Schmoke

Do we detect a whiff of political positioning in Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's decision not to sue the state over inadequate school funds? Is Mr. Schmoke edging ever-closer to running for governor? Or do these smoke signals indicate the mayor simply wants to cut the best deal for Baltimore City on increased state support for city schools?Both options might be part of the mayor's strategy. By shelving the lawsuit, Mr. Schmoke clears the deck of a potential hazard to his gubernatorial ambitions. When the mayor said last year he wanted the courts to order the state to spend more money on poor school districts, he generated tremendous animus in influential Montgomery County, the state's biggest and wealthiest subdivision.

The failure of the New Democratic Club-2 to endorse Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's re-election is one of the more intriguing developments of this lackluster political season. The snub reveals a growing rift between Mr. Schmoke and City Council President Mary Pat Clarke, the erratic and ambitious godmother of Second District politics. But it also illustrates just how different the mayor is from a run-of-the-mill politician.Names should not fool anyone. Whatever once was "new" about the New Democratic Club has long since disappeared into the memory books that contain pictures of Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Robert F. Kennedy and other icons of the 1960s and 1970s Democratic Party reform.

Give Kurt Schmoke credit. When it came time to make a tough, personal political decision, he used common sense and pragmatism.Running for governor would have been a disaster. In the end, he realized that. He made a smart strategic move last week in removing himself from the 1994 gubernatorial field and immediately plunging into his 1995 re-election campaign for mayor of Baltimore.It was a smart move on any number of levels.From a personal standpoint, Mr. Schmoke wouldn't have enjoyed a run for the governor's mansion.

The public focus of Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's re-election effort will shift this week from raising questions about his rival's campaign finances to raising money for his own coffers.After three weeks of queries about the propriety of the reporting methods and expenditures of City Council President Mary Pat Clarke, Mr. Schmoke and his campaign committee will sponsor a gala, $500-a-person fund-raiser Tuesday at the Christopher Columbus Center.The event will be the first of four fund-raisers for Mr. Schmoke over two months.

A year ago, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke was talking about suing the state of Maryland in order to collect more state education aid. The disparity between what the state's richest school district spends per pupil ($7,377 in Montgomery County) and what the poorest jurisdiction spends ($4,706 in Caroline County) is massive.Montgomery County spends 58 percent per pupil more than Caroline and 42 percent more than the city on its schools. It can do so because of the great wealth within Montgomery. That's why the county's school system is so superior.

This year's budget season produced one of the most fascinating political battles of the five-year-old Schmoke mayoralty. It ended with the mayor getting mad, vetoing the budget and succeeding in persuading the City Council to go his way. With no fewer than nine of the 18 council members recanting their previous vote, the big political loser was City Council President Mary Pat Clarke who had engineered a rebellion against Kurt L. Schmoke's budget priorities and...

As Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's role as national spokesman for urban America looms larger after his appearance at the Democratic National Convention last month, displeasure with his performance as the city's chief executive is mounting. Criticism of the mayor is nothing new, but many of the more recent complaints have come from groups that had been his political allies. Even they are losing patience -- and hope.The call of the NAACP's local chapter for martial law indicates how desperate people have become.

Here is Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke excusing irregularities detailed by the The Sun in a public housing repairs program:"Only federal funds, not local tax dollars, were used for this program. These funds would have gone back to Washington if they had not been used. The federal government continues to send new funds to Baltimore for new housing programs."These sentences crystallize what's wrong with the Schmoke administration and with the national Democratic Party. At a time when the Democrats' business-as-usual attitude is increasingly under scrutiny for overhaul and change, they still do not see the handwriting on the wall.

Sixteen years ago, Kurt L. Schmoke burst onto the political scene as a unifying figure. That was his appeal as city state's attorney. That was his appeal in the 1987 elections, which catapulted him to City Hall as the Baltimore's first elected African-American mayor.As he seeks a third term, voters are seeing a different Kurt L. Schmoke -- a politician stressing polarizing themes that the city can ill afford. His attacks on challenger Mary Pat Clarke have focused on the City Council president's campaign expense reports or real estate deals rather than on issues fundamental to Baltimore's future well-being.

The "golden boy" of Baltimore politics may be losing some of his glow.Kurt Schmoke was assured of re-election as mayor 10 days ago, winning an underwhelming victory over two tired, aging and impoverished has-beens. When all the votes were counted, Mr. Schmoke had been given a mandate for a new four-year term by a mere 11 percent of the city's adult citizens.Most of the other 89 percent stayed home.Voter turnout on Sept. 12 was pathetic. It epitomized, sadly, circumstances in Baltimore, a city experiencing what Jimmy Carter would call a "malaise."