On January 6, as alarmed Americans were still grappling with the afternoon’s shocking images of the Donald Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol, a just-evacuated Andy Harris sat down in his House office for a virtual interview with WBAL-TV.

While waiting for word if Congress would reconvene to finish the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory, Maryland’s 1st District representative was calm. Disconcertingly so, given the day’s extraordinary and tragic events. Leaning back in his chair, Harris recounted witnessing Capitol police escorting House leaders “Mr. Hoyer, Speaker Pelosi, Mr. Scalise” off the floor. He matter-of-factly described being told that tear gas had been deployed in the rotunda and members of Congress should be prepared to use the emergency gas masks beneath their seats. He gave hint of a smile as he recalled the mob banging on the chamber door, comparing “the thumping” to the enthusiasm witnessed when a president arrives for a State of the Union.

“Obviously, later we heard there was a gunshot, but other than that,” Harris said, “there was no indication that this was a truly violent protest, as violent as one as you would worry about.”

Also disconcerting: While Harris said he didn’t support rioters breaking windows or disobeying lawful police orders, he stressed that he understood their frustration. He repeated Donald Trump’s debunked allegations that credible reports of election fraud had not been investigated and absolved the president of any role in fomenting the Capitol invasion. Instead, Harris—one of the Republicans challenging that day’s generally pro forma affair—placed blame with the summer’s Black Lives Matter protestors, whom he claimed had normalized violent political protest.

It went downhill from there.

After Congress reconvened, Harris got into a shouting match and near-tussle with a Democrat. During a Fox Baltimore interview the next morning, he spread the uncorroborated charge that leftist provocateurs were behind the Capitol assault. A week later, he skipped the House vote on impeachment altogether. A week after that, Capitol police stopped him after a handgun in his possession set off a magnetometer near the House chamber (a situation currently under investigation).

Not a good start to the sixth term of this GOP congressman who has said he will run next year? Not necessarily. Even with some Republican constituents joining Democratic officials in calling for his resignation, Andy Harris isn’t likely to pay a political price for his mounting controversies. The way his district is currently drawn, Harris’ stature in the eyes of his Trump-loving base might have only grown.

“The Democrats have no one to blame but themselves,” quips Richard Vatz, a conservative Towson University political analyst. In other words, to understand the often out-there politics of Andy Harris, you’ve got to understand the gerrymandering that enables him.

If it’s not obvious yet, Representative Andrew Harris is an anomaly in Maryland. He is the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation and a Freedom Caucus member, the furthest right bloc in the House Republican Conference. (Founding Freedom Caucus members include Judiciary Committee member Jim Jordan, governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, and Mark Meadows and Mick Mulvaney, both of whom served as the former president Trump’s chief of staff.)

In one of the bluest states in the country, Harris’ stop-sign red district stretches from Assateague Island, up the entire Eastern Shore, and across the northern spine of the state to the Carroll County border of Pennsylvania. The result is that he has cruised to reelection since 2010 (which, to Vatz’s point, is basically how Democrats intended it when they crammed as many Republican precincts into the 1st District as possible).

On one hand, it would be easy to dismiss the 64-year-old Harris as a fringe politician in a hyperpartisan district. He’s a Cockeysville anesthesiologist by profession, and not particularly charismatic. He doesn’t hold any leadership positions. He hasn’t authored significant legislation outside of trying to prevent the legalization of marijuana in D.C. and generally only makes the news when his extreme-right positions place him outside even recent GOP norms.

It’s not a short list. He has expressed support for Hungarian dictator Victor Orban. He was the only House member to vote “present” on a resolution denouncing QAnon. He opposed naming a North Carolina post office after Maya Angelou, calling her a communist. (His politics often smack not just of Trumpism, but McCarthyism.) Unlike say, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he continued to back Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore after credible allegations of sexual abuse.

In recent years, he voted “no” on both funding for 9/11 first responders, which the House passed 402-12, and recognizing the mass extermination of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which passed the House 405-11. Closer to home, he denounced the CDC response to COVID as “a cult of masks” and railed against Governor Hogan’s closure orders at a ReOpen Maryland protest, comparing them to “Communist China” and North Korea.

In March, Harris voted against a resolution to award Congressional Gold Medals to police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The measure, which Harris called “a stunt,” passed 413-12. 

“Democrats have no one to blame but themselves,” says Richard Vatz.

What remains up in the air at this point, is whether the Old Line State’s Grand Old Party will continue lurching toward Harris and his Freedom Caucus wing and likely put itself out of business in terms of winning statewide office. Or, will it swing back toward Larry Hogan’s brand of traditional conservatism, which has proved capable of winning the most important elected office in Maryland? “The million-dollar question,” says Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher College. It’s a divide analogous to the national GOP’s reckoning in the wake of former President Trump’s stinging election rebuke, the GOP’s loss of the U.S. Senate, and their standard bearer’s second impeachment.

Not surprisingly, given divisions within the GOP, different Republicans answer differently. State delegate and Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga, a former Harris chief of staff who lives in Perry Hall, remains all in on her former boss’ take-no-prisoners brand of politics.

“I’m launching a ‘Keep Harris in the House’ effort,” she told Baltimore in early March. Perhaps more noteworthy, Szeliga admits she’s given thought to running for Congress from the 1st District once Harris steps aside. “I don’t think Andy will be there another 20 years.”

Szeliga represents one direction for Maryland’s GOP and could conceivably run for governor sometime as well. “She would be a U.S. Senator if she lived in Alabama,” one veteran, non-partisan political observer says, paying a compliment, albeit a backhanded one, to her savvy political and communication skills.

Meanwhile, Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, closer in manner and rhetoric to Hogan, sees a potential opening to unseat Harris. Shortly after the events at the Capitol in January, he announced he’s weighing a run against Harris. The term-limited Glassman points to Harris’ oft-repeated campaign pledge not to run for more than six terms, which he recently disavowed, as a case study.

“The pledge he made is a popular one—‘I won’t stay in office more than 12 years and become a product of Washington’—but that’s exactly what has happened to him,” Glassman says. “I don’t know if he was always this conservative, and I wish I had another word, because I consider myself a conservative, or if he’s gotten more conservative since he’s been in Washington. But I feel it’s clear he’s become the very thing he said he was going to avoid by not seeking more than six terms.”

Harris did not make himself available for an interview for this story.

Heather Mizeur, a former State Delegate and talented campaigner with the ability to raise money, is the most prominent Democrat to throw her hat into the ring so far for 2022. But political observers across the board describe her task of upsetting Harris as a near- hopeless cause in the district as constituted.

It was not always this way in Maryland’s 1st District, or the state, for that matter.

For 18 years, Wayne Gilchrest, then a moderate Republican, represented the 1st District. Before him, Democrat Roy Dyson represented the area for a decade. But after Democrats remade the congressional map following the 2010 census, Harris has been untouchable.

The premise for the Democrats in creating the distorted district map was to boost their 6-2 advantage in the House to 7-1. They literally drew long-serving Western Maryland Republican Roscoe Bartlett out of the picture by adding a large portion of Democratic-majority Montgomery County precincts to his district.

Inconceivable today, 20 years ago Maryland’s congressional delegation was split 4-4. From 1993-2003, voters sent Republicans Wayne Gilchrest, Bob Ehrlich, Connie Morella, and Roscoe Bartlett to the Hill. Of course, it’s hard to imagine Gilchrest and Morella in to- day’s GOP. Gilchrest has switched party affiliations, and both were among more than two-dozen former Republican House members last year who announced they backed Joe Biden.

But even with Maryland’s 2-1 Democratic registration advantage, the state’s gerrymandering is crazy. Some Dems admit as much.

“It’s difficult to justify a 7-1 split in the congressional delegation,” says Len Foxwell, the veteran strategist who until recently served as the top adviser to Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot and has since launched his own communications firm. “One downside is many people are disenfranchised from casting meaningful general election ballots.”

Change is hard, however, and power difficult to part with. Gerrymandering is built into our political DNA. The practice derives its name from a former Massachusetts governor named Elbridge Gerry. Described as “a nervous, birdlike little person” by a biographer, Gerry was both a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the brains behind the dubious legislation that created a misshapen political district in his home state in 1812.

The result is Harris has little incentive to appeal to the widest swath of voters. He can meet with a white supremacist on the Hill—he later said he didn’t know the man’s background—and call Christine Blasey Ford a “troubled woman” with “psychological problems,” without worry. In the past, as Gilchrest says, the 1st District, which used to include the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland, shared a more libertarian bent and a concern for the Chesapeake Bay. Now, the 1st is represented by someone with a lifetime 3-percent score from the League of Conservation Voters.

Adding to the polarization in Maryland, as elsewhere, local jurisdictions are also gerrymandered. According to Foxwell’s research—he teaches a class around some of the wonky details at Johns Hopkins—more than 75 percent of Maryland’s jurisdictions are de facto monopolies. Baltimore’s 100-percent Democratic City Council isn’t the exception; it’s the rule here. In Montgomery County it plays out blue, but on the Eastern Shore and in Western Maryland, it’s a GOP-only show. “The result is an increasingly corrosive effect,” Foxwell says.

Harris has little incentive to appeal to the widest swath of voters.

Earlier this year, Hogan created an independent commission to address gerrymandering, but power rests in the Democratic legislature. Suffice it to say, Senate President Bill Ferguson quickly shot down the idea of a dramatic overhaul.

In the end, says Doug Mayer, Hogan’s former top communications strategist, Harris is less a cause than a symptom of what’s wrong with gerrymandering and GOP politics. For starters, he’d like to see a state map where four congressional seats are largely “safe” for Democrats, two for Republicans, and two up for grabs, reflecting the state’s party registrations. But he’s too much of a realist to be optimistic.

Mayer is similarly skeptical regarding any significant move away from Trump and Trumpism by the Maryland GOP or national GOP base and adherents like Harris.

“Donald Trump is the litmus test for Republicans,” says Mayer, now with the Annapolis-based Strategic Partners and Media, a highly regarded Republican campaign consulting firm. “As a long as the Republican Party stays a cult of personality, it’s going be a problem here and nationally to win.”

Picture CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference) meeting Lord of the Flies meeting a Richard Linklater film and you get a sense of the rollicking new documentary Boys State.

Every year, in Texas, thousands of promising young men—high school seniors—gather to learn about the Democratic process and essentially cosplay a real election. They break into two made-up parties, the Federalists and the Nationalists. There are delegates and party leaders and, most coveted of all, a governor, the highest elected office.

The event is sponsored by the American Legion and has been going on for decades. Dick Cheney was a participant. So was Bill Clinton.

Because the event takes place in Texas, the boys are overwhelmingly conservative. They care deeply about the second amendment. They “back the Blue.” When they talk about “abortion” (as in, “A big issue for me is abortion”) it is understood that they mean they are anti-abortion. Some favor Texas secession although the most serious among them reject that policy.

They’re loud and rowdy and jocular, but they are mostly good kids—after all, they’re voluntarily spending a week of their lives learning about American Democracy. That said, it’s crazy seeing young people who are so reflexively conservative. It’s like a birthright to these boys. (And yes, in case you were wondering, there is a female equivalent of the retreat called Girls State.)

The filmmakers, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, focus mostly on four boys—and they’ve chosen wisely.

There’s Ben, possibly the most politically savvy of the bunch, a kid who has Ronald Reagan figurines in his bedroom and who intuitively understands how to use bare knuckles campaign tactics to win. Ben is wealthy, handsome, and Jewish—but he is also disabled. A bout with meningitis as a child left him with no legs and a deformed arm (he gets around pretty nimbly on prosthetics). As a result, he’s a firm believer in rugged individualism. Any notion that a person can be oppressed by society is nonsense to him. Look at me, he insists: I have so many disadvantages and look how accomplished I am! He expresses this worldview to his somewhat amused parents as he packs up his stuff for Boys State in what appears to be a sprawling mansion.

Next there’s Robert, a floppy-haired Matt Dillon lookalike, who is not quite what he seems. At first, you think you have his number: handsome, athletic, effortlessly popular. He uses a kind of jocky bonhomie to get signatures for his governor campaign and shouts out chest-thumping messages of American exceptionalism to the appreciative boys. But in private interviews, he proves to be more thoughtful, and interesting, than he initially appears.

Then there’s René, a most extraordinary young man, who seems to be 17 going on 45. (He even wears tiny wire-rimmed glasses low on his nose, like a pair of starter reading glasses.) René is Black and liberal, which already puts him in the .01 percentile of his peers. (“Call me if you want to come home,” he says his mother advised him before he left.) He’s also exceptionally brilliant—hyper articulate, serious, with a slight chip on his shoulder that comes from always knowing he’s the smartest kid in the room. René is elected the chairman of the Nationalist party (Ben is the leader of the Federalist party)—and is almost immediately met with resistance, at least some of which is rooted in racism.

Finally, there’s the film’s true protagonist, the idealist Steven, a son of Mexican immigrants, who got his passion for politics by attending a Bernie Sanders rally, no less. Like René he’s an outsider among his peers—not just because he’s Mexican, but because his politics lean left. That said, Steven is a natural born politician, in the best sense of the word—he really wants to listen and learn and earn people’s trust and vote. At first, his earnestness seems no match against Robert’s frat boy charms, but it turns out these rowdy kids appreciate his authenticity. Even when it’s revealed that he organized a local March For Our Lives (sacre bleu!) it doesn’t quite derail him as much as you might think.

What makes Boys State so remarkable is that every political type is laid out before us—the opportunist, the glad-hander, the policy wonk, the true believer. Many of these boys are cynical because they’ve grown up watching a broken political system. Ben, in particular, uses “grievance politics” because he saw how well Trump wielded it in the election. Robert lies about his core beliefs because…isn’t that what politicians do? But the emergence of Steven as a leader is heart-warming. Some of these boys may be too far gone to save. But many of them are secretly yearning for a person of character and quality to lead them. Aren’t we all?

Boys State is available on Apple TV+ starting August 14^th.

New and immaculate, the War Memorial on Gay Street was draped in sun­light for its 1931 opening, with Mayor Howard Jack­ son on the portico, facing City Hall, looking out over the crowd.

One year into the Great Depres­sion, though, Jackson’s outlook was far from sunny. “In some homes today, there is more suffering, more heartache than war ever brought,” he announced. “Our real obligation to those who died [in World War I] is to find a solution to the economic problems of the present.”

His present, of course, is now the past. Today’s banks have real money inside. The stock market is soaring. Employment is at a record high. But other problems reminiscent of the Depression linger, as problems do. There are still hobos under bridges. Still soup lines. Still factories closing. And old and forgotten, the marble War Memorial has lingered, too, darkening in city soot, weather­ ing, growing weary.

Now it sits draped in a blanket of fog and blackness on a cold March midnight. On the front portico, where a mayor once spoke of better­ment, a homeless Vietnam vet named Bill sleeps with his head pressed against a tall golden door. From here, the War Memorial seems heartbreaking: soiled and silent in the shadows of downtown. Even the front courtyard appears disheveled, muddled in low mist, that patch of land where “The Star­Spangled Banner” was first per­formed in 1814. And across the courtyard, City Hall tolls its bell: one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, four. Nothing changes, save the scatter of rubbish whirling in rich, black breeze.

But come 5:30, light nips at the horizon. A short woman sips coffee at the corner and shivers, hawking newspapers for 25 cents. Police offi­cers hasten toward headquarters. Batches of businesspeople bustle by, ignoring the old memorial, and Bill awakens on the portico, fumbles with a handful of cigarette butts, and lights one.

At 7:30, Civic Works employees perform calisthenics in the front plaza, and at 8:05, a car pulls to the curb. A candidate for U.S. citi­zenship emerges, ready to be sworn in as part of a monthly cer­emony. She is old, feeble, with light-brown skin and long gray hair, with two tall sons in turbans helping her from the sedan to a wheelchair. And she is smiling up at the War Memorial, a smile of hope and excitement. Long ago, just after this monu­ment was built, this old woman would not have been allowed to take her citizenship oath here. State veter­ans had forbid use of the building “for other than veterans.” But that idea didn’t last—this is American, after all—and the policy was overturned on Constitutional grounds.

Eventually, the building became a museum, and was rededicated to also honor veterans of World War II and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The Disabled America Veterans, the American Legeion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars took office space over the years, and in 1997, Cynthia D. Coates became the building’s first non-veteran, its first female, and its first African-American executive director.

Today, the first day of spring, Coates is in her office downstairs as 351 citizens-to-be assemble in the auditorium above. She listens as Lloyd Marcus sings “Celebrate America” and Howard German croons “America the Beautiful.” She hears 351 voices—legal alien voices—take the oath of U.S. citizenship and she hears congratulations booming from the stage, cries of “Welcome to America!”

Then she hears 351 voices—citizen voices, now—whooping on the portico, on the stairs, on Gay Street and beyond. And Cynthia Coates sits in her chair smiling at the joyous sound of her old and maybe not entirely forgotten building. A building still of patriotism, still of pride, and now, again, of hope.

John Paterakis, 87

For good reason he was called the Bread Man: John Paterakis’ family-owned company, H&S Bakery, with him at its helm, has produced kazillions of loaves, rolls, muffins, and bagels over the past seven-plus decades. Additionally, through its Northeast Foods subsidiary, H&S has cranked out an untold number of hamburger buns as the principal supplier for McDonald’s. Of course, the nickname also applies to Paterakis’ multimillionaire status.

And yet, he was a decidedly unpretentious man, who lived in the same Timonium home for nearly 50 years, drove the same car until its odometer exceeded 200,000 miles, and dressed casually, seldom seen in a suit. But despite the pains he took to operate under the public radar, Paterakis nonetheless left an indisputable imprint on the city and state. As a developer, he transformed the once-desolate waterfront between Fells Point and the Inner Harbor into a gleaming mix of shops, residences, offices, and hotels, collectively known as Harbor East. As a philanthropist, he generously supported the Ronald McDonald House charities, Greek businesses, and Greek Orthodox churches. And as a political kingmaker, he contributed significant sums to the campaigns of governors (Spiro Agnew, Marvin Mandel) and mayors (William Donald Schaefer, Kurt Schmoke, Sheila Dixon, Catherine Pugh).

Paterakis’ extraordinary success stemmed, in part, from his intrepidness: spending $1.5 million (in 1965, a lot of dough) on an automated, mass-production plant to manufacture buns for McDonald’s before he had secured a deal with the fast-food behemoth; and shelling out $11 million in 1985 on behalf of the cash-strapped city to develop that decrepit waterfront strip curiously called the Gold Coast, and then forging ahead with the project when the city refused to honor its pledge to buy back the land.

“John Paterakis was the quintessential self-made businessman,” notes Donald Fry, president and CEO of the Greater Baltimore Committee. “He not only built a great company, but was completely dedicated to Baltimore and making it a great place to live, work, and raise a family.

“The city is fortunate that Mr. Paterakis had the foresight and willingness to take a risk and develop the challenged stretch of land that we now call Harbor East. That area is now recognized as a crown jewel for Baltimore, and has been a catalyst for jobs and economic activity. His legacy as a business and civic leader will run deep in the city’s blood for many, many decades.”

Helen Delich Bentley, 92

Helen Delich Bentley brought a combative nature and a sharp tongue to her roles as a reporter covering the port of Baltimore, chair of the Federal Maritime Commission, and Republican congresswoman who served from 1985 to 1995—attributes forged during her upbringing amid challenging circumstances in rural Nevada. That intensity and fierceness earned her both friends and enemies in high places. Throughout, she tirelessly championed the city, the state, and, especially, the port, heading the maritime commission during the Nixon and Ford administrations. Today, the port bears her name.

