Posted on 10/23/2005 1:40:02 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BALTIMORE - When Mayor Martin O'Malley announced he was running for governor, the Democrat kicked off his campaign in a park overlooking the city's famed renovated harbor, a school band playing pep songs behind him as he talked up his experience in running Maryland's biggest city. But as other big-city mayors can attest, a high-profile urban post can be a political liability as well as an asset.
Just look to California, where a mayor of Los Angeles has never been elected governor. Or to New York, where Ed Koch failed to win the governor's office in 1982 despite being a household name statewide.
"Most big-city mayors don't make it to statewide offices," said Marion Orr, an urban politics professor at Brown University. "When you look at a big city like Baltimore, you see crime, you see poverty, you see bad schools. When you begin to think about the predicament of cities, it's not an easy position to sell."
In Maryland, however, the governor's office has been filled by a former Baltimore mayor as recently as 1992. And in next-door Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell was elected in 2002 after serving as mayor of Philadelphia.
Most big-city mayors have several factors working against them. First, a decades-long population shift from the cities to the suburbs means cities wield less electoral power and are demographically different from most states as a whole. The campaign style needed to win office in, say, Chicago, may not sell to voters in rural Illinois.
And there's a cultural divide between urban and rural areas that makes small-town voters suspicious of big-city mayors, said Matthew Streb, a political scientist at Northern Illinois University.
"If you're the mayor of a big city, you've run a campaign before. You have a campaign staff. You know how to raise money. What you haven't done is run a statewide election," Streb said. "It's very different to build a statewide coalition than an urban coalition."
O'Malley, who has been mayor since 1999, is bidding to win the Democratic nomination next year and unseat Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich. He is trying to sell his accomplishments: less violent crime, more elementary school students getting proficient marks on standardized tests and a widely publicized development renaissance.
Though the city is home to about 12 percent of Maryland's population, it is due to receive $1.06 billion in state aid this fiscal year out of a total of $5.16 billion available. Some say voters outside of Baltimore may feel that too much money has gone to fix the city's problems.
Opponents — including fellow Democrat Doug Duncan — note that O'Malley hasn't lived up to a promise to reduce city homicides to less than 175 annually. Republicans say 12 city high schools are considered persistently dangerous under federal education law.
"He has a failed record for the children of Baltimore," said Audra Miller, spokeswoman for the Maryland Republican Party.
Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow for the New America Foundation and author of pieces critical of O'Malley and other big-city mayors, said urban demographics are so different from the nation as a whole that politicians struggle to translate city posts into higher office.
"He's a gregarious, likable candidate. The problem is, he's presiding over a very troubled place," Kotkin said. "You run with the city itself, but it becomes something you have to run from unless you've done something very remarkable."
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On the Net:
O'Malley campaign: http://www.martinomalley.com
Ehrlich campaign: http://www.bobehrlich.com
Duncan campaign: http://www.dougduncan.com
"BALTIMORE - When Mayor Martin O'Malley announced he was running for governor, the Democrat kicked off his campaign in a park overlooking the city's famed renovated harbor, a school band playing pep songs behind him as he talked up his experience in running Maryland's biggest city. But as other big-city mayors can attest, a high-profile urban post can be a political liability as well as an asset."
Maybe it depends on how good a job you do - people are talking about Guiliani for President, not just governor.
Republicans say 12 city high schools are considered persistently dangerous under federal education law.
"He has a failed record for the children of Baltimore," said Audra Miller, spokeswoman for the Maryland Republican Party.
This is where some of the portion of the Baltimore state aid is ending up in the private coffers of Gilbert Sapperstein, alleged to be good buddies with Martin O'Malley and his father-in-law, MD. Attorney General, Joseph Curran Jr.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1507227/posts http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=9581 http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3164
Link should have been separated
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1507227/posts
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=9581
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3164
Link should have been separated
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1507227/posts
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=9581
http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=3164
Any time I take Amtrak to DC it looks to me as if Baltimore remains a toilet. Nothing but blocks and blocks of slums and poor neighborhoods. So what has O'Malley done to improve that??
Nothing !!!!!!
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