Ben, who arrives at the park via white BMW crossover, started skating the bowl in Hampden about three years ago, he says, primarily for the same reason most men his age start getting active again.

“I needed to get exercise, and I didn’t grow up with such a wonderful bowl in my backyard,” says Ben, a Massachusetts native.

If there’s been an increase in the number of guys his age skateboarding since the COVID-19 outbreak, Ben says, he wouldn’t know. He chalked that up to his type of skating, which encourages social distancing by default.

“I skate the bowl. No one [else] skates the bowl,” Ben says. “Everyone’s over on the other side.”

Back on that side of the park, John Shea, 43, is one of the more accomplished skaters among the early arrivers.

Shea is one of the few skaters his age who never dropped the hobby for a prolonged period of time, and it shows in the aggressiveness and speed of his skating.

While dynamic with his feet on the board, Shea will never be accused of being loquacious. He’s friendly, and answers questions, but it’s clear being interviewed makes him uncomfortable.

Still, Shea explains what he wants to accomplish by continuing to skate, and the reticent Catonsville resident may have summed up the goals for all the early-bird skaters: “Just roll around and try not to get hurt.”