In 1994, she achieved a rare setback, losing the Republican gubernatorial primary to Ellen Sauerbrey. Afterward, she worked as a lobbyist for the maritime and defense industries.

“She came up when women weren’t supposed to accomplish anything,” says David Blumberg, the chair of the Maryland Parole Commission and a decades-long Bentley friend. “When they hired her at The Sun, she said, ‘I’m not doing society stuff, I’m not doing cooking things, I’m not doing helpful hints—I’m a reporter.’ So they made her their port reporter, which was the most untenable position possible for a woman. But she embraced that, because she was as tough as any longshoreman she had to cover. The thing with Helen was, yeah, she had salty language and everybody knew it, but she could communicate with that segment so effectively . . . she was able to transcend any kind of difference that she may have had with people she was writing about or representing or serving.”

David Modell, 56

Former Baltimore Ravens president, and son of Art Modell, David Modell passed away after battling lung cancer for nearly two years. Modell worked his way up the gridiron corporate ladder, starting as a grounds crew member for the Cleveland Browns when he was just 14 years old and eventually becoming president of the Ravens, a title he held from 1996 until 2004.

During his tenure, David made many monumental decisions for the organization including the hiring of former head coach Brian Billick, which led to the team’s first Super Bowl victory in 2000. “The foundation he laid led to one of the model franchises, I believe, in the NFL,” the team’s senior VP of public and community relations Kevin Byrne told BaltimoreRavens.com. “One of his keys, like his father, was he wanted the fans involved.”

In the wake of Modell’s death,The Ravens shared a story that exemplified just that: After the team had flown back from Tampa following its first Super Bowl win, they stopped right outside M&T Bank Stadium so that a crowd of fans could hold the Lombardi Trophy, which went on a tour for a year after that. “He wanted to get 100,000 fingerprints on it,” Byrne said. “He wanted the community to enjoy the trophy.”

In addition, it was Modell who was instrumental in getting the fans’ input on the team’s name and colors, as well as what amenities would be included inside M&T Bank Stadium. Modell also made sure to include a nod to Baltimore’s football past by resurrecting the “Marching Ravens” band, which played for the Baltimore Colts. “He is the godfather of the Marching Ravens,” band president John Ziemann told BaltimoreRavens.com. “I always told him he was the P.T. Barnum of the league.”

After 2004, Modell served as a consultant for the team, as well as on the board of directors of 3ality Technica, a 3D broadcast company. He lived in Baltimore with his wife, Michel, and their twins, daughter “Fee” (Aoife) and son “Bertie” (Bertram). He is also survived by daughters Breslin and Collier, and sons Arthur and David Jr., as well as his older brother John.

Modell was lauded for his accomplishments by the local media including Baltimore, which named him to our “40 Under 40” list in June 2001. “Luck clearly plays a role in getting to and winning the Super Bowl,” he told us. “But if you dream big dreams, are relentless in your pursuit of those dreams, and never give up, great things will happen. —Jess Mayhugh

HARRIS / The Baltimore Sun

W. Dale Hess, 86

Like the home run kings of baseball’s so-called steroid era, W. Dale Hess—a successful Harford County developer, businessman, and farmer who served in the General Assembly for 15 years—will forever have the equivalent of an asterisk placed beside his name, based on his conviction in federal court on charges of mail fraud and racketeering in connection with a complicated racetrack scandal that also brought down former Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel.

Elected to the House of Delegates as a Democrat in 1954, Hess ascended through the ranks as a key ally of Mandel, eventually serving as vice chair of the House’s powerful Maryland Ways and Means Committee. He also accumulated tracts of land in Harford County.

In 1970, Hess gave up his General Assembly post to become a vice president of Tidewater Insurance, a company that, five years later, became entwined in a federal corruption probe involving Mandel. Ultimately, Hess, Mandel, and four others were found guilty in 1977. (Hess served 18 months of a three-year sentence; in 1987, their convictions were overturned on what amounted to a technicality.)

Hess resumed working as a developer, owning apartment buildings, a shopping center, and a fast-food franchise. But his legacy remains tied to his participation in the racetrack scandal. In Thimbleriggers, Brad Jacobs’ perceptive 1984 book about Mandel, Hess is described as “a former Future Farmer of America who graduated to millionaire political fixer.”

Quentin Lawson, 83

Quietly, doggedly, and professionally, Quentin Lawson spent more than 40 years performing the kinds of man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit administrative tasks that advance public agendas rather than personal ones. In other words, he never created headlines. And yet his management and policy-making expertise in human services, leadership development, and, most notably, education, bettered countless lives, particularly those of African Americans.

For city schools, he oversaw teacher-training programs and an initiative to decrease dropout rates. For the National Forum for Black Public Administrators, which he co-founded, Lawson sought to increase the number of African Americans in the top ranks of government.

Courtesy of The Baltimore Sun

As executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, he wove the connective tissue among academic, nonprofit, and government institutions necessary to improve African Americans’ economic, educational, and political standing.

Finally, as head of the National Alliance of Black School Educators, he worked to enhance the educational experience for teachers, administrators, and, especially, students. Nancy Grasmick, former state superintendent of schools and now the Presidential Scholar for Innovation in Teacher and Leader Preparation at Towson University, points out that “Quentin Lawson was recognized in this state and the nation as a policy expert on education who advocated for high-quality education for African-American children before this goal was on the national agenda.”

Daniel Berrigan, 94

Handsome, urbane, and uncompromising, Daniel Berrigan came across as the undisputed rock star among the activist, renegade Catholic priests who, beginning in the 1960s, protested against the Vietnam War and nuclear arms in particular, plus racial, social, political, and economic injustice in general.

An award-winning poet and prolific author, Berrigan—along with brother Philip, also a Catholic priest, and seven others—staged a non-violent signal event in the anti-war movement: the 1968 ritual burning of draft cards at the Catonsville Selective Service draft board. Their group’s subsequent trial on charges of destroying government property galvanized activists nationwide. Found guilty, the Berrigan brothers went underground but were quickly arrested, with Daniel serving about two years in a federal prison. (Philip served two and a half years.) Daniel’s one-act play based on court transcripts, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, was made into a 1972 film produced by Gregory Peck.

Together, in 1980 the Berrigans established the no-nukes Plowshares Movement, their efforts resulting in repeated arrests, once for taking hammers to nuclear warheads at a weapons plant in 1980. Later, Daniel worked with AIDS patients and stoked the Occupy Wall Street campaign.

“His death symbolizes an ending of an era,” notes veteran local peace and justice activist Max Obuszewski. “One of my great memories is getting arrested with Dan in New York City’s Times Square as we protested Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program. Afterwards, the arrestees gathered at Dan’s apartment in Manhattan, a combination art gallery and resistance museum. Historic memorabilia covered most of the wall space.

“His wake and funeral at St. Francis Xavier church in Manhattan were memorable for the number of people who came out to honor this revolutionary. Before the funeral, hundreds of us marched in the rain from Maryhouse [where The Catholic Worker newspaper is published] in the East Village to the church. At the altar there was a banner that read, ‘Daniel Berrigan: priest, poet, prophet presente.’”

AP Photo/NFL Photos

Willie Richardson, 76

While most of his teammates turned in subpar performances in the Baltimore Colts’ shocking 16-7 loss to the underdog New York Jets in 1969’s Super Bowl III, wide receiver Willie Richardson shone, catching six passes for a total of 58 yards. That came as no surprise, considering he was coming off sensational back-to-back seasons in 1967 and 1968, during which he caught a combined 100 passes, including 16 for touchdowns, efforts that earned him two-time Pro-Bowl status.

Drafted by the Colts in 1963 out of Jackson State College (now University), Richardson—a relatively diminutive 6 feet 1 inch and 198 pounds—played seven seasons with the team, then spent one with the Miami Dolphins, before finishing his career back with the Colts. Overall, he caught 195 passes for 2,950 yards and 25 touchdowns, retiring after the 1971 season. But he stayed in town, where he owned a liquor store, helmed sports director duties at Channel 45, and served as football coach at Johns Hopkins. In 1980, he returned to his native Mississippi, working for the state government for 25 years.

“He had all the attributes of being a phenomenal, all-around athlete,” recalls Richardson’s former Colts teammate, running back Tom Matte. “He had great hands for receiving and was wonderfully coordinated. [Colts quarterback Johnny] Unitas had a a lot of confidence in him. Willie would always get out there and get open, and that’s what helped keep us going. He was one of the integral parts of our team when we had so much success, when we were very, very close-knit.”

Ted Marchibroda, 84

Moving over from his post as offensive coordinator for the Washington Redskins, Ted Marchibroda assumed head coach duties for a 1975 Baltimore Colts squad that the previous season had chalked up a woeful record of two wins, 12 losses. He quickly reversed the team’s fortunes, as the Colts went 10-4 to cop the AFC East division title, then repeated as division champs in 1976 and ’77, although they lost in the first round of the playoffs all three years. After dismal seasons in 1978 and ’79, he was fired.

An innovator, Marchibroda pioneered the hurry-up/no-huddle offense as offensive coordinator for the Buffalo Bills from 1989 to 1991, a team that made it to the Super Bowl four consecutive times (1990 to 1993).

AP Photo/Darron Cummings

Later, he revived a moribund Indianapolis Colts franchise, and, in 1996, returned to Baltimore to serve as the Ravens’ first head coach, retiring after three losing seasons.

“He was a man of vision when it came to professional football,” recalls former Colts defensive back Bruce Laird, who played under Marchibroda from 1975 to 1979. “He developed the three-wide-receivers formation before anyone was really into it. But the biggest thing about Ted was he knew how to talk to his football team and how to have them understand that winning is a process. In the NFL, just wanting to be a winner is not enough: You have to work at it, you have to believe in it—and he was able to get that across to 50-some guys year-in, year-out.

“He talked to his team every day. I thought that was very important. We had a rapport. He knew his players, their personalities, their likes and dislikes. He was a gentleman who really taught a group of young men how to win.”

Louis Grasmick, 91

Louis Grasmick batted a thousand—literally! Justly hailed for his achievements as a businessman, developer, philanthropist, and political go-to guy for Mayor William Donald Schaefer, Grasmick also holds the obscure but noteworthy distinction of briefly playing major league baseball, pitching in two games for the Philadelphia Phillies in 1948, and connecting for a hit in his lone at-bat.

More pertinently, Grasmick expanded his Pier 6-located lumber company from a small operation catering to the maritime industry into an international concern. Locally, he supplied goods to the National Aquarium, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, and the World Trade Center. Additionally, his company helped plan and develop The Anchorage condos.

A key member of Schaefer’s kitchen cabinet, Grasmick spearheaded a successful city initiative to raise money to house the homeless, and put time and energy into his role on the board of the Department of Recreation and Parks.

Ever charitable, Grasmick, along with his wife, former state schools superintendent Nancy Grasmick, gifted the Johns Hopkins Heart Institute with $2 million and, at Schaefer’s urging, convinced his long-time friend, ex-City Solicitor and Judge George L. Russell Jr., to head the commission that launched the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture.

“He was such a bright star in this community,” recalls Russell. “Beginning in the early ’70s with a drive to build the new Provident Hospital, we participated together in a lot of charitable events. There were so many things he was involved with, particularly as a top fundraiser for various projects and causes. He was just so dedicated to public service.”

Courtesy of The Baltimore Sun

Leroy “Roy” Hoffberger, 91

After securing grants and donations from businesses and foundations, plus state bond money, the American Visionary Art Museum needed one last financial infusion to ensure its 1995 opening. Unhesitatingly, AVAM co-founder Roy Hoffberger—attorney, businessman, philanthropist, and art collector—reached into his own pocket to auction off a clutch of his cherished German Expressionist works on paper.

Hoffberger personified menschdom, walking the walk and talking the talk, a philosophy encapsulated in the subtitle of his 2014 memoir Measure of a Life: What we leave behind is far more important than how far we get ahead.

His family’s foundation, which he chaired, has benefited numerous local medical, academic, and religious programs, and he gave privately, too.

“Roy had so much impact on the arts in Baltimore in so many directions,” says former BMA director Doreen Bolger. “It’s actually hard for me to think of anyone else who approaches his stature. He was a co-founder of AVAM. He was chairman of the board and a major donor to MICA, arguably the nation’s leading art school—the graduate program in painting bears his name. He formed an amazing collection of rare German Expressionist works, a significant number of which have been given to the BMA. Any one of these legacies would qualify him for everlasting gratitude. But all three? Wow!”

Thomas Ward, 89

In 2007, a Bolton Hill burglar found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Retired judge and former Baltimore City Council member Tom Ward, 80 at the time and out for a walk in his neighborhood, heard cries for help and leaped into action, tackling the suspect (6 feet tall!) and holding him until police arrived.

An attorney, Korean War veteran, and long-tenured member of the Mount Royal Democratic Club, Ward loved the city, working hard to protect its historic fabric. In 1967, he alone among council members voted against the proposed East-West Expressway, which would have wiped out vast swathes of several neighborhoods, particularly Fells Point. Ward also co-founded the Society for the Preservation of Federal Hill and Fells Point.

Jed Kirschbaum / The Baltimore Sun

He was elected to the Baltimore Circuit Court in 1982, retiring in 1997, and, in 2014, was appointed chairman of the Baltimore City Liquor Board.

“One of the best friends that I ever had, who was originally a political enemy,” says city councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke. “We went to war every time there was an election. But I’ll never forget the most wonderful thing happened: At one time, finally, I was invited to the Mount Royal Christmas party at Maryland Institute, and Tom Ward was there to welcome me. And it was like a coming-out party for me, like I had really made it. He was a skinny Irish guy with all the power they bring to every challenge. And he just never quit. He was honest, he was insistently ethical, and he was wonderfully loved—and feared.”

Allan Prell, 79

An unusual combination of creative showman and meticulous newsman, WBAL Radio talk show host Allan Prell entertained listeners with novel antics, and, not incidentally, brought a left-of-center point of view to a station dominated by conservative on-air commentators. For example, there was the time Prell presided over a passel of taffy makers while broadcasting from WBAL’s penthouse. And the time listeners ear-witnessed the predictable chaos that ensued when he brewed root beer amid the comings and goings of colleagues in the station’s elevator. Not forgetting his weekly Craigslist-like “Honest Al’s Yard Sale,” whereby he hawked sundry items—some in worse-for-wear condition—offered up by his audience.

More seriously, Prell, an unvarnished liberal, sat down for a weekly informed exchange with staunchly conservative WBAL talk show host Ron Smith in a segment called “The Friday Tiff,” during which they would discuss —sometimes contentiously—current political affairs. Prell held court at the station from 1982 to 1999, when, after tensions apparently rose between him and WBAL management, he decamped to a post at a Seattle radio station, and, later, one in the Washington, D.C. area.

“He was the last moderate voice that ‘BAL had, the last holdout before they went to strictly conservative voices,” recalls Michael Olesker, former long-time columnist for The Baltimore Sun and commentator on both local TV and radio (where he worked with Prell), who now does radio broadcasts for the national Talk Media News and writes columns and blog posts for JMORE. “And he was one of those rare birds from talk radio who actually left the studio to do some real reporting—went out and did some of his own legwork—whereas most radio talk show guys sit in the sanctity of the studio and pretend to see the whole world.”

Jody Albright, 82

Tireless, implacable promoter and enabler of arts and culture left an indelible imprint both citywide and statewide by helping to create Artscape, launch the original Children’s museum at the Cloisters, found the Baltimore Book Festival, establish School #33 Art Center, and set up BMA tours for city students via the Art to the Schools program.

Nathan Barksdale, 54

Convicted drug kingpin claimed to be the model for drug warlord Avon Barksdale on the HBO series The Wire. (Show creator David Simon said this was partly true.) Sentenced to 15 years, the real-life Barksdale participated in the anti-violence Safe Streets program upon his release, but was re-arrested in 2014 on drug charges and died in prison.

Andre Brewster, 90

Piper & Marbury law firm managing partner represented numerous eminent local companies while shepherding the firm’s considerable expansion. Additionally, he protected key tracts as co-founder/board member of Baltimore County’s Land Preservation Trust, and, as board chairman, guided Johns Hopkins Hospital through crucial growth.

Reginald “Reggie Reg” Calhoun, 50

Personable DJ initially made his rep on the city’s club music scene, before becoming a dominant on-air force in the mid-90s with 92Q (WERQ-FM), where he recognized the talent of emerging rapper Jay Z before he broke big nationally.

Johnny Dark, 82

Highly rated Top 40 radio DJ at WCAO-AM when the station ruled the local airwaves during the 1960s. Holds the distinction of emceeing The Beatles’ 1964 concert at the Civic Center, the only time the group appeared in Baltimore.

Edith “Edie” Dasher, 71

Co-founder (with husband Jim) of Worthington Valley nonprofit Garden Harvest farm, a donater of organically grown/raised fruits and vegetables, eggs, and meats to local soup kitchens and homeless shelters, while also offering on-site instruction in sustainable farming methods.

Chris Delaporte, 75

Far-sighted director of Baltimore’s Department of Recreation and Parks oversaw transition of municipal golf courses and the city zoo into nonprofits, brainstormed the Patapsco River’s Middle Branch’s rowing club, and brought Outward Bound to Leakin Park; later helped plan Oriole Park at Camden Yards as chief of the Maryland Stadium Authority.

Julie Drake, 64

Assistant state’s attorney prosecuted the city’s most notorious child abusers, among them a mother, under the spell of a religious cult, who starved her 1-year-old son to death. As head of the State’s Attorney’s Office’s family violence division, she closed loopholes in the law in order to help prevent child abuse.

Dr. Lawrence Egbert, 88

Physician and anesthesiologist who, as medical director of the national assisted suicide organization Final Exit Network, unapologetically advocated for “death with dignity,” purportedly helping arrange the deaths of approximately 300 people, prompting the state Board of Physicians to revoke his medical license.

D.A. Henderson, 87

Spearheaded the World Health Organization’s successful initiative to eradicate smallpox in the 1960s and 1970s, before becoming dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose facilities and enrollment he greatly expanded. Also advised the White House and Department of Health and Human Services on bioterrorism.

Joye Marino, 77

Doyenne of Baltimore hairstylists and colorists ran her Roland Park salon as a cozy coffee klatch, catering to local ladies and celebs alike, with a clientele that included Sen. Barbara Mikulski, actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, and stripper Blaze Starr, whose flaming red hair hue she concocted.

Carolyn Manuszak, 82

Assumed presidency of tiny women-only Villa Julie College in 1964, and, over 35 years, transformed it into a co-educational institution with 10 times as many students, a significantly larger campus, and the school’s first four-year degree and master’s programs, paving the way for its rebranding as Stevenson University nine years after her 1999 retirement.

Tom Marr, 73

Memorable radio personality who started as a news reporter with WFBR-AM, ultimately becoming the station’s news director and member of its Orioles broadcast team for nearly a decade. Best remembered, however, for his subsequent role as a perceptive, informed conservative talk show host at WCBM-AM.

Harry Meyerhoff, 86

Real estate developer and thoroughbred- racing enthusiast hit the jackpot as principal owner (with then-wife, Teresa, and son, Tom) of Spectacular Bid, who won the 1979 Kentucky Derby and Preakness before coming up short as a Triple Crown winner by finishing third in the Belmont Stakes. The colt returned to dominate the sport in 1980, copping Horse of the Year honors.

Lou Michaels, 80

Versatile 13-year NFL left-footed placekicker/defensive end spent six solid seasons (1964-1969) with powerhouse Baltimore Colts teams, connecting on 107 field goals and scoring 586 overall points, but missed two key field goal attempts in the Colts’ deflating 16-7 loss to the upstart New York Jets in 1969’s Super Bowl III.

