11th District

Del. Robert A. Zirkin portrays Sen. Paula C. Hollinger as a ruthless politician who twists other candidates' arms to force them to buy campaign materials from her husband. Hollinger depicts Zirkin as an ambitious young schemer with a chip on his shoulder and an eye on her Senate seat. These are not people to invite to the same dinner party. The two Northwest Baltimore County legislators are locked in one of the nastiest feuds in Maryland politics today -- complete with allegations of treachery, coercion and self-enrichment.

As hundreds of Baltimore firefighters marched on City Hall Thursday afternoon to protest service cutbacks, Mayor Sheila Dixon announced plans to postpone the closure of any more companies until the end of the fiscal year on July 1. One company had been scheduled to close on New Year's Day. Dixon also said that the number of companies closed for a day on a rotating basis will be reduced from five to four, and that the Fire Department had applied...

Sen. Paula C. Hollinger swamped Sen. Janice Piccinini last night in their race for the Democratic nomination in the newly created 11th District of northwestern Baltimore County.In the equally new and adjoining 10th District, Del. Delores G. Kelley squeezed by community activist Harold G. Gordon for the Democratic Senate nomination.The new 10th, which includes Woodlawn, Randallstown and the Liberty Road corridor and has a large black majority, will bring the county its first elected African-American officials.

If the old saying, "Money is the mother's milk of politics," is true, then William Cole appears to have a big advantage in the District 11 City Council race, where nine candidates are vying for the seat to be vacated in December by Keiffer J. Mitchell Jr. Mitchell, who has held the seat for 12 years, decided not to seek re-election because he's running in the Democratic mayoral primary election. District 11 includes Bolton Hill, Reservoir Hill, Otterbein, Federal Hill, Mount Vernon and a number of West Baltimore neighborhoods.

State Sen. Janice Piccinini, D-Balto. Co., has launched a campaign to derail the county delegation's legislative redistricting plan, saying it would "gerrymander into oblivion" communities in the northern county.Piccinini complains that the plan, for example, would divide most sections of Owings Mills and Reisterstown between two districts.The plan would create a single-delegate subdistrict in the majority black community along lower Liberty Road and attach it to the mostly Republican, rural 10th District.

In Baltimore County, redrawing the lines for state legislative districts is far more than a partisan battle. It is, at its core, a matter of whether the county's growing African American population will be equitably represented in Annapolis. The plan approved by the county's Senate and House delegations is, however, little more than tokenism: It simply takes a block of black voters out of the 11th District and attaches that "sub-district" to the 10th.Since all the 11th District delegates are Democrats, and all those in the 10th are Republicans, the brouhaha over partisanship which has come in its wake is understandable.

Little noticed in the legislative muddle that has engulfed Annapolis is a simmering controversy in Baltimore County over redistricting. Demographics has radically altered the profile of the county's 11th District, which is now 40 percent black but has virtually no real chance of electing a black representative. The new Census statistics, and the Voting Rights Act, point to the need to create a majority black district. But the battle is getting bloody.It boils down to this: Every state legislative district now elects three delegates and one senator.

Pikesville's state legislators told their constituents last night that they have reached the 11th hour for the 11th District.Sen. Paula C. Hollinger said the redistricting plan approved Dec. 18 by the governor's Redistricting Advisory Committee would chop up communities and decimate the district she has represented for 14 years.She said there are problems with the plan everywhere in the district: Communities such as Imperial Gardens and Millbrook would be divided; some 16,000 people would be shifted into the city-based 42nd District; and the Pikesville business district -- the focus of an intensive revitalization effort in the past decade -- would be split between the city and the county.

"WHAT I DID specifically was to take a map of the State of Georgia shaded by minority concentration and overlay the districts that were drawn by the State of Georgia and see how well those lines adequately reflected black voting strength."So said a Department of Justice attorney explaining how it was decided the state's new 11th Congressional District was okay with it.I thought what they did was take an overlay of Sherman's march to the sea. The 11th District runs from Atlanta to Savannah then up to Augusta, precisely where Sherman's soldiers once "got a little careless with matches."

It may have been political naivete, but when Jodi Hammerman said, "I'm speaking realistically," she meant it -- even though it violated conventions of partisan optimism.Realistically, "something cataclysmic" will have to happen for the Republican Party to capture more than one of three House of Delegate seats in the 11th District of Baltimore County, the 30-year-old attorney and GOP hopeful said.With Democrats enjoying a 2-to-1 registration edge in the sprawling northwestern district, that cataclysm would have to include a major Democratic defection to more conservative Republican candidates -- traditionally the only way the GOP can win in the county.

