Campaign altercation leads to calls for a Baltimore Democratic official’s ouster

A Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee member has been accused of verbally assaulting a 78-year-old campaign volunteer over the contentious District 41 state Senate primary race, with two bystanders saying they intervened to prevent a physical attack.

The alleged conduct of committee member Ronald “Ronnie” Rosenbluth, who represents District 41, warrants his removal, according to a petition submitted June 22 to state party Chair Steuart Pittman Jr.

A three-member Maryland Democratic Party committee will discuss Rosenbluth’s fate Wednesday.

Maryland Democratic Party spokesperson Carter Elliott IV said by email that “the party is not commenting on personnel matters,” including how often similar complaints have been filed.

Rosenbluth, who won the nomination for another term on the central committee in the June 23 election, did not respond to requests for comment.

Committee members raise money for candidates and register voters, but they’re most influential in choosing nominees to fill vacant elected offices.

The incident was not reported to police, according to Baltimore Police Department spokesperson Det. Niki Fennoy. A local party leader said other witnesses gave a different account of events.

The 62-year-old Rosenbluth is best known as the longtime owner of Tov Pizza, a popular kosher restaurant in Northwest Baltimore. His younger cousin, City Council member Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer, once called the restaurant “a political clubhouse that sells pizza.” Rosenbluth is a fixture in political and Jewish civic circles, as is his wife, Sandy, who is also a central committee member.

The incident allegedly occurred on June 17 over the District 41 Senate primary race between Sen. Dalya Attar and Del. Malcolm Ruff. The race to represent Northwest, West and Southwest Baltimore was contentious in part because of federal extortion charges against Attar, her brother and a Baltimore Police officer. Ruff defeated Attar in the primary election.

Attar, the first Orthodox Jewish woman to serve in the Senate, was appointed to the seat by Gov. Wes Moore after being nominated by the Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee last year.

Betsey Krieger, a Ruff campaign volunteer, said she was talking to voters at the Public Safety Training Center when Rosenbluth, an Attar supporter whose wife works as Attar’s chief of staff, confronted her.

“[Rosenbluth] started screaming at me like, ‘I hate Jews like you’ and ‘How many people did your family lose in the Holocaust?’” Krieger recalled in an interview. “I was just trying to move away from him as fast as I could.”

“If I’d been alone with him, I would have been terrified,” she added. “When someone’s screaming in your face like that, you feel very shaky, and that’s what I was feeling.”

Krieger, a Keswick resident, said she was canvassing the district for Ruff because she likes his values.

Krieger’s account was supported by at least two people that day, including Erica Puentes, who was campaigning for Ruff.

“It was just ridiculous,” Puentes said, adding that she stood between Rosenbluth and Krieger to prevent him from “laying hands on her.”

George Buntin, another Ruff ally, said he witnessed the confrontation and that Rosenbluth attempted to follow Krieger and Puentes as they walked away to continue speaking to voters.

District 41 resident Amalie Andrew Ward filed the petition to remove Rosenbluth because he “showed he is not capable of fulfilling the duty of office when he allegedly yelled at, followed, and physically intimidated a volunteer for a democratic candidate.”

None of the three petitioners witnessed the incident, they said, and all learned about it from a video interview with Krieger.

Claudia Leight, one of the signatories to the petition, said she was horrified by the reports of Rosenbluth’s alleged behavior as an elected official.

Alexandra Lazerow, the third signatory, said, “intimidation, bullying, and extortion come from the same playbook and they ruin the political process.”

On June 26, Tammy Stinnett, chair of the Baltimore City Democratic State Central Committee, told the trio who filed the complaint that she had spoken with other witnesses to the incident and their accounts differed from what was submitted in the petition. Stinnett is the wife of Del. Sean Stinnett, who ran as part of a slate of candidates that included Attar and Del. Sandy Rosenberg.

Tammy Stinnett did not respond to a request for comment.

Attar, her brother Joseph Attar, and a Baltimore Police officer, Kalman Finkelstein, were indicted by federal prosecutors in October on extortion charges. Prosecutors allege the three tried to blackmail a former campaign consultant, covertly recording the woman in bed with a married man and threatening to share the tape with the consultant’s family unless she sat out the 2022 election. The three pleaded not guilty in November to extortion and conspiracy charges.

Rosenbluth was on a list of people whom a federal judge ordered Finkelstein not to have contact with as a condition of his pretrial release.

In November, Rosenbluth resigned from his job at the Baltimore City Sheriff’s Office, where he had worked on landlord-tenant issues since April 2023.

Krieger said the incident will not deter her from participating in future elections. All she wants is an apology.

Banner reporter Lee O. Sanderlin contributed to this story.