Pat Clarke

Mary Pat Clarke ran a spirited, energetic, enticing and surprisingly effective campaign for mayor that embodied the very reasons Baltimore's political scene will miss her.Upon her defeat by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, Mrs. Clarke said it was her last campaign for political office, even though she pledged to continue her activism in civic life. She said she had high hopes for the generation of leadership that is ascending in Baltimore, including her choice to succeed her as council president, Lawrence Bell.

J. Michael Collins and Roz Heid's critical letters on Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke's Monday statement regarding the bottle tax demand a response ("Clarke finally doing something for schools? Not really" and "Baltimore needs more than a new tax," June 12 and 13). No elected official in the state has done more for remedying the crisis of the city's decrepit school buildings than Mary Pat Clarke. When the school system suffered its 2004 fiscal crisis, renovation money to prepare Waverly School for its first 7th grade class was withdrawn.

The Kurt Schmoke campaign is pleased with the results of the recent Mason-Dixon poll, but not for the reason you might think.The poll, released last week by The Sun and Channel 2, shows Schmoke leading his mayoral primary challenger, Mary Pat Clarke, by 15 percentage points.But that is not the figure the mayor's people care about. That figure, they believe, is likely to narrow before election day.(So does Brad Coker, president of Mason-Dixon. He told me last week he believes the race is closer than the current spread makes it appear.

Sheila Dixon easily fended off a challenge from a City Council colleague to win the Democratic nomination for council president last night, as Baltimore voters overwhelmingly gave the incumbent's political future a major boost. "Despite our differences and despite the criticism that I have received, [the election] made me stronger," said Dixon, who defeated her closest rival, first-term Councilwoman Catherine E. Pugh, and two other Democrats, Carl Stokes and James Hugh Jones II. Citywide support for Dixon, who beat Pugh by about a 5-to-3 margin, translated into a good day for most fellow incumbent Democrats running in the first primary since the council was restructured earlier this year.

Former Gov. William Donald Schaefer yesterday threw his solid support behind Baltimore City Council President Mary Pat Clarke for mayor, but continued to hold out the possibility of his own return to City Hall.Pausing after a speech at a symposium on aging, Mr. Schaefer repeatedly refused to discuss what the future might hold for him in politics, but acknowledged he is raising money for Mrs. Clarke and is supporting her in the Democratic primary."I'm trying to help her," he told The Sun. "I'm trying to help her with fund raising."

As the July 5 filing deadline approaches for city elections, the hunt for an opponent to run against City Council President Mary Pat Clarke appears to be over.Clarke's across-the-board popularity and her reputation as a gifted campaigner apparently have proven too much of an obstacle for potential opponents.She is scheduled to file her candidacy for re-election today and officially kick off her campaign Sunday at a combination birthday party and fund-raiser.A group of city senators and some local business leaders have been scrambling since March to find a candidate willing to take on the popular Clarke.

Me and my town,Battered about,Everyone in itWould like to get out.But me and my town,& We just wanna be loved"Me and My Town,"( Stephen Sondheim musical"Anyone Can Whistle"Watching Mary Pat Clarke on the campaign trail, strange thoughts occur, possibly because no one ever gets to eat. She may not become Madame Mayor, but she'd make a great musical. She waves her arms. She tells jokes. She makes wonderful, expressive faces. At parties, she does a mean Electric Slide.Call it "Mary Pat!" Reunite Andrew Lloyd Webber and Patti LuPone.

Not long past dawn after the dramatic cliffhanger election for governor, another political troupe descended on street corners in downtown Baltimore. The band of campaigners spelled out with successive signs: "Next election: Mary Pat Clarke -- Mayor -- 1995."A cheerful Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who had kept a late vigil with supporters of Democrat Parris N. Glendening, was back in a high-ceilinged conference room at City Hall preparing for a routine financial meeting. Election officials across Maryland had just begun a tedious count of absentee ballots, but Mr. Schmoke already was celebrating the voter turnout in the city that would help give Mr. Glendening his slim margin of victory.

This year's primary race for City Council president is hardly a cliffhanger. There is just one Republican candidate, Anthony Cobb, and Democratic incumbent Mary Pat Clarke faces only token opposition from Daki Napata.Napata, a community activist, displays genuine concern for many of the problems facing city residents. But Napata, who was indecisive even about whether to run for this office, has not been able to put together a credible, focused campaign.Our preference is Mary Pat Clarke, who has held the post since 1988.

