We had no reasonable expectation that Mayor Brandon Scott would answer. What politician would?
The request was provocative: Please rank your modern predecessors.
The pitfalls are numerous. Many of the men and women who took the mayoral reins before Scott are still with us. Some wield local positions of power. More than one has been criminally indicted. All are beloved in their own way.
Scott hardly hesitated.
“I like all the smoke,” he said.
And so we present, from worst to best (his preferred order), Scott’s ranking of Baltimore’s modern mayors.
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Unranked — Bernard “Jack” Young and Clarence H. “Du” Burns
Scott toyed with ranking Young second to last but said it was not fair to include him in the list because his tenure was so brief. Young, mayor from May 2019 to December 2020, assumed the post when Catherine Pugh resigned in the face of a swirling investigation into self-dealing.
What his tenure lacked in length, it delivered in memorable quips. Young once issued a warning about mysterious white vans abducting young women to harvest their body parts after seeing a Facebook post about it.
Young could not be reached for comment.
Scott also did not rank Clarence H. “Du” Burns, who became mayor after William Donald Schaefer’s resignation. Burns, Baltimore’s first Black mayor, served less than a year.
6. William Donald Schaefer
“This is going to be an unpopular opinion,” Scott said as he launched into his explanation of his lowest-ranked choice, “but only the person in my chair will understand this.”
Schaefer, the four-term Baltimore mayor turned governor, is among the most iconic of the city’s leaders.
His tireless boosterism is often credited with the transformation of the Inner Harbor. A statue of him, erected during his tenure, stands near the Harborplace pavilions. It’s hard to think of him without picturing the old-timey striped swimsuit he wore as he jumped into a Baltimore Aquarium tank at its 1981 opening.
Still, Schaefer, who died in 2011, occupied the bottom of Scott’s list.
“There are a lot of checks that I tried to cash that should have Spalding on it because they bounce coming from William Donald Schaefer,” he said without further explanation.
5. Catherine Pugh
Scott ranked Pugh near the bottom without explanation.
Pugh resigned in 2019 amid questions about a children’s book she produced called “Healthy Holly,” which she marketed and sold directly to nonprofit organizations, many of whom did business with the state and city. Pugh pleaded guilty to federal charges and served two years in prison.
Today, you can keep up with her through her regular column in The AFRO.
Pugh curtly declined to comment without hearing Scott’s ranking.
4. Sheila Dixon
It’s no surprise Scott ranked Dixon here. The two have run against each other twice, with Scott winning both times. The campaigns weren’t exactly friendly affairs. Dixon, who resigned after pleading guilty in 2010 to perjury, was known for her hands-on approach. And her propensity to speak her mind.
Reached by phone, Dixon declined to offer her own rankings — “Every man has his flaws,” she said — but was happy to dissect Scott’s.
She laughed at the notion Scott would rank Schaefer last — “was he even born yet?” she asked. She took offense that she was ranked fourth. She said she and those who worked for her would have put her higher.
As to Scott’s ranking of Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (keep reading), well, Dixon was dumbfounded.
“Stephanie? Who ran away and hid during the Freddie Gray incident?” Dixon said. “Stephanie? Oh my god.”
3. Martin O’Malley
O’Malley, the mayor from 1999 to 2007, ranked in the middle of the pack for Scott. Scott said his answer was guided by his experience as a Black youth in Baltimore during O’Malley’s tenure, when city police routinely cleared corners for little to no reason. The practice was later decried by federal consent decree monitors, and the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union sued the city over illegal arrests, winning a 2010 settlement.
“When I think about Mayor O’Malley, we made a lot of progress, but I was a young Black teenager at the time,” Scott said. “Nothing is going to change that for me.”
Scott pointed out that the policy was en vogue around the country. Even Mike Bloomberg, whom Scott partners with often, had similar policies when he was mayor of New York.
“I don’t think these folks are like racist or anything like this, but the policy and the impacts of the policy, we know better,” Scott said. “We should do better.”
Reached by text, O’Malley, true to form, declined to weigh in. “I’ll pass thanks,” he wrote.
2. Kurt Schmoke
It was a bit of a surprise Scott didn’t rank Schmoke No. 1. Scott has long spoken favorably of Schmoke, who has been something of a mentor. The first Black person elected mayor, Schmoke served three terms, from 1987 to 1999, and laid the groundwork for many policies in place today.
Most notably, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs and was the first to pilot a group violence reduction strategy, the same strategy with which Scott has made national headlines due to its efficacy here.
But Schmoke was before his time. His public safety policies were generally disliked, and the city saw a rise in violence during his tenure.
“I was able to go out and implement that we were going to have a comprehensive approach to gun violence because Kurt Schmoke said what he said 30 years ago,” Scott said. “Now for him it ended up being political suicide, but I stand on his shoulders.”
Reached by phone, Schmoke laughed at being ranked second and at the ranking of Schaefer, his predecessor.
Ranking mayors is like ranking baseball players, Schmoke said, meaning one has to consider the era they played and the competition they faced.
Rather than ranking modern mayors, Schmoke said he considered Theodore McKeldin the best mayor of the 20th century. McKeldin, who served from 1943 to 1947 and from 1963 to 1967, has the distinction of being Baltimore’s last Republican mayor.
“McKeldin really, post-war era, had the vision for what became the Inner Harbor,” Schmoke said. “And he took some actions on Civil Rights that weren’t very popular at the time.”
1. Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
Perhaps it was Scott’s long-standing relationship with Rawlings-Blake that nudged her to the top of his ranking. He got his start in City Hall as one of her staffers when she was a member of the City Council. He has called her a mentor, as he has Schmoke.
Justifying his decision Wednesday, Scott cited “record” low violence during Rawlings-Blake’s tenure. During her early years in office, which began in 2010, the homicide rate was the lowest since the 1980s.
But Rawlings-Blake’s time was upended by the unrest that erupted in the wake of the death of Gray after he was injured while shackled and unbuckled in the back of a police van. Outraged residents took to the streets in protest, images that would come to define Baltimore in the years after. Rawlings-Blake drew severe criticism for her leadership during the unrest, with then-Gov. Larry Hogan accusing her of being unreachable and “missing in action.”
Rawlings-Blake decided not to run for another term as a result.
She could not be reached for comment.
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