Race For Mayor

A battle for mayor is warming in Hampstead, where Councilman Wayne H. Thomas has filed to oppose incumbent Christopher M. Nevin.The filing deadline for the bipartisan municipal election for mayor and two council seats on May 11 is two weeks off.Nevin, 40, has not filed, but said he is running for re-election "as a ticket again" with incumbent Councilmen Larry H. Hentz Jr. and Stephen A. Holland, whose four-year terms are expiring.Holland, 39, and Hentz, 46, have filed for re-election. Also running for the council is Steven Balaz, 33.The Nevin-Hentz-Holland ticket won about 80 percent of the votes in 1995, when 30 percent of the town's 1,799 registered voters cast ballots.

TOMORROW IS Election Day in Annapolis. Voters will select a new mayor and at least five new aldermen. With such turnover, the prospect of significant change in the governance of Maryland's capital city is great. After eight years of amiable Alfred A. Hopkins as mayor, whoever is his successor -- former mayor Dennis Callahan or two-term Alderman Dean L. Johnson -- will take a more activist role.Mr. Callahan, a Democrat, won't hesitate to use the mayor's office as a bully pulpit. Although not as outspoken, Mr. Johnson will be more active than the incumbent in assembling long-term plans for development, infrastructure and transportation.

FREDERICK -- In this city where the major political debates usually concern overly rough road concrete and streetlights that shine in historic townhouse windows, the contest for mayor has taken on a distinctly big-city flavor.Voters will decide tomorrow between an incumbent Republican who says he is staying in office just to keep his opponent out and a challenger who became a Democrat just so she could run in this race.In their way, both are local political titans: Mayor James S. Grimes, 57, a self-made millionaire who owns a $40 million truck dealership and leasing company; and Frances Baker, 69, president pro tem of the city's Board of Aldermen, whose husband, Joseph, is named for his grandfather, a city patriarch.

IT COULD RANK as the dumbest political move in recent local history, a misstep so egregious that it could play a role in next year's race for governor and the following year's race for mayor of Baltimore.By embracing a $137 million proposal to build a massive hotel south of Little Italy -- far from the Inner Harbor and the Convention Center -- the Schmoke administration has bungled a prime opportunity and placed the city's convention business in grave jeopardy.Even worse for Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, this inept move could have unintended consequences: an angry eruption of anti-city sentiment in the General Assembly next year; a heated issue in next year's state elections over taxpayer subsidies for this dubious undertaking; a city referendum that could prove deeply embarrassing and set the stage for an all-out challenge to the mayor in 1999's municipal elections.

An article in Tuesday's Anne Arundel edition about Michael T. Brown's official announcement of his bid for mayor of Annapolis failed to include the name of an opponent, Alderman Dean Johnson, a Republican who represents the city's 2nd Ward.The Sun regrets the error.Michael L. Brown Sr., a two-time candidate for Annapolis City Council, will announce today that he is running for mayor.Brown, a 42-year-old educational program analyst with the state Department of Juvenile Justice, is the fourth candidate to throw his hat into the ring for the city's top political office.

In the race for mayor of Maryland's capital city, Carl O. Snowden seems to have it all: cash, clout and network. But, he's also a black man with a militant past in a town that has never elected a black mayor.High-minded agreement around town is that race should not be a factor in who gets elected to the city's highest office. But Annapolis has never faced a serious black contender for the post, and many fear race will be the only issue that counts."Will Annapolis elect a black person?" asks Richard L. Hillman, a Republican and a former mayor who is white.

Are we happy now? Did we tell each other how much we don't like each other's skin color in Tuesday's election? Are we still telling ourselves -- wink, wink -- that we voted strictly on Serious Issues in the race for mayor of Baltimore, or have we now officially kissed off the thing that everyone claims to hate, which is favoritism based on race?In black Forest Park, Kurt Schmoke got 92 percent of the vote. In white Locust Point, Mary Pat Clarke got 96 percent of the vote. In black Cherry Hill, Kurt Schmoke got 90 percent of the vote.

Eight years ago, proud of our ability to perform the simple skills of arithmetic familiar to any fourth-grader, this newspaper pronounced Clarence H. Du Burns no longer among the living. Our pollsters had him trailing Kurt L. Schmoke by 29 points in the race for mayor of Baltimore. Du's gone, our numbers said. You're crazy, Burns replied. This is the simple math, we declared, quite full of ourselves.Immediately, several things happened: Burns' money dried up, thereby preventing him from running a full-bodied, media-drenched campaign; almost everybody around him, sensing a lost cause, wished him luck and then bolted for the door; and Schmoke, perceived as the bringer of a bright new day, loaded with money, carrying aloft his resume like an Olympic torch, and filling the airwaves with relentless commercials, went on to be elected mayor.

An older man with a familiar political name is among the candidates for mayor of Baltimore -- but it's not former Gov. William Donald Schaefer.Philip Charles Dypsky Sr., 84, a one-time bar owner who is part of the East Baltimore family that includes a current and former member of the state legislature, joins the mayor, the City Council president and a water-taxi driver in seeking the city's highest office.In all, 84 Democrats and 14 Republicans had filed late yesterday for three citywide offices and six councilmanic districts in September's primary elections.

In politics, voters' choices often boil down to the lesser of two evils -- or sometimes of three evils. That's the way the race for mayor is shaping up: There's no perfect candidate, no white knight.The Democratic primary so far is strictly a two-person affair. Incumbent Kurt L. Schmoke vs. Council President Mary Pat Clarke.On paper, Mr. Schmoke should be a winner. He has the money and clout of incumbency. He remains popular with older African-Americans who point to him as a sterling role model.