Sidney Mintz, 93

The Johns Hopkins University anthropology professor (he co-founded the department) meticulously probed how food wrought enormous influence on international political, economic, cultural, and social institutions, writing about the phenomenon in several books, most unforgettably 1985’s Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History.

Susan Souders Obrecht, 61

Fashionable, formidable, and energetic publishing exec overhauled a sleepy Baltimore County community newspaper chain whose properties included the Towson Times, building it into a more dynamic operation. Later, she owned and operated regional lifestyle magazine Mid-Atlantic Country, before acquiring Baltimore magazine for two years, 1992 to 1994.

Milt Pappas, 76

Right-handed starter won 110 games (and appeared in two All-Star games) for the Orioles between 1957 and 1965, before being traded to the Cincinnati Reds for outfielder
(and 1961 National League MVP) Frank Robinson.

Royal Parker Pollokoff, 86

Ubiquitous Channel 11 presence from the 1960s to the 1990s played the kid-friendly part of P.W. Doodle, rode herd on countless children contestants on bowling program Pinbusters, and, perhaps most famously, shouted, “Hey, you kids, get off that furniture!” in a voice-over for a long-running slipcover commercial.

Gene Raynor, 80

Parsed the complexities of city politics for public and press alike as director of the Baltimore City Board of Elections under Mayor William Donald Schaefer. He performed the same task statewide when Schaefer become governor, while also dabbling as a restaurateur at the Waterfront Hotel and Dalesio’s.

Carl Schoettler, 83

Baltimore Sun news feature writer infused his prose with style, insight, and attention to detail and texture, whether profiling high-visibility figures or covering major news events such as the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Lor Scoota, 23

Promising rapper (born Tyriece Watson) on the cusp of attaining national recognition with rhymes that deftly captured the gritty reality of Baltimore’s streets was murdered while driving shortly after hosting a charity basketball event that also served as an anti-violence rally at Morgan State University. The crime remains unsolved.

William Steinmetz, 89

Designer and artist who, along with his wife, Betty Cooke, established The Store Ltd. in The Village of Cross Keys in 1965, selling thoughtfully selected home goods and clothing, plus elegant jewelry designed and made by Cooke. The MICA alum also served the college as a trustee and devoted benefactor.

Robert Timberg, 76

Naval Academy grad who suffered life-altering wounds as a Marine in Vietnam, then became an esteemed political reporter with The Evening Sun and The Baltimore Sun. In 1995, he authored the well-received book The Nightingale’s Song, which recounted the Vietnam War experiences of fellow Middies, including Sen. John McCain.

The “freshman class” of lawmakers currently convening in Annapolis for their first full week in this year’s General Assembly, includes more women (31) than men (29) for the first time in history.

Those surging numbers of newly elected female representatives mean a record 72 women will serve in the 188-member state legislature this session. Specifically, 11 of those rookie legislators are alumnae of Emerge Maryland, an increasingly successful nonprofit that identifies and trains Democratic women seeking political office.

Since its founding in 2012 and the launch of its first class in 2013, Emerge Maryland has trained 103 women to run for public office. So far, more than 70 percent of those who have participated in the 75-hour, four-to-six-month program have run for elected office—with more than 60 percent winning their various races. Officeholders include not just state representatives, but county and city council, school board, and Democratic state committee members.

“In 2011, there was a confluence of events that got us started,” says Diane Fink, executive director of Emerge Maryland, who previously worked as legislative staff in the General Assembly and served two terms on the Frederick County Democratic State Central Committee. “But the short story is co-founder Martha McKenna, myself, and Barbara Mikulski got together and realized something had to be done about the number of women in Annapolis, which was declining at the time. Women candidates were having to leave the state for one-hour and half-day workshops. And they were not being recruited, but discouraged, from running.”

With key support from Mikulski, the nonprofit got off the ground under the umbrella of Emerge America, which now has affiliated chapters in 25 states.

Baltimore City elected leaders with Emerge Maryland training include City Council member Shannon Sneed, who won in 2016; state Del. Brooke Lierman, who was in Emerge Maryland’s inaugural class and won office in 2014; and state Del. Robbyn Lewis and state Del. Stephanie Smith, both of whom won election for the first time this past November.

Overall, 19 of 25 Emerge Maryland alumnae won in November, including the first black women and the first Chinese immigrant elected to the General Assembly from Montgomery County, as well as the first woman ever elected as State’s Attorney in Anne Arundel County.

Thirty-year-old Sarah Elfreth from Anne Arundel County became the youngest woman elected to the State Senate this fall. A pair of Emerge Maryland alumnae also flipped seats from male to female in the Anne Arundel County Council this fall and that seven-member body is now 5-2 majority female. Emerge Maryland alumna Shaneka Henson was previously elected to the Annapolis City Council in 2017.

The overall impact: Anne Arundel County is decidedly more female and a little bluer.

“We are now electing people who have not had a seat at the table and have not had their voices heard in the past,” says Fink. “The issues they raise, about childcare, increasing the minimum wage, domestic violence, for example, are not heard, not in the same way, when women bring their voices to the table. Fifty-two percent of the population is female and our representation should reflect that.”

With a growing track record and budding network, Emerge Maryland announced a cohort of 20 women in its class of 2019, including five women from Baltimore City who successfully navigated the competitive application process.

“Women across Maryland are now looking to the women who have come before them and realizing they too have what it takes to run and serve in elected office,” says Fink. “They are smart, energized, and ready to run.”

The new legislators in Maryland are part of a rising national tide of women who have been inspired to run for office by a desire to improve their communities, but also by the last presidential election.

During the previous election cycle in 2016, 920 potential female candidates contacted Emily’s List, a group that backs Democratic women who support abortion rights, spokeswoman Lindsay Crete told The Washington Post. Two years later, in large part as a reaction to the election of President Trump, that figure rose more than 40-fold, to 42,000, according to Crete.

Emerge Maryland’s 20 new class members are: Shruti Bhatnagar, Laurie Brittingham, Katina Burley, Rose Greene Colby, Tamira Dunn, Remi Duyile, Cornett Fenn, Cynthia Cotte Griffiths, Natasha Guynes, Ebony Johnson, Kimberlee Lena Kennedy, Stacy Korbelak, Mikkyo McDaniel, Yvette Monroe, Andreana Overton, Odette Ramos, Tori Rose, Shirley Schreffler, Ainy Haider-Shah, and Sarah Wolek.

Don’t be surprised if you hear those names again.

Paul Jay thinks we are far past the time for journalistic niceties. The CEO and senior editor of the Baltimore-based nonprofit journalism outlet The Real News Network (TRNN) minces no words as he speaks from his spacious downtown office. “How broad do you want to be on the truth?” he asks. “Do you want to narrow the truth, so it’s so limited and you don’t tell people the big picture and what the threats are?”

He’s talking about an innovative style of news-making that seeks to bypass corporate journalism and advertisers, making media that is more accessible to broad populations. And his offices look like the kind of place where innovative work is being done. The renovated warehouse space is all exposed brick and steel beams. Some staff members work out in the open, at several long, wooden tables. Others have glass-walled offices. Windows let in plenty of natural light, as well as views from the bustling city below (TRNN is within walking distance from City Hall).

The space includes three studios for creating videos, one of which is also equipped for podcasting. Modern soul food restaurant Ida B’s Table is on the first floor, and there are work spaces available for rent. Outside is a marquee that posts weekly messages about the latest in local news—sometimes bitingly direct, and sometimes tongue-in-cheek.

“Pugh wants ethics exemption. LOL,” read the marquee in May when Mayor Catherine Pugh requested a sweeping exemption from city ethics rules. One day in September there were seven murders in 24 hours, and the block-letter text simply read: “7 murders in 24 hours. What’s next for Baltimore?”

Jay says he likes to cut through the noise. On the day of our interview, for example, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just issued a calamitous new report, which makes the case that the world had just 12 years to stave off the most detrimental effects of climate change.

“Either you believe in science, or you don’t,” Jay says. “I’m not a climate scientist, but the leading climate scientists are saying this. So why don’t we say that? What’s wrong is most of what’s calling itself journalism isn’t journalism. It’s either the narrowest reporting without any real historical social, economic, context. Or it’s like what’s going on with CNN, MSNBC, or FOX, in which they just chase ratings. They don’t give a damn about the actual truth of the situation.”

“If we are going to do local news in Baltimore, we’d better look like Baltimore.”

Founded in Toronto in 2003, The Real News expanded and made Baltimore the headquarters 10 years later. The company employs more than 30 people, who work as editors, camera operators, managers, journalists, and office managers. TRNN is a nonprofit—they don’t accept advertising and are supported by donations, and by the organization’s separate, for-profit business entities.

“There would be no problem if we had a budget even a fraction of The Baltimore Sun,” Jay says. “Our whole budget is around $3.3 million.”

They have large and small donors, and they also have a for-profit segment that helps keep the lights on, too. TRNN purchased their building using donated funds ,and they rent out space. TRNN is also the primary investor in Ida B’s Table, so they get funding from that, although vice president of finance and operations Leandro Lagera is quick to point out that the primary goal of Ida B’s is not to make money, but to foster community.

Jay says that he and his team knew they wanted to expand operations beyond Canada and into the United States as early as 2008. In 2009, they opened a small office in Washington, D.C., a few blocks from the White House. Then they decided that D.C. wasn’t the place for them.

“After a couple of years, we really started to understand that if we want to speak to ordinary working people, we needed to be in a city and learn how to do local news,” Jay says. “For most people, news and politics are local.”

He and his team settled in Charm City, partly because they’d gotten to know about it through their time in D.C. They also elicited the help of veteran journalist Marc Steiner, who, after leaving Morgan State University’s WEAA-FM radio station, produces his eponymous show through TRNN.

After that came the work of creating a newsroom that looked like the city.

“We made a determination when we came here that if we’re going to do local news in Baltimore, we’d better look like Baltimore,” he says.

One of TRNN’s more recent hires is education expert and attorney Khalilah Harris, as host and executive producer. A black woman from Brooklyn, New York, who has lived in Baltimore since she came to attend Morgan State University 24 years ago, Harris has worked for social justice around education for several decades, but never in front of the camera as a television host. Among other things, she served as deputy director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans under the Obama administration.

Harris says she is there to not only bring her knowledge of policy, law, and education to the table, but also her perspective as a black woman.

“How do we serve as good stewards of helping people find solutions for themselves or bring to the surface the solutions that already exist locally in Baltimore?” she says. “Baltimore is really a microcosm of all national issues and also in a location that could prove to provide solutions to those things.”

Jay oversees the management of the outlet with the help of his wife, Sharmini Peries, a journalist and former economic and trade adviser to ex-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and author and former Black Panther Eddie Conway.

The newsroom is considered far left by mainstream standards, and its goal, in essence, is to skirt the extraneous elements that come with traditional journalism (no ratings to chase, no advertisers to satisfy), and reach out directly to the people—specifically Baltimore’s black working class. TRNN does this with stories that can be read on their website, streamed on YouTube, or watched on television through Baltimore’s public access channel and Comcast On-Demand.

“We want to become the mainstream media for Baltimore,” Jay told a City Paper reporter in a 2014 story about the network’s beginnings.

Now, after a 40-year run, City Paper is gone, and nationally, many other outlets have shuttered as well. There is no other large-scale alternative outlet to serve the city. Suddenly, TRNN is poised to play an even bigger role in the city’s journalistic ecosystem.

The fact is that Baltimore is a decidedly black, working-class city (according to the 2010 Census, 63 percent of the city’s population of over 610,000 is black), but most of the people telling the city’s stories are white. TRNN’s reporters and producing team, however, skews far browner, mostly Baltimore born and bred, and much more working class in terms of their background and world view.

TRNN offers updates on national and international news (you can find news from Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean among the network’s offerings), but Baltimore takes center stage. You’ll find news related to the city in its own highlighted yellow section on TRNN’s website. Reporters have covered topics such as labor issues at Johns Hopkins and the toll climate change takes on poor communities and have interviewed local third-party politicians. In their series “Hidden Victims,” reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis tackle the ways that black women in Baltimore can be victims of police violence.

Jay says that he’d like to see the network bring more black women aboard.

“I’m more experienced, but I’m white, and it’s harder for me to be heard in this city,” Jay says. “It’s black working women who will decide the fate of this city, and so we need to be better at finding women, black women, who can do this kind of journalism.”

“There are not as many reporters holding politicians, institutions, and the powerful accountable.”

In 2014, shortly after being released from prison—he served more than 40 years stemming from the 1970 murder of a Baltimore City Police officer—Conway came to The Real News.

Conway, who has always maintained his innocence, was already an established name in the activist and prison abolitionist community and was working in Baltimore’s Gilmor Homes. He said people he knew kept coming to him and telling him the journalists at TRNN wanted to interview him. Finally, he acquiesced. TRNN had a number of black activist groups as tenants, and Conway liked that. He also liked the idea of widening the number of people who could learn about the causes he cared about.

“I said, ‘Look, I like what y’all are doing because even though I’m down there and I’m reaching 100, 200 people—what you’re doing is you’re reaching potentially millions of people,’” he says.

Conway, who was trained in journalism by famed writer and columnist Tom Wicker while he was in prison, reports and also produces a show called Rattling the Bars, about issues around life in and out of prison. But working at TRNN is a little different for him. Conway admits that he brings a very distinct point of view—and even an activist’s sensibility—to his journalism, but he thinks there’s room for that.

“There is no such thing as objective reporting,” he says. “Everything you do comes from your paradigm. And if your paradigm is one of conscience-raising and activism, then your journalism will reflect that.”

However, he says he does not cover or have anything to do with stories TRNN produces about any activist causes he is directly involved in.

Reporter and show host Eze Jackson is another TRNN hire who comes from an activist background. After serving in the Navy, Jackson found work at Service Employees International Union, where he stayed for 10 years. He was also president of Marylanders for Marriage Equality in 2012, just before Maryland legally recognized same-sex unions.

Like Conway, he has learned to walk the line between his personal convictions and his journalistic integrity. He’s learned on the job from veteran reporters like Stephen Janis and former TRNN editorial director and City Paper editor Baynard Woods.

“I just decided to try it,” Jackson says of reporting. “I kind of naturally grabbed onto it because I was like, ‘Oh, this is not very different from making music, making songs, or creating a music video.’”

While some of this is old hat for TRNN, more journalists are looking to the nonprofit model to investigate and report meaningful stories.

“As traditional legacy news organizations in many places get smaller, these nonprofit news organizations are filling a void and doing important work for democracy,” says former Sun associate managing editor and current University of Maryland visiting scholar Marty Kaiser.

Kaiser sits on the board of the nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism and has helped lead other nonprofit outlets around the country. “There are not as many reporters holding institutions, politicians, and the powerful accountable,” he says. “That’s where many of these nonprofit news organizations can make a difference.”

If it sounds like a daunting responsibility, it is. TRNN journalists wear many hats to get stories covered.

“We all have general beats but we’re a small team, so we tend to focus on multiple things,” says managing editor of the Baltimore Bureau Dharna Noor. She says it’s basically like having multiple plates spinning at one time. “I cover climate stuff and environmental racism, but sometimes I also report on labor because we don’t have a labor reporter.”

Noor also writes her own scripts, helps write and edit other people’s scripts, and helps out at various TRNN events.

“Our difficulty is money more than anything,” Jay says. But he thinks that as TRNN continues to hone its mission, those donations will come. “Part of it is we have to be better storytellers. We have to be better at taking specific things that happen, report on them, but then give them this kind of context, this kind of analysis, this kind of meat on the bones.”

Anyone with siblings knows that besting a brother or sister in sports or winning your parents praise is like a nagging intuition that only grows with age. Thiru and Krishanti Vignarajah are living proof that sibling rivalries never die. One is running for Baltimore state’s attorney and the other is vying to unseat Gov. Larry Hogan. As the children of two immigrant Baltimore City Public School teachers, Thiru and Krishanti are the epitome of the American dream.

After their parents fled civil unrest in Sri Lanka, they sought refuge in the Edmondson Heights neighborhood in Baltimore City. Thiru went on to pursue law at Harvard—becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review “before Barack Obama made it cool.” And his younger sister, Krishanti, studied political science and molecular cellular and developmental biology at Yale, eventually becoming the policy director for Michelle Obama at the White House. Although wildly successful, the pair says that there was never any pressure from their parents to go to college and do well.

“If you ask my father, he would tell you, they didn’t really know of the Ivy League, and they always kind of encouraged us to realize our potential,” Krishanti said. “But it was never sort of pressure. It was never, ‘You will go to a top notch academic institution.’ I think there was an expectation that we would make something of ourselves and find some way to give back.” 

Neither Krishanti nor Thiru had ever thought about running for public office. For Thiru, it was the Uprising in 2015 following the death of Freddie Gray that piqued his interest in politics. As a former Maryland deputy attorney general, he witnessed firsthand how the increased violence and homicide rates in Baltimore were tearing communities apart.

“It was just gut wrenching and heart breaking,” Thiru said. “I suddenly realized that it was not going to get better unless we had real leadership in the role of the state’s attorney. I just couldn’t sit back and watch anymore.”

For Krishanti, she was asked to run following a keynote address at the Western Maryland Democratic Summit in April 2017 (and was eight months pregnant at the time). A political consultant approached her and said, “You’re not going to like me in five minutes. You’re going to hate me in five months,” and showed Krishanti a crumpled piece of paper with names on it.

“She says, ‘None of these candidates could beat governor Hogan. Fortunately, I’ve just found my candidate. I just need to wait until she delivers her baby,’” she recalls. “It kind of gave me pause. Part of that pause was that, coming out of the Obama administration, and having so many of the accomplishments we worked so hard to achieve either already reversed or threatened to be reversed, made me believe that we needed to be part of the resistance and opposition. Part of it was I was nearly nine months pregnant.”

Now, nearly six weeks away from the primaries, the brother and sister are ready to acknowledge their familial ties within the race. After keeping their relationship out of the race in an effort to “keep the focus on the issues at hand,” Thiru freely prattled on about his admiration for his little sister and all of her accomplishments.

“She’s extraordinary and we have a sibling rivalry like everybody else but there’s no one I would trust more with the biggest responsibilities on the Earth,” he said. “She is as humble as she is brilliant, she is as hardworking as she is charming.”

Neither sibling can ignore the elephant in the room—if they both win their respective seats, will there be a conflict of interest? Baltimore is known for its history of political families—Mitchells, Cardins, Mosbys—but aside from having a longer name, Thiru believes that they are the same as other families that have served. 

“If a brother and sister didn’t disagree, nobody would believe it,” he joked. “There will be issues and subjects in which we may disagree, and we’ll talk about it and we’ll move forward. In some respects, that’s what I would say about a person in government that wasn’t family.”

When the fancy titles are stripped away, and politics are out of the picture, Thiru and Krishanti are just Woodlawn High graduates who enjoy being on the water or taking in a game at Camden Yards. At the end of the day, they are just a brother and sister, who are hoping for the best outcomes for each other in the June 26 primary.

“I’m inspired and proud of what Krish is doing,” Thiru said. “There is a moment that is seizing the country and I think both of us feel this calling. It’s rooted in our unique experiences, we have walked our distinctive paths, but if not now, when? If not here, where? If not us, who?”

Today former FBI director James Comey told the the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believes he was fired by President Donald Trump because of concerns with the Russia investigation. Due to this mistrust, Comey testified, he documented their private conversations, appointed a special counsel to probe the administration, and accused White House officials of telling “lies, plan and simple.”

In numerous, seemingly uncomfortable, conversations with President Trump, Comey said he was asked for his “loyalty” and to abandon the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 

Several Maryland representatives had varying reactions to the bombshell testimony, including U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who called the details “disturbing.” 

