On Election Day, Sort Out the Legitimate Contenders from the Jokers

June 25, 2018 Michael Olesker

The late Mayor William Donald Schaefer (right)

In this week of primary elections, memory summons a distant time, another election season, and a character named Byron Roberts from a Baltimore daily newspaper long vanished, called The News American.

Roberts was a re-write man who resembled the movie actor Gig Young. He had a twinkle in his eye and a refined sense of humor, even when it came to his history of three failed marriages.

“My ex-wives,” he said one day, “all had the same first name.”

“What was it?” somebody asked.

“Plaintiff,” he said.

Anyway, there came another day on the re-write desk, and Byron, feeling a little whimsical, announced he was running for mayor of Baltimore.

“But you have no political connections and no money,” everybody told him. “You can’t possibly win.”

“I know,” Byron said. “But, when I die, the obits will all say, ‘Byron Roberts, former candidate for mayor of Baltimore….’”

In those days, we could still laugh about our political personalities. Now it’s a meaner season, especially in Washington.

As we go to the primary polls in a bunch of states, including Maryland, we’ve got to sort out the legitimate contenders from the jokers. Byron Roberts was only kidding around. We’ve got people running for office who are laughable, but they’re asking us to take their campaigns seriously.

I’m not endorsing anybody here. The only voting tip I’m offering is this: Look for the candidates who are thinking most clearly about their communities, not their careers. We’re hungry for competence. This ain’t about who’s got the best TV commercials.

I’m ancient enough to have covered William Donald Schaefer’s first campaign for mayor of Baltimore. It was painful to follow him around. Everybody knew Schaefer, because he’d been in the city council for years. But, back then, Schaefer was so shy, he could barely look people in the eye.

The hot political figure of that era, circa 1970, was New York Mayor John Lindsay. And the hot word describing him was “charisma.” It was a word absolutely no one attached to William Donald Schaefer.

One muggy afternoon late in the campaign, I approached Schaefer’s campaign manager. It was a precocious young fellow named Ted Venetoulis, who would get himself elected Baltimore County executive a few years later.

“Schaefer,” I said, “has no charisma.”

Venetoulis practically blew a fuse. “The hell with charisma,” he snapped. “This guy, Schaefer, knows every brick in the city.”

That’s who you want to vote for – the candidate who knows every brick, who’s studied for the job, who’s not in it for self-aggrandizement, but for the chance to do some good.

Byron Roberts understood that distinction. When he told a clerk at the city’s Municipal Building that he wanted to run for mayor, the clerk said, “That’ll be a $50 filing fee.”

“What have you got that’s cheaper?” Byron asked.

He ran for city council and lost. But everybody had a good laugh about it. Back then, there was still room for a good joke.