Olesker: Mayor Needs More Personal Fire Power

In the little boardroom office of a high-ranking city official this week, the subject got around to the race for mayor of Baltimore. The polls say is headed for easy victory in the upcoming Democratic primary vote. But the public buzz is something less than electric.

“She’s a little low key,” one official said.

"Next to ,” somebody else said, mentioning the legendarily feisty former mayor, “she looks practically comatose.”

“Yeah,” somebody said. “And Schaefer’s dead.”

That’s a cynic’s way of saying this mayor lacks a certain charisma. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. When Schaefer first ran for mayor, he was painfully shy and awkward whenever he ventured around people he didn’t know.

But, as he got comfortable with the job, he became not only the city’s chief cheerleader but a powerfully intimidating figure. If he thought any city employee was dogging it, there was hell to pay for that employee and the poor wretch’s boss, as well.

The city of Baltimore is hungry for such a larger-than-life figure right now.

This has been as low-energy a summer campaign for mayor as any in recent memory. There are candidates with some pretty compelling ideas—about lowering  property taxes, for example—but with Rawlings-Blake registering about two-thirds of the voter support in a recent Sun poll, it’s clear those ideas aren’t getting much traction.

One reason: The only candidate who’s got enough money for steady mass-media advertising, on television or elsewhere, is Rawlings-Blake.

And her campaign spots have not exactly been the stuff of deep-think insight about urban America. One TV ad that’s run for weeks, for example, features the mayor’s mother boasting about her.

To her credit, Rawlings-Blake has been a steady hand during some difficult times. She took office in the wake of Sheila Dixon’s forced exit. She’s survived snow storms and hurricane winds, which are basics for any mayor. And, through police scandals and cheating in the public schools and the fire department, there’s never a sense that she’s lost her composure nor made any dramatic mistakes.

Considering her unexpected arrival on the job, and the minimal insight most city residents had about her, she’s been a pleasant surprise to many.

But there’s a difference between not screwing up—and making some kind of positive impact.

Baltimore’s a city that needs an impact mayor. The city’s got 40,000 houses that are empty and mostly falling down. You want examples? Try driving down Druid Hill Avenue some time. The drug dealers have taken over entire blocks. You want examples? Try driving down almost any West Baltimore block some time. The murder rate’s better than it was in the 1990s, but try telling that to any of hundreds of families devastated by killings each year.

The public schools are better than they were a decade ago, but they still suffer some seemingly intractable problems: low academic scores, high dropout rates, kids passed through the system who aren’t picking up the basic skills they’ll need to find an occupation that doesn’t involve breaking the law.

Then there’s that property tax rate. Both Joseph T. "Jody" Landers and Sen. Catherine Pugh have laid out some pretty interesting plans for cutting it down. It’s a burden for those already living in the city, and it inhibits those who might want to move in.

But, even with high taxes, there’s been a steady arrival of young people into the city over the past decade or so. They like the city’s energy, its cosmopolitan mix, its waterfront neighborhoods.

But there’s a pattern to their stay. They marry. They have a child. And, before the child can reach public school age, these couples flee back to the suburbs.

These are big problems for any mayor. They require a mayor who brings some high-profile fire to the job, so that everybody can see it, and makes the flame rise high enough that it sends a glow across an entire troubled city.