“There is no reason to doubt the integrity of Mr. Comey’s recollection of how Mr. Trump repeatedly used the weight of the presidency to ask a law enforcement official to drop an investigation,” Cardin said in a statement. “Such inappropriate actions cannot be simply written off to a learning curve.”

Cardin said it should further encourage his colleagues to cosponsor his legislation to create an independent, 9/11-style commission to investigate Russia’s actions during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Other local representatives had a different takeaway from Comey’s testimony today.

“I am disturbed by Mr. Comey’s statement that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to refer to the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email servers as a ‘matter’ instead of an ‘investigation,'” Rep. Andy Harris said in a statement. “If true, this would in fact demonstrate a clear bias by Ms. Lynch and an attempt to influence public perception of Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.”

The testimony was also of special interest to Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, which is running an investigation into possible Russian collusion. Today, he announced that Rep. Trey Gowdy, of South Carolina, was chosen by the Republican Steering Committee as the new Committee Chairman, subject to final approval.

“I offer my sincerest congratulations to Rep. Gowdy on his new role as Chairman of the Oversight Committee,” Cummings said in a statement. “I look forward to working with him in a constructive and bipartisan manner on an agenda that serves the interests of the American people.”

 Cardin concluded his statement with another note of bipartisanship, urging both sides of the aisle to investigate Russia’s interference with the American political system.

“It is time for Republican leadership in Congress to acknowledge publicly how dangerous the president’s actions and rhetoric have been to American rule of law—the very foundation of our nation,” he said. “We need an independent commission to get to the heart of Russia’s interference in our country and to make public its findings and recommendations for how we can avoid this kind of nightmare in the future.”

Shortly after the Comey hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen went down to the Senate floor to urge Congress to pass sanctions on Russia. 

“Right now the world is looking at the United States and asking why we haven’t imposed tougher sanctions on Russia for its unprecedented and multifaceted campaign to undermine our elections,” he said. “There is no excuse for inaction. The United States must show Putin that we will not stand idly by while he attacks our democracy. We need to be unified in our resolve and put patriotism over partisanship.”

Gwendy’s Button Box

By Stephen King and Richard Chizmar (Cemetery Dance Publications)

Co-authoring a book can be a risky endeavor, particularly when your writing partner is acclaimed, best-selling author Stephen King. There’s a natural fear that his voice could take over the prose and dominate. But that’s not the case with this new novella, which the master of horror co-wrote with Baltimore author Richard Chizmar, who also owns and operates the Harford County press that published Gwendy’s Button Box. Though there are hints of King classics—it’s no carbon copy of “Stand By Me” or IT. This creation is an ideal read for summer—the pacing is so good that readers will breeze through the pages. And perhaps the greatest strength of Gwendy’s Button Box, like much of King’s work, is its versatility, as it’s a suitable read for both young adults and those who are young at heart. Plus, it’s nice to know that King plays well with others.

See our full interview with writer Richard Chizmar.

At Mama’s Knee

By April Ryan (Rowman & Littlefield)

With all the national news coming from the Oval Office lately, you’ve likely heard of April Ryan. She’s the veteran journalist who has covered the White House for 20 years for the American Urban Radio Networks and who remained staunchly professional amid attacks from President Donald Trump’s supporters and his staff. You might not know that she is a Baltimore native and an alumna of Morgan State University. Ryan still lives in the area with her two daughters, and it is this part of her life that she explores in her second book. Through her own experiences—and those of other mothers like former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s mother—she chronicles what it is like to have to explain race and race relations in America to your children. It is an enlightening, engrossing read, and Ryan’s commentary is vital to understanding the problems we face as Americans if we can ever expect to end our divisiveness. As Chris Matthews, host of TV’s Hardball, writes in the book’s foreword, “The stranger this world is to us, the more important it is for us to learn it.” 

See our full interview with journalist April Ryan. 

You’ve been at the epicenter of all the political news in Washington since President Donald Trump’s election. What has that been like for you?
It’s a lot. The uptick is extreme, and we’ve never had an uptick like this before. I’ve been in the middle of watching politics for 20 years in Washington, but this is definitely different. We’re bombarded with everything now. Typically, during the course of the day, there would be two to three stories that would circulate, but now it’s everywhere, everything, all day, all night, and on weekends. And Twitter is now more relevant than ever before. I was talking to a friend who actually has an audio alert for when the president posts something. As I’m talking to you, that reminds me that I need to do that.

As someone who’s covering the news, what do you make of this change?
The way we used to cover news is no more. I grew up in the era of Walter Cronkite where you didn’t know the journalists’ political persuasions. You trusted them. There was no social media; we didn’t have to think about Twitter, or the internet. I remember in college they told us, “Be ready for the information superhighway,” and now it’s here. They should have told us not just to be ready, but beware.

It’s extreme, and there’s a hunger now for immediacy, be it news, or responses from people. And that has caused the news cycle—the news machine—to go into overdrive. This is the first time in history where a newsmaker, a high-profile person, can talk directly to their constituency, their fan base, without going through the filter of the media. We used to be the ones who would ask the questions that we heard from the groundswell of Capitol Hill. And now, you don’t have to read the story because you can watch it happening.

Trump seems to have taken it to another level. You could argue that Barack Obama had access to the same type of technology.
But the issue is we didn’t see him tweeting everything. He didn’t watch a TV show and tweet about it, or tweet something that would throw firebombs everywhere and people were scrambling to determine if it was real, if it happened, what does it mean. He wasn’t a president who would be his own press secretary. Now, you have the day’s activities set, then all Trump has to do is send out a tweet and the whole day has changed. And these are big news pieces, so then the question becomes, what do you as a journalist focus on? It’s tough.

It also seems like there has to be scrutiny of what the White House is saying.
This president doesn’t believe in being politically correct. He goes from the gut, and what he thinks comes out. And this is what some people love about him—the realness of him. He is one of the people, but there’s a flip side, too, because your words can change markets. It can cause anxiety from other world leaders. Words mean something.

You’ve been in the news yourself lately, whether that was when Trump asked you to set up a meeting with black lawmakers, or reality TV star Omarosa Manigault claimed you were being paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Obviously that’s not something that normally happens with journalists covering the White House. What has that been like for you?
[Laughs] It’s been rough. I choose not to talk about the particular situation that happened between me and Omarosa, but what I will tell you is there were plenty of people who saw it. Yes, we had been friends for 20 years. Yes, during the summer she had asked me to be in her wedding, but yes, also in October, she started sending me these crazy emails saying things that were not true. It’s about my career, my journalistic integrity, that I’ve built for 20 years. And I’m not going to lose that for someone who comes back to Washington who’s trying to smear the media. This is all part of a campaign, but for a friend to do this to a friend? That’s a problem. You don’t want them asking questions? You don’t want them being a part of the White House press corps? The press is a part of the framework of this country. We were built into the Constitution by our founding fathers. It makes no sense to me.

Nationally, it seems like respect for journalism is on the rise, with readership at The New York Times and The Washington Post increasing. Still, it must be difficult to continue working with what appears to be an increasingly hostile White House.
I do the job that I’ve been doing. I talk to my sources and newsmakers, people from other presidential administrations, Democrats and Republicans. It’s the same job, we’re just under attack. Why? I’m still trying to figure that one out. There’s anxiety, but you know what, I still have a job to do. My company is 1,000 percent behind me, flatfooted. It means a lot to have that support.

I wanted to talk about your book, At Mama’s Knee, which looks at race relations through the lessons that mothers teach their children. How did it come to be?
Since I was a kid, there was something in my spirit about writing a book, but that didn’t come back into my mind until I started working at the White House. A friend of mine who really inspires me and he’s been a mentor to me—his name is Norman Hall and he works at The Associated Press—said to me once, “You cannot sit next to the seat of power and not write a book. You see things and experience things other people will never experience.” And he was right. So I started writing my first book, The Presidency in Black and White, and it took about 17 years to write.

History hit me hard personally, not just at the White House, because I had to talk to my children about race. They attend a predominantly white, wealthy school where people don’t normally have to talk about it. But that school, along with other schools in the area, closed early because of what happened after the funeral of Freddie Gray in 2015, and I had to talk to them. I can’t just talk to presidents of the United States or newsmakers and leaders around the world about issues of race. I would be remiss if I had not talked to my children and told them why they were being dismissed from school early and why this was happening. It really started one day when I was at work and my baby daughter called me and said, ‘Mommy, is it true that a kid got killed because he was playing with a gun?’ And the reason she called was because my aunt told her to bring her toy Nerf gun in the house because she did not want it to be misconstrued as a real gun because of what happened [to Tamir Rice in Cleveland in 2014.] My 6-year-old’s mind did not understand the dynamics, and I had to explain to her that this was very real. She was nervous, she was scared, and she didn’t believe me. I had to show her the video, walk it through with her. But I also had to tell her that at the end of the day, there was hope.

The day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, I was watching what happened in the White House. I was screaming, ‘That’s Mondawmin Mall, that’s Monroe Street!’ These were the haunts I used to go to as a kid—I remember going to piano practice on Tioga Parkway, next to Mondawmin Mall. This is my town. My family kept telling me, ‘Get home, get home, get the girls.’ So I drove home, with tears in my eyes. I was so scared that night. The next day, I decided not to go to work, and sure enough, school was let out early again. So we drove up the street to the local grocery store and I tried to keep it light, set a tone that we were going to be ok. Then I saw this Confederate flag on the back of a pick-up truck, brandishing around in the wind as the truck was driving around this maze of a parking lot. I looked out the window at these other women who were by the store, and I said, ‘Is that what I think it is?’ My oldest daughter did not know what it was, so I had to tell her, and she started to cry. I tried to get a picture of this person and the license plate and I called the police. By waving that flag, they were adding fuel to a fire. I believe in freedom of expression, but this was not the time. Wisdom was needed. And I was very fearful that something could erupt. I still have pictures of it in my phone.

How have things changed for you and your family since Freddie Gray’s death?
My kids are more aware now. I love the way my oldest approaches it. She has friends from every walk of life, but when there are questions from other communities, she breaks it down in a non-threatening but informative way, as a 14-year-old. I’ve had teachers from her school call me and tell me how they’re so happy at how she is able to talk to kids from other communities who don’t understand. It makes me feel great that my kids understand that we live in the world that we live in, but that there’s still hope. They have Jewish friends, Asian friends, white friends, black friends. And I love the fact that they are able to come together and say, ‘Hey we’re different but we celebrate each other.’ That’s the world that I hope for. That’s the United States that I’m desperately hoping for.

Did you ever consider leaving Baltimore, especially since your work is in D.C.?
I did. But my family and my friends are here. Baltimore’s a real town. I love Baltimore. I’ve been here pretty much my whole life. . . . We have a lot of hurts in Baltimore, but we also have a lot of greatness. And there will be a time, I believe, that Baltimore will have its renaissance. Yeah, we’ve got Band-Aids on some of the ugly things, but we are rising. And that’s one of the reasons why I won’t leave. 

Do you see any other books in your future?
Yes. [Laughs] It won’t be a surprise when it comes out, but it will be a page-turner, that’s all I’m going to say.

When news broke earlier this month that the popular Obama-era initiative Let Girls Learn may become a casualty of the most recent round of federal budgeting, one Baltimorean was especially jarred. As the former director of policy for former First Lady Michelle Obama, Krishanti Vignarajah helped the administration launch the initiative in 2015. We caught up with the Woodlawn High School graduate—who now runs her own company, Generation Impact, and is expecting her first child (a daughter)—to talk about the status of Let Girls Learn, and why it’s worth saving.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Let Girls Learn and how does it work?
It’s an initiative that President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama launched in March of 2015 to support adolescent girls’ education, at home and abroad. We ultimately had seven agencies integrally involved, ranging from the State Department and our development agency, USAID, to the Department of Labor, Peace Corps and the Department of Agriculture. 

Let Girls Learn supports girls’ education in three different ways. The first is through governmental support, everything from the building and renovation of schools to “second chance programs” for girls who’ve dropped out, to science and tech camps that bring together teenage girls from around the world. But we also appreciated that the U.S. couldn’t do it alone, and so we built an international coalition of governments ranging from Japan and Pakistan, to South Korea and the United Kingdom. But . . . even an international coalition of governments couldn’t solve a problem as large as nearly 100 million adolescent girls out of school worldwide, so we partnered with about 100 private sector companies and organizations, ranging from IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Girl Scouts, and Lands’ End, to universities like Georgetown and Cambridge to help us support girls in completing middle and high school.

What was your involvement in the creation of Let Girls Learn?
Mrs. Obama had been really quite moved by the Boko Haram kidnapping of over 200 girls in Nigeria. So she raised the question of what could we do to address this heartbreaking situation of girls getting kidnapped simply for going to school. Obviously, for both the President and the First Lady, the issue was personal, both because each of their success stories was in part driven by education, but also being the parents of two daughters, the incident hit close to home. We recognized that there was some ongoing programming that the U.S. government already supported, but that there was clearly a need to step up our efforts. So, I basically tried to figure out how could we address the issue of girls’ education, in a real and enduring way.

Why focus on girls not boys?
The reality that we see, both at home and all across the world, is that girls often fall behind—particularly when it comes to middle and high school. And so you end up seeing in some places dramatically lower completion and graduation rates for girls compared to boys. What we realized is that there’s no smarter investment in the future of America than investment in girls’ education.

How so?
When you talk about diverting resources from young girls, you’re really talking about divesting from the next generation of America’s leaders, the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and astrophysicists. And they’re coming from everywhere—small towns, inner cities. They’re going to be the daughters of immigrants and working-class parents. So that’s why we knew that this was a priority. The investment in these girls is not just an investment in them, but an investment in their families, communities, and countries. We know, for example, that . . . for each additional year of high school, a girl’s earning potential goes up as much as 25 percent. Another example: Girls who attend school have healthier families. A Lancet study, for example, found that increasing girls’ education was responsible for more than half the reduction in child mortality between 1970 and 2009. I could go on and on.

So what does it cost the U.S. government per year to run this program?
We ended up investing $1 billion. Unfortunately, even that large amount is still far from what’s needed, because the tragic reality is that we still have 130 million girls out of school around the world.

One billion dollars sounds like a lot of money. For comparison’s sake, what are some other budget line items?
So, for example, our HIV/AIDS funding through PEPFAR, which President Bush created, receives about $7 billion. The State Department budget is about $50 to $51 billion, while the Defense Department budget is about $600 billion.

In terms of soft diplomacy, is Let Girls Learn one of the best investments we can make? You know, winning hearts and minds and all that.
Absolutely. [Secretary of Defense] General [James] Mattis has said this, ‘If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately.’ In some cases, it’s pennies on the dollar compared to the other investments we make. But you absolutely get the best bang for your buck.

As of today, it is unclear what the status of Let Girls Learn is. Initial reports suggested it was cut, then the State Department released a statement saying that the program will remain intact, but may get rebranded.
As you can imagine, I sort of scrambled to try to find out what was happening and what was potentially on the chopping block. I’ll tell you I think there is a lot of confusion about what exactly is being contemplated. In my mind, what is absolutely clear is that educating the next generation of women cannot become a casualty of partisan politics.

Do you worry that the Trump administration is just trying to avoid bad publicity here and fully intends to quietly end the initiative?
I realize that there’s always a chance with a new administration that an initiative like Let Girls Learn could have a bull’s-eye on it because it was so closely identified with the [former administration]. But . . . it would just make no sense. President [George W.] Bush, for example, launched the Millennium Challenge Corporation as a new approach to development and to substantially increase HIV/AIDS funding through PEPFAR. When we came into the White House, we realized the importance of these programs and actually increased funding for them. And the idea that something is bad just because it’s what a prior administration has done is at odds with the legacy of the White House.

On Thursday, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) introduced the Keeping Girls in School Act, which aims to preserve some aspects of Let Girls Learn, should the Trump administration decide to jettison the initiative. 
Of course, I appreciate any effort to safeguard the significant achievements we made through Let Girls Learn. But it’s too bad if we need legislation to protect an initiative intended to ensure girls get an education—this issue should be above the fray of politics.

What if the Trump administration decides to keep the program but rebrands it? Why would changing that name and that brand be such a loss?
We launched Let Girls Learn in over 50 countries around the world. And as you can imagine, when Michelle Obama says ‘Let Girls Learn,’ people hear it and it means something. We had successful public service announcements that we put out that had everyone from Meryl Streep to John Legend making the case to let girls learn. Likewise, when we launched a social media campaign asking people to respond to the question ‘What did you learn in school?’ we got an overwhelming response. It ended up trending number one [on Twitter] domestically and number three internationally. We had everyone from David Cameron to Prince Harry to Beyoncé all supporting this cause. To rebrand and remove all of that would threaten to take away all of the awareness we’ve raised.

So, you’re saying there’s a lot invested in the brand already. It’d be like trying to rename Nike or something.
It’s like relabeling Coca-Cola and instead calling it Brown Fizzy Water. If you think there’s no cost to that, you’re failing to appreciate what Coca-Cola has built.

Have you ever wondered about the strategy behind Beyonce’s pregnancy photoshoot or
why you really shouldn’t mess with journalist April Ryan? R. Eric Thomas is here to help. His humor column at Elle.com, and contributions to sites like Man Repeller and StyleCaster, have been going viral and lightening up your Facebook feed since last July. We talked to Eric about growing up in Baltimore and how he got internet famous.

What was growing up in Baltimore like for you?
I grew up in the Upton area of downtown Baltimore. My father is the executive director of the Baltimore Public Market Corporation and before that he was the assistant general manager of Lexington Market. What I love about Baltimore is how each neighborhood is like a different cultural experience.

How was your experience at The Park School?
I loved that I got to experience a completely different world. I grew up downtown in the city and went to church at Pimlico, but then when I went to school I was out in 90 acres of woods and we got to ride horses and walk along streams and it was an extraordinary educational experience for me as well as an extraordinary cultural experience. It really made me who I am. After Park, I went to Columbia in New York and then transferred to UMBC to study playwriting.

How did you get involved with Elle.com?
Last June, I posted a picture of Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau and the president of Mexico on Facebook and wrote a little riff about it because it looked like a movie poster. They looked like the all male cast of Sex In The City. It got shared about 70,000 times on Facebook and it happened to come across my editor’s desk and she asked me if I would want to do this every day and I said yes. My editor at Elle.com, Leah Chernikoff, says that she wants the site to be like the best brunch conversations—politics and fashion and pop culture and more all rolled into one. I think that my voice is able to add a little intersectional comedy to the conversation.

 Did you always think you would be writing a humor column?
I went to college thinking I was going to be the next Toni Morrison. I just wanted to rewrite Beloved for the rest of my life, but apparently that position has been filled. Playwriting is my first love. My first play was produced in Baltimore. And then, when I moved to Philadelphia, I got into storytelling and got involved with an organization very similar to Stoop Storytelling, which you have in Baltimore. That is really where I developed a stronger comedic voice, which led to posting weird things on the internet, which led to writing funny things about the news every day.

How have you cultivated your sense of humor?
I’m the least funny member of my family so, of course, I am the one who gets paid to make jokes. I come from a line of super intelligent, very witty people and I learned how to be funny by sitting around our dinner table. It was competitive in that way that dressing rooms at comedy clubs are competitive—there’s no punishment or mockery for not being funny, but it’s so rewarding to make other funny people laugh. At my wedding, my brothers and parents gave the most hilarious, heartwarming speeches and now everyone is obsessed with them. All my producer friends are trying to book my family for shows. This is terrible.

