On the morning after she stared down her criminal indictment, and insisted she’d done nothing wrong, Mayor Sheila Dixon went back to business as usual. She arrived at the Upton Boxing Center, in the 1900 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, and put on boxing gloves. She threw a few snappy shadow punches. The shadow must have had a face like the state prosecutor of Maryland.
The trip to the boxing center was part of the mayor’s Fit Baltimore program. By Friday evening, just hours after her indictment, Dixon’s office already had put out a statement about the Fit program, blithely declaring, “Baltimore City is poised to soar to new heights. There will be challenges. In fact, there already has been. But with perseverance and faith, we will weather this storm.”
The allusion was clear, though the mayor didn’t know the half of it. On Saturday, as Dixon and others put on gloves and worked out, the boxing ring began to move. The mayor noticed it but kept on shadow boxing. Then the metal stanchions supporting the ring collapsed.
When a security officer helped her out of the ring, it turned out the mayor was shaken but not stirred from her daily routine.
It has been this way for three years now. Investigators press ever closer, but she gets up and goes to work. They invade her home last summer, and she goes off to work. They issue a 12-count criminal indictment alleging theft, perjury and fraud, and she goes to work.
Say what you will – this is a woman of remarkable tenacity, and toughness, and steely-eyed focus, and a work ethic beyond reproach. And the mind does back flips to recall others around here, political leaders who came up against the law, and how they faced life in their hours of crises.
There was a time, roughly 30 years ago, when the Baltimore area seemed to lead the league in political corruption: Spiro Agnew, moving from Baltimore County to Annapolis and then to Washington, never broke stride when it came to taking money under the table. Baltimore County Executive Dale Anderson went off to prison, and so did Anne Arundel County’s Joseph Alton.
Anderson never got over his troubles. From the moment a federal jury found him guilty of 32 counts of extorting kickbacks from developers, of tax evasion and conspiracy, he barely contained his rage.
“I’m not guilty,” he said as he marched out of the old Calvert Street federal courthouse, “and I’m not gonna let these bastards destroy me. I’m gonna beat them back to their goddamned socks.”
He never did. He went to prison, came out, got elected to the state legislature for a term, then lost a bid for re-election. At the end of his life, the emotional fires still burned. At his home off Belair Road one afternoon not long before the end, he said, “I’m the only man on Earth who knows absolutely he’s not guilty. These prosecutors gave immunity to 15 felons. They gave É”
His voice droned on, still trying to convince anyone who would listen that he’d done nothing wrong. For a while, Anderson had a familiar face near him at Allenwood federal prison: Joe Alton. Alton pleaded guilty to taking money and, unlike Anderson, left for prison without a public murmur of protest.
When he was released, Alton described the prison experience as “interesting and educational.” When Anderson saw Alton’s description of the joint, he fired off a note from prison: “Dear Joe,” it said, “you were in the wrong institution all along.”
Then there was Agnew.
On the evening he caved in to the government’s case declaring thousands of dollars routinely extorted in little white envelopes, and pleaded no contest to tax evasion charges and thus became the only vice president ever to resign in disgrace, Agnew took his family to dinner at Sabatino’s Restaurant, in Little Italy.
In public, he didn’t talk about his downfall for the rest of his life. As he stepped down, the country was already gearing up for Watergate. Who cared about Agnew when there was the furtive Richard Nixon, trying to shred the Constitution?
Ironically, Agnew first heard about his legal troubles from Marvin Mandel, who succeeded him as governor and heard about the investigation from a well-connected friend. “The feds are giving three of your friends immunity,” Mandel said.
“Nah,” Agnew said, “it’s not gonna happen.” He said he had a deal with Nixon that would keep him safe. A few hours later, Agnew phoned Mandel back.
“You’re right,” he said. “They’re double-crossing me.”
The irony was, the feds soon came after Mandel. He was found guilty, but kept appealing. He did his time in prison, and later had his case overturned. His attorney, of course, was a young Arnold Weiner, who’s now representing Sheila Dixon.
