Campaign Manager

The Downtown Partnership launched a Web site yesterday to provide timely traffic-related information to Baltimore commuters -- a potential boon to drivers the next time a water main breaks. The site, Get Around Downtown, offers real-time alerts on unexpected traffic backups in the downtown region as well as information about long-term road projects. Michael Evitts, public relations director, said the nonprofit corporation created the site as a successor to an e-mail list that had grown to about 2,000 recipients.

SUPPORTERS OF MAYORAL candidate and City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III showed up at Martin O'Malley's endorsement rally Thursday. They chanted slogans in support of their candidate, drowned out O'Malley's endorsers and then went home.The performance went over like either brilliant strategy or flatulence at a funeral, depending on whom you ask."I wanted to express my outrage at the way that Bell's people handled the O'Malley endorsement," one caller said. "I think that that stuff is further proof that Bell is not the kind of candidate that the city of Baltimore needs as its mayor.

After their unsuccessful attempt to lure NAACP President Kweisi Mfume into the Baltimore mayor's race, state politicians in Annapolis are trying to recruit a new candidate: former city Police Commissioner Bishop L. Robinson.State Comptroller William Donald Schaefer has confirmed that he and his supporters are suggesting that the 72-year-old former state prisons chief consider a mayoral run.Robinson, who was Baltimore police chief with Schaefer from 1984 to 1987, is expected to make a decision on the matter today.

Christopher F. Pfrommer III, a former political campaign manager and administrative aide, died Monday after a fall in his home in the 100 block of W. University Parkway. He was 64.Mr. Pfrommer, a former science reporter for The Evening Sun, managed the successful 1962 campaign of 2nd District Congressman Clarence D. Long, and later served on his staff, in charge of the congressman's legislative agenda and constituent complaints.In 1971, he left Mr. Long's staff to become a press aide during William Donald Schaefer's first mayoral bid. The next year, he managed Charles B. Anderson Jr.'s successful campaign to become Harford County's first county executive and later headed the county's 1976 bicentennial commission.

For more than two weeks, Nathaniel T. Oaks boycotted a patriotic new ritual in the Maryland House of Delegates. He refused to stand with his colleagues to salute the flag.But last night, guided by his campaign manager, Oaks ended what he described as an "unconscious" avoidance of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.The Baltimore Democrat walked into the historic chamber, spun on his heel to face the American flag and joined the respectful chorus of voices."I'm a part of the establishment," he said later with a grin.

Ellen R. Sauerbrey, whose campaign for governor has been without a press secretary since the previous one was forced out in November, has hired a veteran Republican operative with local roots to take over the job.Jim Dornan, 38, who has experience as a campaign manager and Capitol Hill staffer, started work yesterday at Sauerbrey's headquarters in Towson. He will handle press relations and share duties speaking for the campaign with consultant Carol Hirschburg."I'm ecstatic to be here. This is the first time I've been able to work for a legitimate Republican candidate in the state of Maryland," said Dornan, who grew up in Baltimore, Towson and Bowie.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who will gain precious minutes of national exposure when he presents the winning trophy at Saturday's Preakness Stakes, is asking other gubernatorial candidates to refrain from politics for the day.In a statement released by his campaign yesterday, the governor urged his opponents to respect the "family atmosphere" of Maryland racing's biggest day by not handing out literature or putting up political signs at Pimlico Race Course."I...

SO, HERE'S the thing. You're not happy with the ink you're getting in the mainstream press -- variety or volume -- so here's a solution: Put out your own newspaper.The campaign of Harford County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann, a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, has done precisely that. In recent days, thousands of Marylanders have come upon the News Maryland in their mail slots or on their front stoops.The paper arrives with the state flag flying above its name and a couple of articles attacking Gov. Parris N. Glendening.

Less than four months before the Democratic primary, Gov. Parris N. Glendening has fired his campaign manager after a contentious run-in over the day-to-day handling of his re-election effort.In the first shake-up of his campaign, Glendening ousted Tim Phillips on Tuesday and announced yesterday that he was hiring Karen White, an experienced operative now running the Idaho Democratic Party.Sources familiar with the situation said the governor and some of his closest advisers, including his wife, Frances Hughes Glendening, had clashed with Phillips in recent days, questioning some of his day-to-day campaign decisions.

The campaign manager for Charles I. Ecker has quit, leaving the Republican gubernatorial hopeful with a critical void at a time when some party leaders are growing skeptical of his chances in the race.Geyer Wise, 28, said she plans to pursue job offers with campaigns nearer her home in the New York City area. "I've had a great time in Maryland," she said. "Chuck Ecker is one of the finest people I've ever met."Wise's departure -- coming the week before Monday's state filing deadline -- is certain to increase speculation that Ecker's campaign is ailing, though he said yesterday that he plans to stay in the race.