What do you believe your column’s purpose is?
I think it provides a respite for people who are exhausted by the news, but still want to remain aware. My column doesn’t ignore the world that we live in but does provide the opportunity to laugh. I think that’s important. I know I’m not curing cancer, but I know firsthand how draining it can be to constantly be pushing back against oppression or injustice. I see the column as sort of like the meal you go to after the march, that space where you can relax for a minute with people who also want to see a better world, and tell stories and jokes—sometimes. Sometimes the column is just me finding reasons to post videos of Idris Elba working out. That’s important, too. 

How do you think celebrity has changed in recent years?
As with the news cycle, many aspects of celebrity have become 24-hour affairs. It’s possible to never be off as a celebrity. And there’s a deeper expectation of access. Celebs are supposed to Snap and Insta and Tweet and also put out new work and show up to talk shows. It’s a lot. I mean, they get paid a lot so I’m not super sad about it, but it’s also just so much. Sometimes you want to take a week where everyone gets a vacation from being in the present. We can all sit on the beach and read a book and not worry about what our favorite stars are doing and, in return, they can sit around and be boring and maybe not post a Snapchat about their breakfast. That’s my dream: to not know what celebrities are eating for breakfast.

Why does popular culture resonate with people so much right now?
I think pop culture has always been aspirational and there are so many barriers being set up in our culture right now that, for a lot of people, aspiration is all they have. I don’t know if we should be seeing pop culture as a model for living, but it is something that reaches across divisions and connects us. That’s significant. I think pop culture helps us to know that we’re not alone in the way we feel, the things we think, what we want, and what makes us laugh.

On Jan. 21, the day after President Trump took office, Baltimore businessman Mansoor Shams was on a conference trip in Houston when he decided to hit the streets with a sign reading, “I’m Muslim and a U.S. Marine. Ask anything.”

Given that, according to the Pew Research Center, 47 percent of U.S. adults do not personally know a Muslim, the 34-year-old—who served as a corporal in the Marine Corps from 2000 to 2004—is hoping to fight Islamophobia with those eight little words. 

“I try to connect with people at a human level,” says Shams, sitting in the Pikesville home he shares with his wife, Nahel, and their four children, with a red-and-yellow Little Tikes toy car parked in the background. “We are one human family. If we both got cut right now, what color would our blood be? We might have some differences in our belief systems, but actually, we’re not that different.”

 As one might imagine, reactions have varied, ranging from curious looks and angry stares to sympathetic smiles and high fives. But what has also emerged are unique dialogues as strangers ask questions about topics the likes of Sharia law, the Islamic State, and women’s rights. 

“It’s a trickle effect,” says Shams. “Even the person who doesn’t come up to me, I have a feeling—and I may be wrong—that when they see the sign, something hits them. And if I can make that happen, make them think, I’m okay with it.”

Having experienced the power of face-to-face connections firsthand, Shams has continued his quest in other major cities. He took to the streets in Denver and Portland. He wielded his sign in Seattle, just days before the president’s controversial travel ban barring entry for refugees and visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries. He talked to pedestrians in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and fielded questions from  passersby in the bustling heart of Times Square. For his efforts, he’s become a quasi-celebrity as the “Muslim Marine,” receiving requests for interviews from major news outlets like NPR, CNN, and PBS.

A Johns Hopkins alum and local Muslim youth leader, Shams, who moved to Maryland from Pakistan at age 6, first made headlines for his activism back in 2015 when, in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, he spearheaded the #FreeIceCream campaign that brought complimentary soft-serve to local parks and city schools in order to spread good vibes throughout the community. Two years and dozens of conversations later, he plans to keep reaching out to people, and he’s optimistic about the future. 

“I have dreams,” says Shams. “One of those dreams is to just make an impact. Another is to run for office one day.”

On April 12, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen announced the “Customers Not Cargo” act, which will prohibit the forcible removal of a passenger after boarding a flight due to overbooking. This new piece of legislation comes on the heels of a viral video showing a United Airlines passenger being forcefully ejected from a flight.

The video showed Dr. David Dao, with a bloodied face, being heaved and dragged through the aisle of a plane departing Chicago for Louisville on April 9. To accommodate for an overbooked flight and no volunteers coming forward to leave the plane, United Airlines randomly selected four passengers and when Dao refused, the Chicago Aviation Police forcibly removed him.

“It is outrageous that airlines can bodily remove passengers after boarding rather than providing appropriate incentives to encourage volunteers,” Van Hollen tells Baltimore. “A lot of people don’t realize that airlines currently have the legal right to forcibly eject a passenger who’s already on board. And that’s just not right.”

Van Hollen explains that his proposed legislation doesn’t prevent airlines from the common practice of overbooking, but requires them to instead offer sufficient incentives to passengers to encourage the voluntary release of seats. While the United passengers were offered $800 to de-board, Van Hollen argues that should have happened before passengers boarded the plane, not afterwards.

“Right now you have this perverse system where airlines are able to offer incentives to get passengers off flights,” he says. “But if they forcibly eject somebody or, say, voluntarily bump you, the financial risk for overbooking should be on the airline, not the passenger.”

The cause is especially important to Van Hollen, whose father shared a similar, albeit less violent, experience.

“My father, who passed many years ago, was thrown from a flight,” he says. “He wasn’t on board yet, but it was the last flight for the day, he was about 83 years old at the time. That’s why we named the bill Customers Not Cargo. [Airlines] overbook and then tell passengers they can’t get on.”

On April 11, Van Hollen and 13 other members of Congress sent a letter to the CEO of United Airlines, Oscar Muñoz—who originally praised the work of the Chicago Aviation Police and later publicly apologized to Dao—requesting answers about the current policies in place.

The same day, Muñoz released a statement, saying “no one should ever be mistreated this way.” He continued and said that United Airlines will “take full responsibility” and the airline is conducting a review, in which results will be made public by April 30.

Van Hollen and fellow Congress members have not yet received a response from Muñoz, but remain optimistic that they will. He has begun circulating the Customers Not Cargo act with hopes of gaining co-sponsors in time to introduce the bill to the Senate—in less than 10 days when Congress is back in session.

Right now, he is focused on spreading the word about the bill and highlighting Dao’s experience. Dao’s attorney, Thomas Demetrio, said at a news conference on April 13 that his client was released from a Chicago hospital after suffering a concussion, broken nose, missing teeth, and the need for reconstructive surgery.  

“It’s one thing to read about a passenger that was mistreated,” Van Hollen says. “It’s much different to see it with your own eyes on a video. It really adds transparency and accountability to the process. This is a passenger’s rights issue; it’s a consumer rights issue. It has created the opportunity for action.”

Monday, April 10, marked the final day of the 437th Maryland General Assembly where, for 90 days, lawmakers met in Annapolis to review bills. In this year’s case, Gov. Larry Hogan signed 11 of the 27 bills that came across his desk, including the fiscal responsibility bill, school funding bill for Baltimore City Public Schools, an extension on the time frame in which sexually abused children can sue their abusers, and a permanent ban on hydraulic fracturing in Maryland. Here are the most big-ticket items from the grueling 90-day session.

Planned Parenthood Gets Funding.
Maryland is now the first state to enact legislation to provide funding for Planned Parenthood should the federal government cut its support. The measure was enacted last week after Gov. Hogan allowed the bill to move forward—he didn’t veto it or sign it. The new measure will protect preventative care for over 20,000 patients across nine centers in the state and takes affect on July 1.

The state has allotted $2 million from Maryland’s Medicaid budget and $700,000 for the state’s general fund the services. It’s worth noting that federal law prohibits using this funding for abortions; the bill is to ensure that patients will be able to receive basic healthcare.

Fracking Ban Passes
After years of debate and study, The Maryland General Assembly and Gov. Hogan cooperated to outlaw the controversial natural gas extraction method known as fracking. In doing so, Maryland became the first state (in which fracking is viable) to ban the practice by statute. (New York banned the practice by executive order in 2014, and Vermont banned the practice by law in 2012, but has no harvestable natural gas deposits, meaning the ban was largely symbolic.)

Western Maryland—particularly Garret and Allegheny counties—sits upon a portion of the Marcellus Formation, a large shale-rich geologic area that underpins much of the Appalachian range from Tennessee to New York. Proponents of fracking in Maryland had hoped the practice would bring jobs to Western Maryland and further lower energy prices. Opponents resisted fracking because of its ability to pollute air and groundwater. Anti-fracking activists hope Maryland’s ban will inspire neighboring states, such as Pennsylvania and Virginia to enact similar laws.

Oyster Sanctuaries to Remain Closed to Watermen
Blocking a proposal floated by the Hogan administration, the General Assembly voted to keep the state’s oyster sanctuaries off-limits to watermen until a study of the bivalve’s health is completed in 2018. According to The Sun, Gov. Hogan’s administration and a state commission were “considering a plan that could have periodically opened 11 percent of the [state’s] 8,600 acres of sanctuaries to watermen.”

Environmentalists opposed the idea, citing the fragility of the bay’s oyster population, which is estimated at about 1 percent of its pre-Colonial level, due to disease, pollution, habitat destruction, and over-harvesting. A single oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day and oyster reefs provide habitat for numerous other species.

Styrofoam Ban Fails, For Now
Despite support from environmental advocates, a ban on the use of expanded polystyrene foam products—including food containers and packaging peanuts—failed to pass this year. The bill, co-sponsored by Del. Brooke Lierman of (District 46, Baltimore City) and state Sen. Cheryl Kagan (District 17, Montgomery County), called for a statewide ban on the hard, white plastic material, often mistakenly referred to as Styrofoam. (Styrofoam is a trademark of Dow Chemical Company and a separate substance.)

Advocates had hoped the measure would help combat litter and improve water quality, especially in Baltimore City, where expanded polystyrene products are the second-most collected items in the harbor trash wheels, after cigarette butts. Though Julie Lawson, the executive director of the nonprofit Trash Free Maryland, admitted disappointment, she also expressed hope for next year’s session. “The House Environment & Transportation Committee, having heard our bills for the past several years, has decided they want to take the summer to dig deeper into the issue . . . with an eye toward developing policies that the General Assembly should pursue in coming years,” she said.

Internet Privacy Bill Fails
The House of Representatives voted at the end of March to grant Internet service providers (ISPs) like AT&T and Verizon the ability to collect, store, and sell users’ browser history for advertising purposes. SB 1200 was an emergency bill that would “prohibit ISP’s from selling or transferring a consumer’s personally identifying information to a person without the consumer’s express and affirmative permission.”

Current state law does not regulate the sale or sharing of personal information by ISPs. However, the bill died in a House Committee meeting late last night. According to House Economic Matters Committee Chairman Derek Davis, lawmakers need more time to study the issue.

Watered Down Immigration Bill Gets Rejected
Immigration advocates were pushing for a bill that would limit police involvement in federal deportation. The House passed the bill, known as the Trust Act, in March, however, a Senate committee only advanced portions of the original bill. The act would have prohibited local police from stopping and questioning people to determine their immigration status solely based on factors like as race and religion.

Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. spoke out against the bill last week, saying: “Maryland is not going to become a sanctuary state.” Gov. Hogan vowed to veto the original version of the bill should it reach his desk, but it died before the deadline. The bill was diluted so much that it lost the support of liberal lawmakers and committee chairman Derek Davis said that the issue was too complicated to make a decision in the final hours.

Education Accountability Act
This measure prohibits the state school board from converting declining public schools into charters, offering students taxpayer-funded vouchers to attend private schools and placing said schools in a state-run “recovery” district.

This new legislation sets up an accountability system for the schools, where 65 percent of ratings will be based on academic assessments, including standardized test scores. This is the only piece of legislation Gov. Hogan rejected stating that the bill was “misguided” and would have a “disastrous effect” on the education system.

Child Sexual Abuse Laws Amended
Gov. Hogan also signed HB 642 into law, which extends “the statute of limitations on civil actions arising out of an alleged incident or incidents of sexual abuse that occurred while the victim was a minor.” The bill will be effective October 1 of this year and will not be applicable for any cases prior to that date.

Under the current law, a victim must file a compliant within “seven years of the date that the victim attains the age of majority” or age 25. Under the new law, the period has been extended from seven to 20 years from the incident or age 38.

New Brewery Bill Gets Pushed Through
After much controversy, a revised version of HB 1283 makes big changes to the local craft-brewing scene in Maryland. Inspired by the first American Guinness brewery coming to Baltimore County in the fall, the bill raises caps on barrel production to 3,000 per year, permits some contract brewing, and allows existing breweries to maintain their normal hours. However, the bill prohibits new or future breweries—which are not grandfathered into the bill—to be closed after 10 p.m.

Field Notes is a monthly roundup of environmental news from around the area. If you have a story you’d like considered for a future Field Notes, email mamy@baltimoremagazine.net. Put “Field Notes Suggestion” in the subject line.

Bay Watch

When is a C- a cause for celebration? When we’re talking about the Chesapeake Bay’s health grade. Late last week, the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation released its report on the bay’s overall health in 2016, granting the estuary its highest grade since the foundation began issuing reports in 1998.

The report divides data into three main categories—pollution, habitat, and fisheries—then grades various indicators within each category to calculate an overall score out of a possible 100 points. This year’s overall score was a 34, which equates, in this specially weighted grading system, to a C-.

Except for a slight decrease in the amount of forested buffers, the bay showed improvement or remained steady across all sectors. Especially notable is the 10-point jump in the health of the blue crab population and the continued hardiness of the rockfish population, which garnered an A-, the scorecard’s highest individual grade.

But while things have improved, there is still a long way to go to reach that 100-point A+ (which would be like restoring the bay to how it was in the 1600s). Particularly troubling are the pollution scores, with nitrogen and phosphorus levels still earning F and D grades, respectively. (Excess nitrogen and phosphorus contribute to algae blooms that block sunlight and create dead zones in the bay. Certain algal blooms can be toxic to humans and pets, as well.)

The largest sources of nitrogen and phosphorus are agriculture runoff (particularly chicken manure and fertilizers), car and power plant emissions, sewage plant discharges, and suburban and urban stormwater runoff. Attempts to curtail the nitrogen and phosphorus runoff have resulted in controversial measures such as the Bay Restoration Fee (the so-called “flush tax”) and the much-maligned Stormwater Utility Fee (aka the “rain tax”).

But along with a suite of other actions that have been folded into a federally coordinated multi-state initiative called the Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint, there is a view that the oft-maligned fees are having a positive effect.

“We believe the Bay is reaching a tipping point,” the report’s introduction states. “As this report shows, the evidence is there. We are seeing the clearest water in decades, regrowth of acres of lush underwater grass beds, and the comeback of the Chesapeake’s native oysters, which were nearly eradicated by disease, pollution, and overfishing. . . . The bottom line is our report provides hope and promise for the future.”

Full report here.

So, That Was Christmas

And what have you done? Left your tree in the corner, dropping needles by the ton.

Don’t worry, Baltimore City Department of Public Works will be collecting Christmas trees with your regularly scheduled trash pickup throughout the rest of January (excluding Monday, January 16, because of Martin Luther King holiday). All tinsel and ornaments must be removed before pickup. Or, if you want to divert your tree from the landfill and turn it into free mulch for future garden projects, bring it to the the Southwest Citizens’ Convenience Center at 701 Reedbird Ave. in South Baltimore, Monday through Saturday (excluding the MLK holiday), from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Residents should bring their own containers for the mulch. DPW also would like to remind everyone that wrapping paper and many packaging materials are eligible for standard curbside recycling. An extensive list of recycleable items can be found here.

Baltimore County is also collecting old Christmas trees, beginning this week. Detailed instructions can be found here.

Anne Arundel County regulations can be found here.

Howard County runs a free mulch program similar to Baltimore City’s, as well as curbside pickup and recycling drop-off. Details are here.

Legislative Briefing

Last week, Gov. Larry Hogan announced his environmental priorities for the 2017 session of the Maryland General Assembly, which starts Wednesday at noon and lasts for 90 days.

Hogan wants to spend $65 million over three years on a variety of programs that focus on “targeted investments and market-based solutions to protect and preserve Maryland’s environment and natural resources.”

Forty-one million of the $65 million he has earmarked comes from a 2012 settlement with Exelon Corp. and must be invested in Tier 1 renewable energy projects. (Tier 1 renewables include solar, wind, and certain biomass and waste-to-energy methods.)

The rest of the $65 million would be distributed among four initiatives: increased tax credits and rebates for electric cars and charging stations, a $3 million investment in the state’s green jobs-training program, $7.5 million for a new clean-energy startup incubator at the University of Maryland, and up to $10 million in funding for a pollution credit-trading program.

But as The Sun pointed out in a recent editorial, those pet projects might not get much traction in the Democratic-controlled legislature. Instead, the General Assembly might focus on its own green agenda, which includes possibly overriding Gov. Hogan’s veto of a measure that would have boosted the state’s required quota of Tier 1 renewable energy from 20 percent to 25 percent by 2020. The legislature and the governor are also due for a reckoning about hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking. The controversial practice, in which a solution of water and chemicals is blasted into bedrock to release deposits of natural gas, is under a moratorium in the state while officials investigated its potential environmental impact. (It has been implicated in water and air pollution, as well as drilling-induced earthquakes.) But the ban expires this year and Hogan and the legislature will need to decide whether or not to allow it and, if so, how strictly it should be regulated.

Energy Star

Kudos to Columbia’s Wilde Lake Middle School. When the newly constructed school opened last week, it did so as the state’s first “net-zero energy” school. This means that, over the course of a year, the $33 million building will generate as much energy as it uses. The energy efficiency is achieved through both low-tech and high-tech means. There’s the school’s 2,000 solar panels, geothermal heating system, and lights that automatically dim when conditions are sunny.

But, as Scott Washington, the Director of School Construction for the Howard County Public School System, said in a video update on the project this fall, “Number one is the building orientation and envelope. That means how the building is situated on the site, as well as the envelope that the building is made out of—the roof structure, the wall structure, how insulated they are.”

The school also boasts an “energy kiosk” in the main hallway, which allows students to see, in real time, how much energy the building is using and generating. The school replaces the 48-year-old Wilde Lake school, which will be razed to make room for new playing fields and a bus loop.

Great Vertical

Time to add another entry into the city’s ever-growing register of urban farms.

Last month, a trio of organizations led by a Canadian agriculture technology companysigned a letter of intent to start a vertical farming operation in East Baltimore. The triumvirate is led by a Canadian agriculture technology company Arcturus Growthstar Technologies Inc., which procured financial backing from the Columbia-based venture capital firm CBO Financial to lease 25,000 square feet of indoor space from the local nonprofit Volunteers of America Chesapeake. The farm will grow greens like lettuce, basil, oregano, and cilantro in a climate-controlled environment and will offer agriculture job training to ex-offenders participating in Volunteers of America Chesapeake’s workforce re-entry program.

The $6 million project joins other agriculture and food system-related ventures popping up throughout East Baltimore. In the parking lot of the American Brewery building, another vertical farm, Urban Pastoral, grows greens in a LED-light-laden shipping container. Down the road, Walker Marsh raises cut flowers for market at Tha Flower Factory, a half-acre parcel where vacant rowhomes once stood. And in late September, the long-awaited Baltimore Food Hub broke ground at its 3.5-acre site at the corner of East Oliver and North Wolfe streets. The $23.5 million project, spearheaded by American Communities Trust and local workforce nonprofit Humanin, will eventually host job-training facilities, communal incubator space, and an excess of land to be dedicated to urban farming.

Someone, it seems, is always stealing Catherine Pugh’s thunder. Tonight, that someone is inveterate thunder-stealer Donald Trump. It is Nov. 8 and, inside a plushly carpeted ballroom at the Radisson in downtown Baltimore, Maryland Democrats have gathered to celebrate what the pundits and pollsters have predicted will be a decisive victory for the blue team, culminating in the election of the nation’s first female president.