Two-term state Del. Bobby A. Zirkin describes his district in northwest Baltimore County as having a small-town feel, where it's not out of the ordinary to run into your former fourth-grade teacher while waiting in line for a coffee at a Pikesville Starbucks. "I told his mother he'd be a lawyer - and president," Amy Harris, Zirkin's teacher at Wellwood Elementary, said on her way out of the store one afternoon this week. For now, Zirkin, a Democrat, wants to be a state senator. He is facing Republican Jeffrey S. Yablon, a first-time candidate, for the seat in District 11, which includes Pikesville and Owings Mills.

Two-term Del. Bobby A. Zirkin says he is seeking higher office to continue his efforts to reform the state's juvenile justice system. Physician Scott Rifkin says he has a plan to reduce health care costs that includes the creation of a statewide surgeon general's office. As they run for a seat in the state Senate, Zirkin and Rifkin have been campaigning for months to get their messages out in what is perhaps the most hard-fought race this year in Baltimore County.

High above the $220 million town center project in Owings Mills and within view of the motorists zooming by on Interstate 795, a banner hanging from a construction crane displays the name "Brown." The work of developer Howard S. Brown, who is chairman of David S. Brown Enterprises, is reflected in signs throughout Baltimore County. At a business park down the road from the town center project is a sign identifying it as a Brown property. Another sign there reads: "Elect Bobby Zirkin." With the primary election less than two weeks away, the developer and the candidate are facing questions involving campaign dollars and political influence.

The 8th, 9th and 11th City Council districts stretch from the western city-county line to the Inner Harbor, taking in the bright waterfront tourist attractions promoted on city tourism brochures as well as gritty, crime-ridden areas more likely to turn up on television's The Wire. That diversity is evident in the 8th District, where Councilwoman Helen L. Holton, a Democrat, faces Jacquiline Johnson, who is running as an independent. In one corner of the 8th sits Dickeyville, a 19th-century mill town with white picket fences and houses that look as if they were plucked from Colonial New England.

Del. Robert A. Zirkin portrays Sen. Paula C. Hollinger as a ruthless politician who twists other candidates' arms to force them to buy campaign materials from her husband. Hollinger depicts Zirkin as an ambitious young schemer with a chip on his shoulder and an eye on her Senate seat. These are not people to invite to the same dinner party. The two Northwest Baltimore County legislators are locked in one of the nastiest feuds in Maryland politics today -- complete with allegations of treachery, coercion and self-enrichment.

Ask the candidates running for the House of Delegates from the 11th District to name a key issue, and they'll probably give the same response: crowded schools. The western Baltimore County district covers several communities struggling with crowded schools, such as New Town Elementary in Owings Mills, where new enrollments have been halted. Nearly all of the six candidates vying for three delegate seats support building more schools and using increased state funding for education to reduce class sizes.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!Just ask any member of the Congressional Black Caucus or one of their special-interest support groups that railed against the Supreme Court's decision throwing into doubt specially crafted minority election districts.To hear them tell it, this is the end of democracy as we know it. One advocate called it ''the first step in the resegregation of American electoral democracy.''In fact, the court decision may lead in the opposite direction: An end to a dangerous trend toward segregating voters according to race.

State Sen. Paula C. Hollinger, the Democratic incumbent from the 11th District seeking a seventh term in the General Assembly, is running on a long record of accomplishment in Annapolis. "I feel very proud of the work that I've done," she said, after reciting a list of legislation on education and senior citizens that she helped forge and wants to see carried out. But her Republican challenger, Alan P. Zukerberg, maintains that Hollinger has lost touch with constituents, whom he pledges to give a greater say in government decisions.

"WHAT I DID specifically was to take a map of the State of Georgia shaded by minority concentration and overlay the districts that were drawn by the State of Georgia and see how well those lines adequately reflected black voting strength."So said a Department of Justice attorney explaining how it was decided the state's new 11th Congressional District was okay with it.I thought what they did was take an overlay of Sherman's march to the sea. The 11th District runs from Atlanta to Savannah then up to Augusta, precisely where Sherman's soldiers once "got a little careless with matches."