Even wrapped in fur, Sheila Dixon doesn't like being left out in the cold.
In an interview that aired on WJZ-TV this week, the mayor said she was disappointed that she didn't get a shout-out from Barack Obama, Elijah Cummings or Martin O'Malley during the president-elect's whistle-stop in Baltimore.
Obama came to town three days before his inauguration - and, as luck would have it, eight days after Dixon's indictment. "Was I bothered by it? Yes," Dixon told WJZ's Adam May. "Others noticed it and were upset that not even he or the governor or Congressman Cummings mentioned my name. I'm human. That was a lonely part."
And that was before Dixon got uninvited to today's U.S. Conference of Mayors gathering with Obama at the White House, as The Baltimore Sun's Annie Linskey reports today.
What do the alleged snubbers have to say for themselves?
"The congressman certainly didn't mean to make anyone feel lonely," said Cummings spokeswoman Jennifer Kohl. "His sole purpose was to introduce the president and vice president-elect, and those were the only people he introduced. And he didn't recognize anyone else. And the mayor, by the way, is still in his thoughts and prayers."
Said O'Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese: "It certainly wasn't intentional. The governor was just excited to be in the city of Baltimore with President-elect Obama and the citizens of Maryland. I would point out that, I'm not sure he recognized anybody aside from the vice president and President-elect Obama."
It was a bitterly cold day, and speakers kept it short. But Obama himself recognized the mayors of Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., when he stopped in those cities earlier that day.
What says the Snubber-in-Chief?
The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.
Dixon wasn't totally ignored that day. On WBAL-TV, Deborah Weiner not only noted that Dixon was in the crowd but that the mayor just charged with accepting furs from a city contractor was dressed in, you guessed it, fur.
If Dixon didn't appreciate that shout-out, perhaps her defense attorney did. I asked Arnold Weiner if he took pride in his newswoman-daughter's attention to that particular detail. He said he'd been out of town that day and missed the broadcast.
Those other guys
In the same TV interview, Mayor Dixon said she has outshined the last two mayors. "In the past two years, I've done more than my predecessors have in 12 or seven years," Dixon said, referring to the tenures of Kurt Schmoke and now-Governor O'Malley.