Developer Ronald H. Lipscomb paid $8,750 for a political survey for a state delegate running against Sheila Dixon for mayor in 2007, according to an account of the transaction in court papers filed Monday. Del. Jill P. Carter, a Baltimore Democrat, denied any knowledge of the poll in an interview on Monday. She has not been accused of accepting donations over the $4,000 limit on individual contributions. The poll was disclosed in documents filed by attorneys for City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton, who has been charged as part of a wide-ranging City Hall corruption probe with accepting a poll from Lipscomb.

West Nile virus found in Shore mosquitoes Mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus have been detected in Maryland for the first time this year. The bugs turned up in samples collected last month in Pocomoke City on the Eastern Shore. The virus "typically appears at this time in the summer, so we are not surprised with this positive finding," said state Agriculture Secretary Buddy Hance. The virus is present throughout the state, and abundant spring rains have boosted mosquito populations, he said.

Cornell N. Dypski, one of Baltimore's longest-serving state legislators who was in both the House of Delegates and Senate, died Tuesday of Alzheimer's disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 77. During yesterday morning's session, Del. Peter A. Hammen, a Baltimore Democrat, announced Mr. Dypski's death, and delegates observed a moment of silence in his honor. "He was an awfully decent fellow," former Gov. Harry R. Hughes said yesterday. "He typified the public official who worked really hard as a legislator representing the people who had elected him."

Turns out Maryland is big enough for more than one guitar-strumming Democrat. Frank Kratovil, the Queen Anne's County state's attorney running for Congress in the 1st District, has a band in his recent past. It appears to have been a back-burner thing compared to the Irish-rock ensemble a certain pol used to front. Kratovil's campaign manager, Tim McCann, even had trouble summoning the group's name when I inquired about it the other day. (I'd asked after hearing Kratovil had taken the stage recently at the big conference for local government officials in Ocean City.

Kevin Costner can do certain kinds of American confusion better than anyone else. He's nonpareil at playing the mental fog that isn't quite a hangover, or the comfort a modest man can take in a homey, familiar mess. As Bud Johnson, the single father and sometime egg-factory worker in the mild political comedy-drama Swing Vote, he plays a middle-aged slacker so unsentimentally, and with such ease and conviction, that he supplies the movie with a comic engine that keeps running when the script wheezes and splutters.

John McCain once had the most powerful brand in American politics. He was often called the country's most popular politician and widely admired for his independent streak. It wasn't too many years ago that "maverick" was the cliche of choice in describing him. But that term didn't even make the list this year when voters were asked by the Pew Research Center to sum up McCain in a single word. "Old" got the most mentions, followed by "honest," "experienced," "patriot," "conservative" and a dozen more.

Money continues to pour into a hotly contested primary race for Maryland's 1st Congressional District, exceeding $1.5 million in the past four months on the Republican side of the race alone, according to campaign finance reports made available yesterday. Campaign officials said yesterday that by the Feb. 12 primary, the total from the candidates and groups operating outside the confines of campaign finance laws will likely exceed $4 million, an extraordinary sum for any congressional primary and one of the most expensive of any House race this year.

WASHINGTON -- The campaign manager for Rep. Albert R. Wynn has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging fundraising improprieties by Donna Edwards, Wynn's chief rival in next month's Democratic primary. The Wynn campaign handed reporters a 34-count complaint yesterday alleging illegal collaboration between the Prince George's activist and several of the organizations supporting her in the 4th District contest. In a statement, Edwards dismissed the complaint as "a desperate 11th-hour attempt" by Wynn "to deflect from the fact that groups representing the core of the Democratic party and the issues it stands for ... have decided that they want to fire him and are supporting me."

State Comptroller Peter Franchot has returned $54,000 in contributions he received from a Hollywood film producer who broke Maryland's campaign finance law during the 2006 election, according to the comptroller's campaign manager. Producer James G. Robinson was fined $119,000 in October by the Maryland state prosecutor for giving larger donations than the law allowed to Franchot, Gov. Martin O'Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown. Under Maryland law, an individual or corporation may give no more than $4,000 to a candidate and no more than $10,000 overall during any four-year election cycle.

Thomas Wayne Rimrodt, a Republican campaign manager who had been an assistant secretary in the Maryland Department of Planning until early this year, died of brain cancer Sunday at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson. The Parkville resident was 41. Born in San Diego, Mr. Rimrodt earned an undergraduate degree at California State University at Hayward and two master's degrees - in public administration and in political science - from Claremont Graduate University in California. After serving as the city manager of Atherton, Calif.