And at first, all seems to be going according to plan. Maryland’s statewide and citywide races shake out as expected: Sen. Ben Cardin isn’t up for re-election until 2018, so he’s safe. Chris Van Hollen nabs retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski’s seat, and seven of Maryland’s eight congressional seats remain in Democratic hands. In Baltimore City—where registered Dems outnumber Republicans 10 to 1—the results are even more of a foregone conclusion: All 15 members of the City Council will be Democrats (though eight are newcomers). And last but not least, Pugh, at age 66, secures her self-described “dream job” as mayor with 57.6 percent of the vote.

But, as the national results come in, things seem far less certain. Several states that Hillary Clinton needs for an electoral college victory—including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—seem to be slipping away, and that drama, unfolding on the room’s two giant flat-screen TVs, threatens to eclipse Pugh’s accomplishment.

But it’s not like Pugh hasn’t been in this position before. She has often been overshadowed during her political career, losing elections to candidates with more fiery charisma (Sheila Dixon for City Council president in 2003) and more establishment support (Stephanie Rawlings-Blake for mayor in 2011). But Pugh—moderate, disciplined, and gracious by nature—just put her head down and went back to work.

So, in a way, it’s fitting that Pugh’s moment of triumph is preempted by Trump’s stunning upset. Still, in politics as in show biz, the show must go on, and Pugh is nothing if not professional. Just before 10:30 p.m.—with Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours” blaring over the sound system—Pugh takes the stage to give her victory speech. Surrounded by Congressman Elijah Cummings, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, and all 15 members of the incoming City Council, she strikes an optimistic but rallying tone.

“We’ve got, I believe, a great road ahead of us,” she says, looking characteristically chic in a blush-colored shift dress and her customary three-inch stiletto heels. “[But] we have neighborhoods that need to be focused on. . . . We have 76,000 people who are unemployed. . . . And we’ve got 3,000 people sleeping on the streets. . . . We’ve got to create a more diverse and inclusive government that allows opportunity to spread throughout our communities because we recognize that when you lift the least, you lift all of us.”

It’s an effective speech, and the crowd seems temporarily buoyed, but it also serves as a reminder of the many problems facing the city and the effort it will take to make even a small dent in them. It does make you wonder: What kind of a person even wants a job like that?

Catherine Pugh was born on March 10, 1950, in the Philadelphia suburb of Norristown, Pennsylvania, the second of seven children born to James and Addie Crump.

Her father, a union laborer in a rubber factory, and her mother, a homemaker, ran a house full of love, but also full of discipline.

“They were pretty strict,” Pugh remembers now. “We ate breakfast together every morning. We ate dinner together every night.”

They also emphasized education, with her mother running a makeshift at-home preschool for the brood.

“My father said it was her job to teach us to read and write, and so he went down to the local school and bought each of us desks,” she says.

Because of this, Pugh says she was literate by the time she was 3 years old. This precociousness was reinforced by weekly trips to the library and regular consultation with the family’s set of World Book Encyclopedias, which she calls the 1950s version of Google.

“I thought my parents were, like, the smartest people in the world because if I said, ‘Hey, dad, where’s the Antarctic Ocean?’ he would say, ‘Go get A, the World Book Encyclopedia!’ And if I asked my mother, ‘Hey mom, where’s Bolivia?’ she would say, ‘Go get B!’ So, as a 3-year-old, I would be sitting there reading, thinking that everything I’m reading, they already know. But I do know today that they prepared us to be whatever we wanted to be.”

But it wasn’t all work and no play. Her mother, especially, provided some fun and glamour.

“I had a mother who dressed like nobody else,” Pugh recalls. “[She] used to take us downtown for what she called window-shopping. And she would window-shop in some of the most expensive windows that I’d ever seen.”

And though the family couldn’t afford to dress seven children in the department store fashions of the day, Pugh’s mother found a way to keep her style-conscious daughter sartorially satisfied.

“There was a dressmaker who lived around the corner from us,” Pugh explains. “And if I saw something on TV I liked, she would say, ‘If you sketch it out, take it around to the dressmaker and see if she can make it.’”

Not that Pugh got free rein. There were standards to be upheld.

“There were absolutely parameters. We were churchgoing!” she says with a laugh. “I remember when wrap-and-buckle skirts came out and my mother had skirts made for my sister and me. One morning, I was looking for my skirt and my mother said, ‘It’s gone.’ I’m like, ‘What happened?’ And she was like, ‘I was watching you walk down the street and that skirt just kept flipping, and it just didn’t look good.’ I was like, ‘Okaaaay. All right. So much for that!’”

It’s a lesson Pugh has taken to heart: Appearances matter, but for reasons beyond vanity.

“When I was in junior high school, my mother used to always say, ‘I don’t care what job you go to, go like you’re in charge,’” Pugh told The Baltimore Sun in 2014. “Appearance . . . gets you in many doors. Brains keep you in.”

Pugh possessed both. So after working several jobs to help pay her own way, she set off for Morgan State University, where she earned both a bachelor’s and a master’s in business.

“I’m a numerical person,” she notes.

After graduation, she interviewed for 11 jobs at major banks and got eight of them. Five of those eight jobs were in Baltimore. She chose Equitable Trust Bank, where she started as a branch manager trainee, graduated to branch manager, and then worked as a credit analyst.

From there, her career only diversified. At one time or another, she has been a print journalist, a talk show host, the dean of Strayer Business College (now Strayer University) in Baltimore, and director of citizens involvement under Mayor William Donald Schaefer. She’s still president and CEO of her own public relations firm and a co-owner of a high-end consignment shop in Pigtown called 2 Chic Boutique. In addition, she is the author of three children’s books and a book of poetry. She sits on the boards of numerous institutions and nonprofits, including the Baltimore Design School, which she co-founded.

A workaholic who is divorced and has no children, Pugh often describes herself as “married to the city.” She lives in Ashburton and, for fun, likes to run, play golf, and go for long, solo drives in her Jeep Cherokee, something her staff is reluctant to let her do now that she’s the city’s chief executive.

“I’ll figure out a way though,” Pugh says with a laugh.

Pugh began her career as an elected official in 1999 on the City Council. That’s when she came to realize the power, both direct and indirect, a mayor wields.

She recalls, early on, going to then-Mayor Martin O’Malley with two ideas—one for a public art project in which artist-decorated fish sculptures would be placed around the city, and another for what became the Baltimore Running Festival. O’Malley okayed both, then left the planning up to her.

“When I thought about it, I said, ‘Oh, this is a problem, because he didn’t say, ‘Well, go to so-and-so and they’ll give you money.’ So I’m thinking about the fish sculptures: How much is that going to cost? The artists: Who’s going to pay them? Who’s going to mount [the sculptures]? The first thing I did was write a letter to [Abell Foundation President] Bob Embry, and what I said was, ‘The mayor wants to do this project. I can get you a letter!’ And the letter got me $100,000 from the Abell Foundation to jump-start that project. . . . That’s when I recognized that the word of the mayor could go a long way in getting things done.”

Similarly, Pugh drafted the initial request for proposal for the Baltimore Running Festival, and chose its first sponsor, Corrigan Sports. Sixteen years later, the festival remains one of Baltimore’s marquee events and provides the city with an estimated $40 million economic impact.

But after this string of early successes, Pugh encountered a rare professional setback in 2003 when she challenged Sheila Dixon’s re-election as City Council president. Pugh lost by more than 21,000 votes to Dixon, who then ascended to the mayor’s office in 2007 after O’Malley left to become governor. Dixon resigned three years later amid a corruption probe.

When Pugh’s term ended in 2004, she left the City Council with seemingly few political options. But just six months later, she was appointed to a vacant seat in the House of Delegates by then-Gov. Robert Ehrlich. She represented the 40th District—which stretches from lower Park Heights across to portions of Hampden and Remington, and then all the way down to Violetville in the southwest corner of the city. In 2006, she ran for state Senate in the same district and won handily. And though her goal remained the mayorship, she flourished in the state legislature, eventually rising to the rank of Senate majority leader.

Indeed, some think her time in Annapolis was the best thing that could’ve happened to her.

“I’ve known her since she was on the City Council and then she went to the state. I think that’s where she did her best work because it allowed her to accomplish the goals that she set for the community,” says Edna Manns-Lake, the president and founder of Fayette Street Outreach Organization, a neighborhood improvement group in West Baltimore.

For Baltimoreans, Pugh’s highest-profile success in the legislature was the Baltimore Design School, a public middle and high school in Greenmount West that offers specialized curricula for aspiring architects, graphic designers, and fashion designers.

But there’s much more where that came from. During her 11 years in the General Assembly, Pugh passed more than 150 pieces of legislation. In 2016 alone, she passed 18 bills, including one that provides up to $2,500 in property tax relief to public safety officers who work and own a home in Baltimore City.

“She lives and breathes this stuff,” says Bri Ujimma Ward, who was a legislative aide to Pugh from 2008 to 2010. “When you work for her, the work is going to get done. To me, the general public doesn’t know enough about the work she’s done.”

Ward might have a point. Because for all her accomplishments, Pugh was not able to ignite the kind of groundswell needed to unseat Rawlings-Blake in the 2011 mayoral primary. And she faced a similar battle this time around, struggling to break away from a pack of her fellow Democratic mayoral hopefuls, especially Dixon. Then, when the general election came, Dixon, tenacious as ever, mounted a write-in campaign that garnered a not negligible 22 percent of the vote.

It is virtually impossible to know all the conscious and unconscious factors that inform a person’s vote. But looking at the results can give some insight into Pugh’s strengths and weaknesses as a candidate.

In the primary, Dixon won 170 of the about 200 precincts in the city with majority African-American populations. Pugh, meanwhile, won 69 of the 96 or so precincts with predominantly white populations. Pugh’s 2,408-vote victory likely resulted because while Pugh was able to place second in many African-American districts, Dixon garnered only meager support in white enclaves.

Though it might be tempting to infer from this that Pugh’s support isn’t rock solid in African-American communities, Mileah Kromer, the director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher College, cautions against such pat conclusions.

“The question becomes . . . whether there was a preference for Dixon, which is one thing, or actually a disliking of Pugh, which is a completely other thing,” says Kromer. “I don’t know about any polling that was done, or any serious focus groups, to be able to conclude which one of those two realities was happening.”

If eyewitness testimony is anything to go by, Pugh seems to connect with African-American voters just fine. On a campaign stop at Northeast Market in early November, Pugh was treated like some combination of rock star and long-lost relative, doling out hugs and snapping photos with excited vendors and shoppers, most of them African American. On the other hand, Sen. Ben Cardin and then-Senate hopeful Chris Van Hollen, who were also there that day, were greeted with a certain arm’s-length politeness.

Oddly enough, what hurt Pugh might not have been a lack of support, but rather the wrong kind of support. In a year when voter frustration with the status quo precipitated unexpected outcomes, Pugh’s endorsements from just about every major establishment figure may have dogged her, making her seem like just another politician. Dixon, on the other hand, may have endeared herself to the disenfranchised by casting herself in the role of insurgent outsider.

As late as mid-October, WEAA First Edition host Sean Yoes was asking Del. Jill Carter—also perceived as an outsider—to justify her support of Pugh.

“Given the fact that you are considered the ultimate outsider, and Catherine Pugh is definitely an insider as far as the political game is concerned, a lot of people were probably surprised that you went ahead and endorsed her,” Yoes said.

“I can see how it could look that way from the outside,” replied Carter, who represents much of Northwest Baltimore in the 41st District. “But in terms of my experience with the Democratic establishment in Annapolis, Catherine Pugh, while perceived as establishment herself, has always been fair-minded and intelligent. She’s also been welcoming to me, unlike many, many others.”

This equanimity and warmth aren’t always apparent with Pugh, who can come across as uncannily poised and prim. But last year, during the Freddie Gray unrest, Pugh made worldwide headlines when she defended a group of protestors to Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera. She was also captured hugging a teary protestor in an image that went viral. Predictably, Pugh’s actions angered some and gratified others. But, more than most, she seemed able to straddle the divide between the powers that be and the passion on the streets.

Ultimately, Kromer thinks this is Pugh’s great strength. “You could take the one approach to say that Pugh does not have the inroads among African Americans that Dixon has,” she says. “But I also think there’s a different way to look at it, to say that Pugh is a coalition-builder. Pugh is able to appeal to different areas of the city and cobble together enough support to actually win.”

Naturally, many have high hopes that she will use this bridge-building capacity to advance her agenda, which, for the record, includes restoring to the city full control of the public school system, decreasing crime and improving community-police relations, and restructuring the city’s housing department and replacing its commissioner, Paul Graziano, who has been accused of letting the department become a hotbed of corruption and ineptitude. She also wants to further progress made by Rawlings-Blake in decreasing property tax rates and eliminating vacant buildings. Mostly, however, Pugh wants community development that goes beyond the waterfront neighborhoods.

“We want to bring businesses to our city,” she has said. “We want to create retail corridors where people can get the services that they need in their neighborhood.

“When I look at what’s happening in Hampden, and Canton, and Federal Hill, we ought to be able to make that happen in Pigtown or Ashburton or other neighborhoods.”

If Catherine Pugh is indeed “married to the city,” her inauguration is her wedding day—and just like any other bride, she has to contend with the weather.

The inauguration is generally held in War Memorial Plaza between City Hall and the War Memorial building. But because Tuesday, Dec. 6, is cold and rainy, Pugh decides to move the ceremony inside the War Memorial. Barbara Mikulski, one of the many state and local politicians on hand for the ceremony, thinks the decision provides Pugh’s administration with an auspicious beginning.

“I know she will be a fantastic mayor,” Mikulski tells the crowd. “She already made her first executive decision, which was to move this inside. That in and of itself shows that she will provide common sense leadership . . . so three cheers!”

The crowd laughs and Pugh, wearing a red-and-white Carolina Herrera that she snagged on sale, looks positively giddy.

After several more speeches and a performance by the Morgan State University choir that moves state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. to tears, Pugh comes forward to recite her vows.

Flanked by two of her brothers, Pugh faces Maryland Court of Appeals Judge Shirley M. Watts, raises her right hand, and begins the oath of office. When she gets to the word “mayor,” she hits it hard, breaking into a huge grin as the audience whoops and her brothers beam proudly. She is now the 50th mayor of Baltimore.

In her prepared remarks, she describes herself as “excited” and “blessed” to become the city’s “servant-leader.”

“I believe that everything that I’ve done to this moment has prepared me for this particular point in time,” she says.

She then launches into a litany of thank you’s, mentioning everyone from Gov. Larry Hogan (with whom she vows to work closely) to her old Morgan State cheerleading buddies sitting in the front row. The normally controlled Pugh actually seems slightly overwhelmed by the moment.

But after a few minutes, she catches herself, and, referencing planned inauguration events throughout the city, says, “I don’t want to stand before you all long. . . . I’ve got four communities that are waiting for me.”

Of all people, Pugh knows what it’s like to be kept waiting.

Read more about Sen. Mikulski’s illustrious career as a social worker, feminist icon, and stalwart champion of Baltimore a profile by senior editor Ron Cassie.

Pugh bested Republican Alan Walden and Green Party candidate Joshua Harris, who received 9 percent and 10 percent of the vote, respectively. Former mayor Sheila Dixon also mounted a challenge as a write-in candidate after narrowly losing the April democratic primary to Pugh and received 23 percent of the vote.

“To all of my opponents out there . . . there’s room under this tent for all of us,” Pugh said. “So let’s work together. Let’s move our city forward, not backward. Let’s become more inclusive, more diverse. Let’s create businesses, expand business, and create opportunity. Let’s get people working in Baltimore. I look forward to working for all of you.”

Overall, turnout was up from the last mayoral election, in 2011, when Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was elected to her first full term, reaping 84 percent of 45,000 votes cast. (Rawlings-Blake assumed the mayor’s seat in 2010 after Dixon was forced to resign amidst a scandal in which she was found to have misappropriated gift cards meant for the needy.) After that election, the city moved mayoral elections to coincide with the presidential election cycle—and Pugh’s margin of victory surely benefitted from an engaged electorate. Many polling places throughout the city reported long lines, several even experienced technical problems, and many residents were still waiting to vote until 9 p.m. tonight.

Though Pugh’s victory is not surprising in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 10 to 1, some wondered about the strength of her winning coalition, especially after her slim margin of victory in the April primary. But today’s results indicate widespread, if not necessarily enthusiastic, support.

Also in attendance at the Radisson Hotel was Locust Point resident Sophia Silbergeld, who supported Pugh in both the primary and general elections.

“She has had a ton of experience,” Silbergeld said. “She has the city’s best interest at heart. She said this is the job she has always dreamed of and that’s the kind of mayor we want to have.”

In Northeast Baltimore, restaurateur Shawn Lagergren cast his ballot for Pugh. Though he supported Pugh in the primary, he also said his preference was solidified by a dearth of other viable candidates.

“I wasn’t going to vote for Sheila Dixon,” he explained. “It just didn’t look good for her with the scandals that had happened prior to this. I don’t think she should be back in.”

Cassandra Bridgeforth of Lauraville was even more frustrated with the options.

“I voted for Catherine Pugh. I hated it,” she said. “They gave me choices of the same old crap, or the same old crap, or the same old crap. At least show me new crap. [But] the other [candidates] just didn’t look like they had the power to be it. So I just held my nose and voted for Pugh.”

Pugh, a resident of Ashburton, is a former journalist, talk show host, and dean and director of Strayer Business College. She earned a BS and MBA from Morgan State University and runs CEPugh and Company, a marketing and public relations firm. She also co-owns a consignment shop in Pigtown called 2 Chic Boutique. Look for more on Pugh in the January issue of Baltimore magazine, on newsstands December 21.

If elected, Pugh has vowed to strengthen penalties for possession of a loaded handgun; enhance crime prevention programs like Citizens on Patrols, Neighborhood Watch, and Safe Streets; and establish an Office of Returning Citizens to help ex-offenders re-enter society.

She also has voiced support for increased funding for after-school and youth job programs, a return of Baltimore’s public school system to city control, and firing controversial Baltimore City Housing Chief Paul Graziano.

In addition to the mayor’s race, all 15 seats on the City Council were on the ballot this year. Many longtime incumbents chose not to seek reelection, providing opportunities for new faces on the council, which usually sees very limited turnover. Below is a list of all official entrants in City Council races. Bold type denotes the winner and an asterisk indicates a new council member.

President

Sharon Black – Unaffiliated

Susan Gaztanaga – Libertarian

Connor Meek – Green

Shannon Wright – Republican

Bernard C. “Jack” Young – Democrat (incumbent)

District 1

Zeke Cohen – Democrat*

Matthew McDaniel – Republican

District 2

Brandon M. Scott – Democrat (incumbent)

Gregory Yarberough – Republican

District 3

Ryan Dorsey – Democrat*

G. Andreas “Spilly” Spiliadis – Green

District 4

William “Sam” Broaddus III – Republican

Bill Henry – Democrat (incumbent)

District 5

Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer – Democrat *

District 6

Sharon Green Middleton – Democrat (incumbent)

Richard Thomas White Jr. – Green

District 7

Leon F. Pinkett III – Democrat*

Tamara Purnell – Republican

Nnamdi Scott – unaffiliated

District 8

Joseph Brown Jr. – Republican

Kristerfer Burnett – Democrat*

District 9

John T. Bullock – Democrat*

Kenneth Earl Ebron Jr. – Republican

Jamie Latear Frierson – Green

District 10

Christine Digman – Republican

Amanda E. Maminski – Green

Edward L. Reisinger – Democrat (incumbent)

District 11

Eric Costello – Democrat (incumbent)

District 12

Frank W. Richardson – Unaffiliated

Ian Schlakman – Green

Dan Sparaco – Unaffiliated

Robert Stokes Sr. – Democrat*

District 13

George Johnson – Republican

Shannon Sneed – Democrat*

District 14

Thomas T. Boyce – Republican

Mary Pat Clarke – Democrat (incumbent)

David Harding – Unaffiliated

“This isn’t a pizza place where people talk politics,” Isaac Schleifer jokes as he slides into a seat at Tov Pizza in Northwest Baltimore. “It’s a political clubhouse that sells pizza.”