The Rev. Daki Napata, an outspoken minister who went before residents of Southeast Baltimore in St. Brigid's Church hall last night as an aggressive Democratic challenger in the race for City Council president -- blasting incumbent Mary Pat Clarke -- concluded by saying his campaign was over.He announced he would no longer campaign because, he said, he had been virtually ignored by the media and even by the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance to which he belonged."I grew up in this city believing democracy was real," he said.

Sheila Dixon easily fended off a challenge from a City Council colleague to win the Democratic nomination for council president last night, as Baltimore voters overwhelmingly gave the incumbent the chance at a second term in the city's second-highest elective office. "Despite our differences and despite the criticism that I have received, [the election] made me stronger." said Dixon, who defeated first-term Councilwoman Catherine E. Pugh and two other Democrats, James Hugh Jones II and Carl Stokes.

Armed with a list of registered Democrats and a stack of campaign cards, Mary Pat Clarke strides along a street of modest rowhouses, going door to door to reintroduce herself to voters. There are few in Baltimore's Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood just west of Clifton Park who don't remember Clarke, the former two-term City Council member and two-term council president who is seeking to return to the legislative body eight years after a losing bid for mayor. "I've known her for a long time," resident Irene Johnson, 80, said after a front-porch conversation with the candidate.

Brace yourselves: Lawrence Bell is about to be marketed as the second coming of that secular urban saint, William Donald Schaefer.Not that Schaefer's endorsed Bell's campaign for mayor -- or anybody else's. But, in the name of political shorthand, Schaefer's name is being evoked to explain Bell's singular devotion to politics, and to the city, and to a lifestyle of such blissful fulfillment attained by the cleaning of the tattered alley, the signing of the zoning ordinance, and the heroic installation of the sewer system that it needs no room for mere private pleasures.

HERE'S ANOTHER WAY of looking at the Sharon Weber case -- looking from the outside in.Weber is the former Baltimore kindergarten teacher who left her job at Dallas F. Nicholas Sr. Elementary School after working one day last fall. Weber said her classroom lacked such basic necessities as books.Ever vigilant, particularly when it comes to the hiring of teachers, city school officials pursued Weber after they learned she'd taken a teaching job in Baltimore County. They asked the state to suspend her license.

A few years back, when Daniel P. Henson III and I were still on speaking terms instead of exchanging gunfire, there arrived in our conversation one night the following phrase:Conflict of interest.It arrived in the midst of a series of articles in this newspaper regarding roughly $25 million worth of no-bid housing contracts awarded by City Hall, some of it going to friends of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, lots more of it going to friends of Housing Commissioner Henson, lots of the costs inflated, some of the work never completed, plenty of it done poorly, and the federal government demanding considerable repayment of bogus costs.

Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and City Council President Lawrence A. Bell III may never be considered political allies, and they are hardly close friends. But they are turning out to be far from the persistent adversaries and bitter foes that recent political history suggested they would be.A year after winning convincing victories in the Democratic primaries -- Schmoke on his way to his third term as mayor and Bell to a first as council president -- the city's two most powerful elected officials seem on the verge of entering an era of good feeling not seen at City Hall in nearly a decade.

Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has spent nearly $2 million in his bid for a third term, leaving him with a debt of slightly more than $50,000, according to his latest campaign finance report.The debt resulted from interest-free loans to The Kurt Schmoke Committee of $25,000 each from Mr. Schmoke and his wife, Patricia, and $35,000 from attorney Ronald M. Shapiro, his campaign treasurer, the report shows.Mr. Schmoke held a fund-raiser last night at Martin's West to retire the debt and replenish his campaign coffers.

CAMPAIGN WORKERS had titled the ad ''the idiot,'' although the commercial itself was a masterstroke.It showed Mary Pat Clarke holding court in Baltimore City Council chambers in May 1993 and railing on about making drug dealers pay a sales tax. ''What I'm saying [to the dealers] is we're going to collect this tax or you better go somewhere else. . . . Move off this corner or pay the 15 percent,'' she declared.In the weeks before this 30-second spot ran on Baltimore television, Mrs. Clarke, president of the City Council, was pulling off the improbable.