If campaign signs were votes, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake would be the hands-down favorite to keep her job as Baltimore City Council president for four years. And if dedicated campaign workers were a guide, Council Member Kenneth Harris Sr. might be the strongest challenger to Rawlings-Blake.
But don?t put too much into the dearth of signs for Michael Sarbanes, said Keisha Carter, manager of his campaign for council president. “Someone made a conscious effort to take down our signs,” Carter said before the polls closed Tuesday. Volunteers put a lot of signs up late Monday and early Tuesday, but “the overwhelming majority were missing” when workers got to the polls.
Despite campaign help from Gov. Martin O?Malley, Rawlings-Blake faced a tight race to retain the post she gained when Sheila Dixon replaced O?Malley as mayor. Like the other candidates, Rawlings-Blake crisscrossed the city on primary day, trying to eke out a win from the low turnout, dampened by the first rain in weeks.
“I don?t think it will change the outcome,” Rawlings-Blake told The Examiner as she worked the poll at Leith Walk Elementary School in northeast Baltimore. With voters scarce, she was able to greet most of them personally.
Despite her 12 years on the council, it was Rawlings-Blake? first citywide race, but normally an incumbent ? even one chosen only by her colleagues ? would have had the upper hand against a community activist who had never run for political office.
But in this case, the activist was named Sarbanes, a name that has been winning Baltimore elections for four decades as father Paul Sarbanes ran for delegate, Congress and Senate, and then brother John won a U.S. House seat last year.
Michael Sarbanes was able to raise more money than Rawlings-Blake, and published polls showed the race close. The two wound up splitting important endorsements from labor and liberal groups, and Sarbanes got the nod from two city newspapers.
Harris, despite two terms on the City Council and a campaign theme of being “serious about Baltimore,” has not been able to raise his profile during the campaign.
Political observers, such as Morgan State University political science professor Vernon Gray, who has been an adviser to Dixon, said the votes of black women would be crucial to the race.