Schleifer, who is just 27 and goes by “Yitzi,” becomes the 5th District’s new city councilman this month. Tov Pizza (“Baltimore’s Best Kosher Pizza”) is owned by his older cousin, Ron Rosenbluth, a former Democratic State Central Committee official. The busy Reisterstown Road pizza, sub, and knish joint has been around since 1984, but it feels even more retro with its checked Formica floor and gumball machines. And it’s here Schleifer and Rosenbluth gamed out maybe the most surprising primary victory in this watershed election year.

The target, at least initially, was 39-years-in-office city councilwoman Rikki Spector. A successful software entrepreneur, Schleifer had funded a poll that examined Spector’s vulnerability in the Democratic primary, but the data coming back wasn’t great. “I figured we had to convince about 800 registered Republicans and independents to switch party affiliation if we were going to win,” Schleifer says. Still, given the size of the politically conservative Orthodox community in the 5th District, Schleifer, an observant Jew, calculated it was worth a shot. (Spector is also Jewish, but less observant.)

Then, three months before the primary, the 80-year-old Spector unexpectedly declined to seek re-election. Instead, she tapped Betsy Gardner—City Council President Jack Young’s longtime 5th District aide and citywide Jewish liaison—to succeed her. Gardner also received Young’s backing, which brought along Democratic establishment and union endorsements. Schleifer’s basic math hadn’t changed.

Every election brings challenges, of course. Some more critical than others. Though of little consequence elsewhere in the city, the state legislature had moved this year’s primary back to avoid a conflict with Easter, which effectively pushed the date into the middle of Passover week. That meant Schleifer would not campaign the weekend before the election—and much of his Orthodox base would be out of town for the holiday.

“You know the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a kid’? That’s me.”

One more curveball: The Baltimore Sun endorsed neither Gardner nor Schleifer, but a third candidate, Elizabeth Ryan Martinez, a Roland Park attorney in the city’s legal office. Undaunted, Schleifer, who’d chosen Oriole orange as his campaign color, continued to generate enthusiasm and raise money by playing off his youthful energy, business experience, deep Orthodox community and neighborhood ties. He knocked on doors across the district. He touted his focus on public safety, property taxes, and government accountability. And his platform didn’t waver when Spector left the race—he’d been campaigning against her for six months at that point—and Gardner jumped in.

In the end, Martinez garnered 1,260 votes—many that Spector believes would have gone to Gardner, if Martinez hadn’t received The Sun’s endorsement. Schleifer actually lost the primary day tally to Gardner, but he’d already found his 800 votes by then. Credit Schleifer’s team for its organization: His big absentee and early-voting turnout allowed him to hang on and win one of the closest of the 15 City Council races up for grabs.

“We never said it publicly,” Rosenbluth, 53, says, “but on the campaign, our theme going in was that line Reagan used—you know, ‘Are you better off than you were 40 years ago?’”

As unanticipated as Schleifer’s bold victory was in April (he faced no Republican opposition in the general election), the fact that he is the youngest incoming City Council member and Baltimore’s first Orthodox Jewish city councilman in decades, at least, points to an interesting demographic trend. Already the 14th largest Jewish community in the country, the number of Jewish households in the Greater Baltimore region has been steadily growing. In particular, the Jewish population in the Park Heights corridor, a traditional enclave of Orthodox Jews, grew by 25 percent between 1999 and 2010. And its relative density makes it especially notable. In the last comprehensive study—the 2010 Greater Baltimore Jewish Community Survey—more than three in 10 Jews identified as Orthodox, a percentage that is triple the figure of the growing Orthodox affiliation in the Jewish community nationwide, according to the Pew Research Center.

These stats stand in contrast to the city—where population, at best, has leveled off after decades of decline. The Greater Baltimore Jewish Community Survey reports, for example, that the number of Jews living in Baltimore County fell by 5,900 between 1999 and 2010 but grew by 7,800 in Baltimore City. “I’ve heard people say that there are too many synagogues on Park Heights Avenue,” Schleifer says, “but they have been a stabilizing factor, along with Ner Israel Rabbinical College, the Jewish Community Center, community associations and nonprofits, and the senior living high-rises in Northwest Baltimore.”

On a late summer morning, Schleifer is driving past the house where he grew up in a working- and middle-class section of Falstaff, which sits just inside the city line below Pikesville. He has to stop and share a story. Or two. He’s married, the father of one, and soon, two. He’s also sharp, confident, and remarkably even-tempered for his age. Any age, really. But he admits he bristled, just ever so slightly, whenever it was implied during the campaign that being a young, successful Jewish businessman automatically meant that he came from money and was therefore out of touch with parts of his district. The 5th is one of the most diverse districts in the city—stretching from Howard Park to Pimlico and Park Heights to Mount Washington and Roland Park. It’s got a Muslim community and a Latino community. It has some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, as well as some of the poorest. “I’m the youngest of five—I have four older sisters,” Schleifer says, gesturing toward the modest, brick duplex of his childhood. “There were seven of us in that house—three bedrooms and one bathroom. Everything I’ve gotten I have worked very hard for by building a business that, thank God, has been very successful.”

As he begins driving again, he talks about playing baseball and basketball with the mix of black, Jewish, and Latino kids up and down the street. “Once a year, the maintenance guy at the school [Falstaff Elementary/Middle] would go up on the roof and throw all the balls down,” Schleifer recalls with a smile. “We celebrated like it was the biggest day of the year. To us, it was.” It’s also on this block where his interests in community service and politics was first encouraged—Schleifer’s father, Barry, is a former Falstaff Improvement Association president.

After Schleifer turns past the school and continues on this mini-tour of his district, he notes the new sold-out Bancroft Village townhome development on Park Heights Avenue—with SUVs and bicycles parked in front of nearly every doorstep—and the synagogue next door. He also highlights the imminent closing of Northwestern High School. “There was a fight over the closing of the school, but we have to look at the property as an opportunity now,” Schleifer says. “It’s not often that that many acres of land become available—whether it’s for a park or recreation center or some other kind of redevelopment.”

Looping past Pimlico, the historic racetrack in the heart of the district, he says he’d like “to see 50 events a year, not one or two.” But he adds that the Pimlico community—not just elected leaders, business people, and city officials—need to have a seat at the table regarding the future of the venue, including signing off on the types of events that may get booked.

Later, he waves to a police officer standing on a corner and looks closely at another officer getting out of a car before again nodding hello. “If you’re a cop in this neighborhood and I don’t know you—it’s because you’re new here,” Schleifer says. “I know everybody in this neighborhood because I grew up here.

“My family has been here for 40-plus years,” Schleifer continues. “I was born at Sinai Hospital. You know the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a kid?’ That’s me.”

Schleifer acknowledges that the primary campaign got heated at times in the 5th District, pitting neighborhood against neighborhood, including allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. He wants to make it clear that he doesn’t represent one group’s interest over another.

“I serve the entire 5th District. There are differences, but there are also issues that overlap. We are all in this together.”

“He’s in it for the right reason,” Johnson says. “He has big shoes to fill.”

Current Fallstaff Improvement Association president, Sandra Johnson, has known Schleifer almost his whole life and she describes him as a hard worker with a significant resume in community service. “He’s in it for the right reasons,” Johnson says. The list of community positions Schleifer has held include serving as the northwest community liaison for City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and vice president of his Cheswolde Neighborhood Association. Johnson cautions, however, that it will take him time to get a handle on the complex and wide-ranging issues facing his district. She adds that there’s lots of diversity within the African-American, Latino, and Jewish communities in the 5th District. But the biggest challenge for Schleifer, Johnson says, is that it will simply take time to establish lines of communication and trust with people and community leaders accustomed to dealing with Spector. “He has big shoes to fill,” Johnson says. “Rikki Spector developed the meaningful relationships she has over many years, and he will have to do the same. But he has the personality for it. He’s going to do fine.”

Spector and Schleifer reconciled their campaign differences after the primary. She showed up at his packed late-September fundraiser at the Royal Kosher Restaurant, as did Young, several current members of the City Council, and several likely new members, including Ryan Dorsey and Zeke Cohen, Democratic primary winners in the 3rd and 1st districts, respectively. Sen. Ben Cardin, state Del. Sandy Rosenberg, and local Jewish political power broker Howard Friedman, the former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and past leader of several Baltimore Jewish organizations, also turned out. Schleifer worked the room like a pro, keeping his address short while asking the gathered audience twice to applaud Spector’s dedicated service.

Spector says she doesn’t regret her decision to endorse Gardner. She also says she’ll do whatever she can to help smooth Schleifer’s transition. “Yitz believes he can do the job, and he really wants the job,” Spector says. “That’s how I felt. That’s important.”

To Friedman, who has hosted President Obama at his Northwest home, Schleifer’s fast rebuilding of bridges—and new bridge building—is a sign of political maturity. (Schleifer hustled to Camden Yards immediately after his fundraiser to catch up with some supporters who attended the ball game that night.) “There’s an old line in Washington—‘We have friends and soon-to-be friends,’” Friedman says. “That’s how effective politicians think and how he thinks.”

It goes without saying, Schleifer says, that his faith informs not just the way he lives his daily life, but his politics. At the City Council level, that translates into a concern for others and commitment to constituent service.

He also believes that the concept behind several independent efforts in the Orthodox community can be extrapolated into other neighborhoods. The Northwest Baltimore Citizens Patrol and Shomrim neighborhood watch group are examples. Chaverim, a volunteer group providing nonmedical roadside and home assistance, and Hatzalah, a privately funded, two-ambulance, nonprofit emergency medical service, are two others.

At the same time, Schleifer is expected to bring a conservative voice to the council in fiscal matters. Unlike most of the incoming councilmembers, he has not voiced support for the proposed $15 mandatory minimum wage. And, although it didn’t come before him, he also saw the record-breaking, tax-increment financing package awarded to Sagamore Development’s Port Covington project in a more favorable light than some of his freshmen colleagues.

“The top issues in my district are public safety and property taxes,” Schleifer says. “If you don’t feel secure in your home, taking care of that comes first. The Orthodox community doesn’t use them, but schools are obviously an important issue for the entire city. The other big issue is economic development. We need jobs in my district. We need good-paying jobs, too.” Last summer, Schleifer successfully advocated for expanding the city’s lab and fingerprinting capacity after a rash of break-ins in Northwest.

“There’s also no reason why every dollar the city government spends can’t be seen online,” Schleifer says. “With technology today, and the internet, that’s something that everyone of my generation expects.”

As far as doing his work and keeping the Sabbath in a 24/7 job, Schleifer says it is just one more small obstacle to overcome.“If there’s an event on a Saturday—I’m not going to be there. But I’ll have a staff person attend in my place,” Schleifer says. “I can only work six days a week. That means I’m going to have to work a lot harder on those six days.”

You can tell a lot about a person’s status in Washington, D.C., by the location of their office. The Oval Office, of course, is the ultimate seat of power. But a close runner-up—coveted by aspiring politicos from sea to shining sea—is a piece of prime professional real estate in the West Wing. And since 2014, that’s exactly where Broderick Johnson has been—in a second-floor office decorated with family photos, University of Michigan sports memorabilia, and, oh yeah, framed images of him with his friend and boss President, Barack Obama.

As an assistant to the president, Cabinet secretary, and leader of the My Brother’s Keeper Task Force, Johnson is part of the inner circle of the Obama administration in a way that few others can claim. As Cabinet secretary, he liaises with the heads of federal departments and agencies on behalf of the president. As an assistant, he is a trusted voice in Obama’s chorus of formal and informal advisers. And as the head of My Brother’s Keeper (MBK), he coordinates the administration’s efforts to improve outcomes for boys and young men of color, an initiative President Obama has said “goes to the very heart of why I ran for president.”

So, yes, as Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said of Johnson at an April event at Frederick Douglass High School, “He’s a very important person in the White House.”

But just who is he exactly? Well, he’s a Baltimorean, for starters, and a West Baltimorean, specifically. And though he has spent the majority of his adult life in D.C., his Baltimore upbringing continues to shape him, and indeed, the country, especially through his leadership of My Brother’s Keeper, which Obama launched in February 2014 in the wake of several high-profile police shootings of young, black men.

At the April event with Sec. Vilsack—which promoted federal urban agriculture initiatives by marking the opening of the high school’s garden and orchard—Johnson deviated from his prepared remarks to acknowledge how personally meaningful it was for him to be there.

“This neighborhood is very special to me, this school is very special to me,” he told the students, faculty, and community stakeholders assembled in the historic high school’s library that day. “Sixty-one years ago, my parents met here. . . . But it wasn’t until almost a year ago to the day that I visited this very special, hallowed place.

“I came back,” he continued, “because we, of course, were very concerned about what had happened in Baltimore with the Freddie Gray situation, and what had happened, especially, to you students here at Frederick Douglass. There was a lot of negative press about you all, right? As though you all were running around burning the neighborhood, tearing things down. I know that you all do a lot of very positive things that people don’t talk about. So to be here with you and talk about this very positive, new experience of the garden means so much.”

If Johnson, 59, sounds like he knows whereof he speaks, he does. Growing up in nearby Park Circle—the son of hard-working, devoutly Catholic parents—Johnson often found himself in conflict with the limitations placed on him in a Baltimore he describes as only “technically integrated.”

“My mother would tell me about how, when I was a toddler, there were stores in Baltimore that would not allow her to take me into the dressing room to try clothes on,” Johnson recalls, sitting in a wingback chair in his West Wing office a few months after his April visit to the school.

Another instance of subtler racism prompted a parental intervention that proved pivotal for Johnson.

“My second-grade teacher called my parents,” he says with a bemused chuckle. “Apparently, they were called to hear that their son was a bit of a hoodlum—or on a path to being a hoodlum and going to reform school. My parents’ reaction to that was to put me in Catholic school. But that was their attitude—he’s going to do good things in life so let’s take him and put him in a different environment.”

Johnson admits that he, like many 7-year-old boys, may have been a “bit of a knucklehead,” but he says he was hardly a budding delinquent. Instead, he remembers aspiring “to be a leader,” and, at his new school—the now-defunct St. Ambrose Catholic School in Park Heights—he became one.

“I became an altar boy,” he notes. “I also became a safety patrol person. And by the time I reached the seventh grade, I think I was the head of the altar boys and the head of the school safety group.”

Johnson thinks that what happened to him is indicative of an enduring tendency to view black boys as inherently violent or dangerous.

“It is reflective of something we, in the work around My Brother’s Keeper, still deal with today. We still see that in suspensions and expulsions.”

(Indeed, a recent academic analysis of data from public schools in 13 Southern states found that black students were expelled and suspended at rates disproportional to their white classmates. And black boys and young men were censured most of all.)

“I don’t know,” says Johnson wearily when asked why his teacher might have taken such a severe view of his 7-year-old self. “It was just something she didn’t see in me—or did see in me.”

After graduating from Woodlawn High School—his parents moved the family to the county after the ’68 riots—Johnson matriculated at The College of the Holy Cross, a prestigious Jesuit liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts. After a bumpy, hard-partying freshman year, he switched his major from history to philosophy and found a mentor in philosophy professor George Hampsch, a former Trappist monk whose classes emphasized social justice.

“It made a huge difference,” Johnson notes. “I think it was just the value of questioning things, to get to a point where you were comfortable with, say, your own personal values, your own meaning in life. [It also] helped me get through a lot of political confusion at the time in my own head about do you try to make change outside of government? Do you try to make change inside of government?”

Johnson graduated from Holy Cross in 1978, thinking he’d become a philosophy professor. But after a couple years of graduate studies at Bowling Green State University, he realized it would be “a dead end.” Instead, he enrolled at the University of Michigan Law School—crossing paths with fellow future Obama administration officials Ken Salazar and Valerie Jarrett in the process.

Jarrett, senior adviser to the president and a close personal friend of the Obamas, remembers Johnson as a “very studious, serious young man with a huge heart.”

“The issues that he cared about [then] are the same ones he cares about today,” she says, adding that he was focused then, as now, on “how he could use his legal education to make a difference in the world.”

As law school graduation approached in 1983, Johnson briefly considered returning to Baltimore to practice law. But he found the city unreceptive.

“In those years, the Baltimore firms were just kind of not interested in the idea of [hiring] returning African Americans,” he says. “So in a period when Baltimore could have used returning people who could have been leaders of Baltimore institutions and good role models, something was going on there that was troublesome and hurt the city.”

Though Johnson acknowledges that it was a disappointment at the time, he now says he has no regrets.

“Life has turned out the way it has, and it has been great. I’ve been able to help my hometown in considerable ways from here,” he says.

In 1986, Johnson started his political pilgrim’s progress as an aide in the House of Representatives Legislative Office, where he worked on landmark legislation such as the Immigration Reform and Control Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act. After three years, he left the Hill to work for a law firm before returning to Capitol Hill in 1993 as chief counsel for two House committees. Then, in 1998, he was brought into the Clinton administration as the deputy assistant for legislative affairs, lobbying the House of Representatives on behalf of the president’s agenda. He calls the experience “incredibly exhilarating,” though the excitement was somewhat tempered by the Lewinsky scandal and subsequent impeachment trials.

“It was a lot more somber than people perhaps talk about,” he recalls of that time. “Essentially, I never felt like [President Clinton] was going to have to leave office, but I guess it was kind of a close call at times. . . . But I do remember, there was, just as importantly, a sense we had work we had to get done, legislatively.”

After the Clinton administration, Johnson decamped to the private sector, working as an executive for AT&T. By this time, he had met, fallen in love with, and married Michelle Norris, the radio journalist and former host of All Things Considered. The couple has a son and a daughter. Johnson also has an older son from a previous marriage.

In 2003, in the midst of this happy time, Johnson got a request from a friend that would alter the direction of his life. This friend knew a state senator and former community organizer from Chicago who was interested in running for Illinois’ soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat. The candidate was bright, hard-working, charismatic, and ambitious, but he didn’t know many people in Washington. Would Johnson be willing to meet him and think about supporting him?

“I said, ‘Sure,’” Johnson recalls. “He came to [AT&T’s] offices [in Washington, D.C.] and there were four or five of us in a huge conference room. Then we had a fundraiser for him, and a couple months later got to know him [personally].”

Though Johnson found the candidate—who bore the distinctive name Barack Obama—“cool” and “obviously brilliant,” he didn’t necessarily think he was meeting a future president. That changed a year later when Johnson, who was then working for the presidential campaign of John Kerry, watched Obama—still just a candidate for U.S. Senate—take the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Boston and deliver the keynote address.

“That was quite something . . . trying to navigate these narrow corridors to get him down to the stage and he had people stopping him along the way as they all tried to pronounce his name,” he recalls with a laugh. “It was pretty clear to me that he could run for the highest office one day after he’d given that speech.”

Of course, Obama would run for president—and win—in 2008 and 2012, becoming the country’s first African-American chief executive. Both times, Johnson was along for the wild ride as an adviser, part-time in 2008 and then full-time in 2012.

“He provided the campaign with enormous counsel and advice that I found invaluable,” recalls Jarrett.

