City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake kept her job for another four years, winning a decisive 8,500-vote victory Tuesday keeping her job for another four years over community activist Michael Sarbanesin the Democratic primary. Two-term City Council member Kenneth Harris Sr. ran a distant third.
“There was a calm over the city today,” Rawlings-Blake told a cheering crowd of supporters near midnight Tuesday. “While it didn?t have to happen, it did. We have work to do in Baltimore. We are not giving up on one single neighborhood in the city.”
Rawlings-Blake was surrounded by many key Democrats who had endorsed and worked for her candidacy. They included Gov. Martin O?Malley, Rep. Elijah Cummings, former congressman Kweisi Mfume and Mayor Sheila Dixon, who easily won the post she had inherited from O?Malley when he became governor in January.
“Tonight?s victory was in essence a battle for Baltimore,” O?Malley said. “We did it together as one people.”
Rawlings-Blake and Sarbanes boasted two of the best brand names in city politics, with their fathers winning repeated elections.
Despite campaign help from O?Malley and the others and her 12 years on the council, Rawlings-Blake faced what looked like a tight race to retain the post she gained when Sheila Dixon replaced O?Malley as mayor. 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 aboutBaltimore,” had 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.
If campaign signs were votes, Rawlings-Blake would have been the hands-down favorite to keep her job as Baltimore City Council president for four years.
“Someone made a conscious effort to take down our signs,” Sarbanes campaign manager Keisha 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.
