In matters of toughness and resilience, I give Sheila Dixon a lot of credit. She’s running for mayor of Baltimore again, and inviting scrutiny of some old, embarrassing behavior of hers, when she could easily live a private life and let past troubles fade from all collective memory.
Instead, she opened her latest campaign to get her old mayoral job back by writing an apology to Baltimore that ran on the The Sun’s op-ed page on Sunday, Sept. 10. It sounded pretty heartfelt, up to a point, and it couldn’t have been easy to write.
It’s a reminder to all that she left office under a cloud. But it’s also a signal that Dixon and her advisers know she had to show some humility and acknowledgment of the past.
Because if she doesn’t, other people will.
“I recognize that for some of you it may be impossible to overlook my prior mistakes,” she wrote. “I am writing today to ask that you open your hearts and minds to give me the opportunity to demonstrate my commitment to Baltimore city and my passion for ensuring it thrives.”
She proudly lists a pretty good bunch of accomplishments from her time as mayor, from 2007 to 2010, and declares:
“I’ve been told that my prior efforts to apologize for the past have fallen short. I write to you today to eliminate all ambiguity of where I stand and have stood since I left office. I let matters of the heart lead me astray.”
That “matters of the heart” reference sounds a little coy. But here’s another matter. Dixon writes:
“Many of you will remember my time as mayor based primarily on the way that it ended. I have truly made mistakes in my personal life, one of which resulted in a misdemeanor charge that forced my resignation from the job I loved the most.”
She’s right to point out that it was only a misdemeanor charge. But that’s a legal term. In matters of public perception, she was mostly guilty of smallness of spirit.
She was found guilty of embezzling gift cards meant for poor people. She was guilty of feeling privileged. She was the mayor; powerful people can get away with stuff while nobody’s looking. Maybe she was thinking about it, and maybe it just felt like one of the perks of the job. Only Dixon knows.
What she did was a small legal matter but a large issue of character. But here’s the hell of it: she was a pretty good mayor, and we haven’t had one since she left. She knows the job, and the business of the gift cards was a Dixonian aberration.
She runs for mayor as one tough cookie, knowing we remember how she left City Hall the last time she was there. No one wants reminders of their old mistakes. But we should remember her strengths as well, as we hunger for someone to lift the spirits of this depressed city.
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