That’s why no one was surprised when Johnson formally joined the administration in February 2014.

“I had been trying since 2008 to get Broderick to come into the administration,” says Jarrett. “I thought Broderick would have the gravitas to be the primary conduit between the cabinet and the White House. His breadth and depth of knowledge of policy, as well as strategy, made him uniquely qualified. And he has the complete trust of the president. I think Broderick’s moral compass and sense of true north are identical to the president’s.”

Johnson accepted, knowing the president was looking for not just a Cabinet secretary, but a leader for the soon-to-be-launched My Brother’s Keeper, as well. The public-private initiative sets standards for and helps facilitate action in communities looking to address the opportunity gap for young men of color. Currently, there are My Brother’s Keeper communities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 19 tribal nations. Maryland alone has eight, including a Baltimore chapter, which was launched in January 2015.

Johnson—whom Jarrett calls “Mr. Baltimore to the administration”—admits he takes a special interest in the city’s MBK community, which has introduced mentorship and job-training programs. And he has already had meetings with Baltimore’s likely next mayor, Catherine Pugh, about strengthening the program in her administration.

Johnson says it’s all about ensuring My Brother’s Keeper survives, even after the Obama administration ends. President Obama has pledged to continue the work post-presidency, and a nonprofit version of My Brother’s Keeper has been established to facilitate that. And Johnson says he and other administration officials are working to “embed” MBK-related efforts in federal departments and agencies “by virtue of things like multi-year grants and initiatives.”

“Whether the next president calls it My Brother’s Keeper or not, these approaches and these multi-year efforts will continue,” he promises.

As for Johnson himself, he jokes that the first thing he’ll do on Jan. 21, 2017, is book himself into a spa somewhere. More seriously, it’s likely he’ll return to the University of Michigan—where he has taught before—as a part-time adjunct professor, focusing on law and government courses.

“It’s practicum,” he explains. “Here’s how someone who is a law student can get into a career [doing] some of the things I’ve been able to do.”

Johnson then points to a dry erase board hanging on a wall in his office. On it are written motivational phrases that Johnson says help him get through the unrelenting 12- and 14-hour days that White House work demands. One in particular—“Make the improbable, probable”—resonates with Johnson when he thinks about his future—and his past.

“So like, for me, it was improbable, going back to the second-grade teacher, that I would end up being able to do the things I’ve been able to do, absolutely improbable,” he declares. “But it’s probable that my kids will be able to do these things and that the kids in these MBK pictures will aspire to be able to do things and lead generations of their own children and grandchildren for whom things will be more probable than people would have expected.

It is absolutely true.”

You grew up in a rural town outside Pittsburgh. How does that inform your perception of politics?
I had a firsthand view of what blue-collar America looks like. My dad worked in a plant and my mother was a bank teller and then branch manager. You see why pocketbook issues resonate with people. You also realize what “experts” miss is that there are differing opinions and factions within groups. You can’t paint everyone from the same place, the same demographic, with a broad brush. That’s what I try to get students to understand.

Since launching the Goucher Poll in 2012, you and your students have been surveying Marylanders, not just on candidates and races, but on the issues.
It makes me cringe when politicians dismiss polls, as if what the public thinks doesn’t matter. I think politicians have to do what they believe is best, but you can’t disregard public sentiment. Larry Hogan knows how to tap into that sentiment.

How do you determine what questions to ask in a poll?
If I ever hear a politician say something like, “The vast majority of the people in the state support this”—well, we’re going to test that.

You’ve written about the gender gap. Essentially, voters are equally willing to vote for female candidates, but there’s a shortage on the ballots?
Yes. The GOP in particular needs to recruit more. But there’s still an ambition gap. If I ask students in one of my classes if they’d consider running for office, a couple of boys will raise their hand. The smartest girl often will respond, “I can see myself working for a politician.” And I’m like, “No, you should run for office.”

Where do you live? Are you someone who gets involved in community issues?
Federal Hill. And yes, I’m the crime and safety chair for my neighborhood association. My husband is also now vice president of the Federal Hill South Neighborhood Association, and I’m so proud to be a politician’s wife. [Laughs.] Well, community activist’s wife.

It’s 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 13, and hundreds of Baltimoreans are streaming into the B&O Railroad Museum. Dressed in everything from church clothes to jeans and T-shirts, they breeze past the gift shop, through the historic roundhouse, and outside to the reception pavilion, which is set up for a party with a sundae bar at one end, a DJ booth at the other, and a stage in between. But even the sundae bar’s four flavors of Jack & Jill ice cream and the upbeat strains of Whitney Houston, Bruno Mars, and The Black Eyed Peas are no match for today’s star attraction.

The real reason people came today is standing outside the pavilion’s entrance, dressed in a white ankle-length dress, red blazer, and stiletto pumps. Former mayor—some might say disgraced former mayor—Sheila Dixon is here literally shaking hands and kissing babies, as some 400 supporters pour in for her ice-cream social campaign event. Though Dixon announced she was running to reclaim her old job back in July—and has been hinting at her interest for even longer—this is being billed as her campaign kickoff. It’s her first step toward the Democratic mayoral primary on April 26, and then, if all goes according to plan, the general election a year from now.

Though she still has a long way to go, there is an extra buzz amongst the crowd today; the air feels different. Partly this is literal—a cold front swept through yesterday, pushing out the oppressive heat of summer and replacing it with the gusty coolness of fall—but it’s also figurative. On Friday, Dixon’s successor, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, announced that she would not seek re-election. In light of that bombshell, Dixon’s campaign suddenly seems less like a curiosity (“Baltimore Is Getting Out the Popcorn for Sheila Dixon vs. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake” blared a Baltimore Business Journal headline in July) and more like a real option in a crowded field. Indeed, if the event’s turnout and media profile are anything to go by, Dixon may now be a—if not the—front-runner. Even City Council president Bernard “Jack” C. Young—once rumored to be considering a mayoral run himself—has stopped by to glad-hand prospective voters.

You can tell Dixon feels the momentum as she mounts the dais, looking a good decade younger than her 61 years. She begins her remarks by thanking her many loved ones in attendance—including her two children Jasmine, 26, and Joshua, 20—and wishing happy birthday to several close associates. She then launches into a speech that will be familiar to anyone who has seen the campaign video she unveiled just a day later. She characterizes Baltimore as “smart, tough, and strong”; lauds its citizens as “our greatest asset”; and promises to “reclaim, revive, and rebuild this great city.” But there are hints of a more complicated history here, too. More than once, she emphasizes her experience, and, in the video, she talks about Baltimore’s capacity for “second chances.”

“Clearly, I disappointed people. I was embarrassed. I was devastated.”

Outside the museum, Rick Black, an accountant from Northwest Baltimore who is challenging Dixon for the Democratic nomination, stands with three volunteers, attempting to siphon interest away from the fundraiser. When asked why he is running, his answer is a reminder of all that has gone unsaid today. “We shouldn’t be saddled with a thief for mayor,” he says. “You can’t trust a thing she says.”

Dixon was still City Council president in 2006 when the state prosecutor began investigating her for potential ethics violations, including voting on contracts that benefited her sister’s employer and employing friend and campaign chairman Dale G. Clark without a contract. Though these allegations never resulted in any charges, the sprawling probe continued to home in on Dixon, especially her dealings with developers. In early 2009, Dixon, now mayor, was indicted on 12 charges (five of which were eventually dismissed) that included felony theft, perjury, fraud, and misconduct in office. The resulting trial revealed details about gifts lavished on her by Ronald Lipscomb, a married developer whom she briefly dated, as well as details about a sort of gift card slush fund she had set up for the needy, to which developers looking to curry favor would donate, and from which Dixon was found guilty of misappropriating about $630 worth of cards for personal use. (Dixon maintained that she thought the gift cards in question were gifts from Lipscomb.)

Already convicted of one misdemeanor and facing a second trial for a remaining offense, Dixon accepted an Alford plea deal on a perjury charge—meaning she did not admit guilt but acknowledged a jury could have convicted her based on the evidence. She was required to complete four years of probation, perform 500 hours of community service, and make a $45,000 charitable donation. In return, she would have no criminal record and would keep her $83,000-a-year government pension. But she had to resign as mayor, which she did, reluctantly, at noon on February 4, 2010.

For some, like Rick Black, this is all they remember about Sheila Dixon, and nothing will ever wipe the slate clean. Forget the creation of the free Charm City Circulator bus system. Forget single-stream recycling. Forget all the roads resurfaced as part of Operation Orange Cone. Forget the construction of the city’s first 24/7 homeless shelter. Forget the 20-year low in homicides under the steady leadership of Fred Bealefeld, whom she championed as police commissioner despite enormous political pressure. She is simply a crook, a liar, and a disgrace.

Robert Rohrbaugh, the now-retired state prosecutor who led the Dixon investigation is just as blunt as Black when describing Dixon’s political re-emergence. “Ms. Dixon has every right to seek political office and, in my opinion, the voters have every right to reject her,” he writes via email.

But in between the Rick Blacks and Robert Rohrbaughs of the world and her adoring public, there are voters watching Dixon’s comeback with some vague mixture of interest and unease. They accept that she may have been a good mayor, but they’re not sure she’s a good person. They want to know, who is Sheila Dixon and can they trust her?

About a week after the ice-cream social, Sheila Dixon is alone in her tiny street-facing office at the Charles Village headquarters of the Maryland Minority Contractors Association, where she has been employed since mid-2010. It’s 9 a.m. and, like most days, she has a full schedule ahead of her. Though her title is marketing director, she is, to hear her describe it, more like an executive director, involved in almost every aspect of the organization. It seems she can’t help but run things.

Impeccably fit and well dressed, she is guarded, but radiates an earthy warmth despite her wariness. She dutifully answers questions as we plot the familiar biographical arc, starting with her childhood in a working-class West Baltimore family, then moving along to her education at Northwestern High School, Towson University, and finally The Johns Hopkins University, where she earned her master’s in education management. She touches on her time as a teacher for the city school system, her 17 years as an international specialist for the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (now the Department of Commerce), and her deep involvement with her church, Bethel AME, renowned as the place of worship for Baltimore’s African-American power elite.

But it is when she begins talking policy that she comes alive. Whatever else Dixon is, she is truly interested in the mechanics of running a city. “When I got on the [city] council,” she says, “I began to learn city government, learn the budget process, learn the different aspects and the agencies. I was fascinated because I wanted to know how those things worked, so I could do my job even better.”

Her political career started in earnest in 1987 when she won a seat on the City Council, representing much of West Baltimore in what was then the 4th District. “I remember [then Mayor Clarence H.] Du Burns saying, ‘Just don’t get in there and get up and give flowery speeches. You’ve got to get out there and do for your district,’” she says. “And when I went around in my district and saw so many challenges and issues that had not been addressed—I mean, that was the driving force.”

In 1991, she had her first brush with infamy after she took off her shoe and banged it on a table in anger during a council meeting. She shouted at white colleagues, “You’ve been running things for the last 20 years. Now the shoe is on the other foot.” Known as “the shoe incident,” those few seconds branded her as combative and provided plenty of ammunition for those who wanted to reduce her to the offensive “angry black woman” stereotype. It wasn’t until an interview with The Sun eight years later—in the midst of her campaign for City Council president—that she addressed the incident in any detail, explaining that her fury was stoked when a white colleague made bigoted remarks in a closed session before the meeting. The comments, she said then, were like “fighting words, like talking about somebody’s mother.” And yes, it did make her angry. “I was so angry that I was gonna take off my shoe and smack [the white colleague] in the head,” she told The Sun. “And the [TV] cameras were on me and I caught myself, and [Councilwoman] Vera Hall came over and said, ‘It’s not worth it.’ And that’s when I banged the shoe on the table.”

“She grew into the job. She became more, well, mayoral. . . . She listened a lot.”

While the “shoe incident” turned off some voters, it endeared her to others, who saw in her reaction a righteous passion that challenged the status quo.

A former member of the local media who covered Dixon’s career describes her appeal thusly: “She can’t help but engage. She had a lot of emotion that she would just wear on her sleeve. It’s not like she’s going to consult with her press people and she’s going to come up with the best way to respond. There was something very refreshing about that.”

Enough voters supported Dixon in 1999 to make her the first African-American woman elected as City Council president. She won re-election in 2004 and then, when Mayor Martin O’Malley left City Hall for the governor’s mansion in 2007, Dixon finished his term, becoming both the first woman and first African-American woman to hold the position.

Ironically, the same characteristics that got her to the mayor’s office—that unwillingness to take no for an answer—also got her into trouble once she was there. According to the media insider, who requested anonymity because they still cover Baltimore occasionally, Dixon’s Achilles’ heel was a sense of entitlement: “‘I’m entitled to my pay raise. I’m entitled to my driver. I’m the mayor of Baltimore.’” But, the source adds, “I don’t think she’s wrong to look back and say white guys have been having this for years. I’m going to get mine.”

At least initially, Dixon needed that armor of entitlement, says one high-ranking official from her administration. “I remember there were a lot of people who were sort of borderline upset at Mayor O’Malley for leaving the city to Sheila Dixon,” recalls the official, who sometimes works with city government and therefore also requested anonymity. “Many had a Sheila Dixon story, some interaction with her as [City Council] president that they didn’t remember as entirely positive.” But, the official maintains, “She grew into the job. She became more, well, mayoral. She was very receptive to what people had to say; she listened a lot. When people met with her, they really got the feeling that she was interested in what they had to say.”

Her devotion seemed to loosen the sclerotic bureaucracy of city government, and, as she puts it, “unclothe” the potential of Baltimore.

Says Dixon: “I was proud that our city agencies were really stepping up and being a part of the process. Because, you know, in government, people can sometimes get into their little cubicles and they do their job, but they don’t do it for a purpose. People have said to me that they felt like they had a purpose.”

Her former administration official agrees: “There genuinely was a period of excitement when people thought there was a mayor who only wanted to be mayor—nothing more—with her staff rowing in the same direction.”

That made what came next all the worse. Dixon handily won re-election in November 2007, but her days were numbered. In June 2008, the state prosecutor’s office raided her Hunting Ridge home, carting away boxes of evidence. In January 2009, the indictments came down. She was on trial by the fall and convicted on December 1. By February 4, she was out of a job, snowed in at home during the back-to-back Snowmageddon blizzards of 2010, “crying, eating snacks that I normally wouldn’t eat, watching movies, and trying to be strong for my son because he was home.”

“It was very painful,” she continues. “I mean, I loved what I was doing. The people who were part of my team, they also felt pain because they love city government. Clearly, I disappointed people. I was embarrassed. I was devastated.”

It is this shattered trust that Dixon has to mend if she has any hopes of winning back her position. But some experts say it can be done.

Jeff Smith, an assistant professor of politics and advocacy at the Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School in New York City, is the co-author of a forthcoming paper on political comebacks and says there are three main factors to consider: first, “the electoral context,” (i.e. “the partisan and social composition of the constituency”); second, “the nature of the past scandal and the appropriateness of [the candidate’s] response”; and lastly, the “candidate’s charisma.” Smith thinks that—in lieu of a strong challenger—Dixon has a good shot.

“The crime was not a disqualifying crime,” says Smith, whose experience with political scandal is not merely academic. A former Missouri state senator and U.S. congressional candidate, he was convicted of two felony counts of obstruction of justice in 2009 for which he served a year in federal prison. “You can’t come back from, like, pedophilia,” he continues. “Taking $500—not saying it was right or condoning it—is the kind of thing that I think voters would potentially be willing to forgive.” He further believes that “the demographics of the city are favorable for Dixon.” In fact, he sees a lot of parallels between Dixon and the late Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who was reelected just four years after he was busted smoking crack cocaine during an undercover sting.

“I wrote a piece about Barry for Politico,” Smith says. “And the main thesis of the piece is that a lot of elites, especially white journalists, will just be appalled that voters would continue to support Marion Barry. I felt like a lot of that commentary ignored the deep history Barry had with voters, especially in the poorest sections of the city. And from what I’ve read and heard, Dixon has a similar orientation as a politician.”

“Some people are not as forgiving as others . . . and hold certain judgments.”

This would not come as news to Dixon. Before she entered the race, she commissioned an internal poll, which, according to her, revealed strong support for her candidacy overall, but some deficits, particularly in white neighborhoods. “Some people are not as forgiving as others, and some people hold certain judgments because of perceptions—and I’m not saying African-Americans don’t either, that’s not what I’m saying—but that’s where [support is weakest],” she says.

Dixon is attempting to address this by going to these resistant neighborhoods and hosting informal Q&As that she describes as “very open, frank conversations that range from A to Z.”

She also formally apologized—though with mixed results—during a May interview on WJZ, in which she said, “I think people in Baltimore want to hear my sincerity—that I am sorry for what happened. I’m apologizing about it. I also know that people want to hear that I have not taken anything for granted in that process of what happened.”

The euphemistic, passive language irked many. Writing in The Sun, columnist Dan Rodricks later called the apology “weak” and “five years too late,” and a separate Sun editorial in July snarked, “color us unimpressed.”

She does better during our conversation in September admitting that she has “a lot of regrets,” that she visited a therapist in the wake of the scandal, and that, if re-elected, she will “be more transparent in every aspect of what I do in my life.”

But it is also true that to watch Dixon discuss the scandal is to watch someone walk a tightrope between contrition and defiance. She will, in one breath, say that she was unfairly targeted by the state prosecutor and the media, and then, in the next, admit to the hurt and chaos she caused. That she seems sincere about both only complicates matters.

So it becomes not so much a question of Dixon as a question of you, the voter. Is she sorry enough for you? Did she learn enough for you? Do her positive qualities outweigh her shortcomings? Does she deserve a second chance? Dixon, of course, thinks she does.

Only time will tell if the voters of Baltimore agree.

Election 2016: The Candidates

Besides Dixon, here’s a list of those who have declared their candidacies.

Rick Black, Democrat: An accountant from Northwest Baltimore, Black’s website calls him a “fierce advocate against government overreach [who] wants to return our city to the principles of honesty, personal freedom, and financial transparency.”

Mack Clifton, Democrat: A minister and author who has experienced homelessness, Clifton says on his website that he doesn’t “believe in thinking inside the box.”

Bonnie Renee Lane, Green: A native of Michigan who has lived in Baltimore since 2001, Lane cites her top issues as affordable housing, a $15-an-hour minimum wage, and ending police brutality.

Mike Maraziti, Democrat: The owner of Fells Point bar One-Eyed Mike’s and the president of the Fells Point Main Street business association, Maraziti says his priorities include education, lowering property taxes and crime, and restoring accountability.

Connor Meek, Unaffiliated: After being mugged earlier this year, Meek wrote an editorial in The Sun calling for police stations to stay open around the clock, a policy that has since been adopted.

Collins Otonna, Independent: In an email, Otonna describes himself as a “full gospel evangelist,” who works in development commerce and runs two nonprofit foundations, building public libraries in West Africa.

Catherine E. Pugh, Democrat: Currently a state senator repping the 40th District, Pugh also has been a state delegate, City Council member, journalist, and businesswoman. She previously ran for mayor in 2011.

Carl Stokes, Democrat: Stokes currently represents the 12th District on the City Council. He previously ran for mayor in 1999.

Brian Charles Vaeth, Republican: Vaeth is a former Baltimore City firefighter who received a career-ending injury on the job and has spent the subsequent years embroiled in a lawsuit against the city.

Calvin Allen Young III, Democrat: Young, 27, is a native Baltimorean who has a degree in mechanical engineering from New York University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Nick Mosby, Democrat: As a Baltimore native who was elected to represent to City Council in 2011, Mosby represents the 7th District, which was consumed by much of the rioting and peaceful protesting surrounding Freddie Gray’s death.