Aimee for Mayor!

In Baltimore's September 11 Democratic primary, I'm writing in a new candidate for mayor - me. Even with nine candidates to choose from, there's no one I find inspiring, much less qualified. The front-runners are current Mayor Sheila Dixon and City Councilman Keiffer Mitchell. I started out supporting Mitchell, primarily because he was the best of the challengers. Sheila, as most people call her, has too many issues with her ethics. She's also never had an innovative idea in her entire career. What Sheila doesn't understand is that ethics is not just about what is legal or not, but what appears improper. She has disregarded the law on several occasions and claimed ignorance. Sheila has been acting like her sister's employment agency for years. It's a hard pill to swallow. But she put the cherry on top when she hired her sister to work her campaign. That's not illegal, but after several ethics investigations involving her behavior and her sister, you'd think she would know to avoid anything that could be perceived as improper. But that's typical Sheila.




Given Sheila's issues, I was ready to vote for Keiffer. However, Keiffer has just pushed my commitment too far. His campaign adds have been so negative and have exploited Baltimore's homicide problem. One of his ads goes so far as to feature a gun shot and an implied death of a youth. I was totally turned off by this. I was going to hold my nose and vote for him anyway, but then he really went south. He hired Julius Henson. Julius Henson has a checkered past in the campaign world. He's considered a "dirty" campaigner. He referred to a Bob Erhlich as a "nazi" in 2002. Now I don't like Erhlich, but that's just unnecessary. He plays the race card too freely, just to make noise. It's a sad turn of events in a campaign for a decent guy. It just goes to far and I can't hold my nose anymore.





Trouble is, I don't like any of the other candidates, so I'm turning to someone I can trust. Of course my one vote for me won't make much of a difference in the outcome of this race, but at least I won't feel bad when I leave the polls.





At least there is one candidate I am excited about. I'm voting for Michael Sarbanes for City Council President. He's a man who's spent most of his life in some sort of public service. I'm not going to give you his life story, you can check out his website for that. But when you compare him to the others, it's a clear choice. Anyway, Sarbanes has real ideas and experience to implement them. And he's not a typical politician. He believes in pushing the boundaries of his position to the limit to create positive change. I'm looking forward to his win.





Till next time, I'm going to sip a latte.