Mayoral Memories

As Baltimoreans head to the polls this month to start selecting the city’s next mayor, it occurs to me that I started covering these campaigns when William Donald Schaefer, about to turn 50, was preparing to make municipal history.

He’d spent years at City Hall, serving as a councilman and as council president, learning every inch of every neighborhood in town.

And yet he seemed utterly overmatched for the job.

He was painfully shy. He was nothing at all like the personality he later created for himself as the guy in funny hats and turn-of-the-century bathing suits cavorting with seals at the National Aquarium.

Back then, as Schaefer ran for the first of his four terms as mayor, he was so ill at ease that I thought he was inadvertently insulting every voter who approached him to say hello. They all knew him from his years on the City Council.

He knew them, too. He just couldn’t break through his own defense mechanisms when out in public. He couldn’t even make eye contact with voters.

Still vivid in my memory is Schaefer campaigning one summer afternoon at the old Lexington Market. The place was throbbing with people. Here came a veteran merchant, a butcher in a white apron looking to embrace Schaefer in a bear hug.

“Don, Don,” the guy sang out.

“Hi,” Schaefer muttered. He stared at the market floor, arms folded defensively, unable even to look at the guy. I felt like approaching the poor butcher, who looked as if his feelings had been hurt, and telling him, “He doesn’t mean it. He’s just shy.”

That was an era when New York Mayor John Lindsay was America’s hot mayoral icon. The word then in fashion was “charisma.” Lindsay had lots of it, and any candidate who lacked it didn’t have a chance to get elected.

I took this kind of thinking to the young fellow who was running Schaefer’s campaign: Ted Venetoulis, the future Baltimore County executive who was just getting started in local politics.

“Schaefer,” I said, “hasn’t got an ounce of charisma.”

Venetoulis, the gentlest, most upbeat of men, practically bit my head off.

“The hell with charisma,” he said. “This guy knows every brick in the city of Baltimore.”

The real star of that summer’s Democratic primary campaigning, though, was George L. Russell Jr. He was the first African-American to serve as an associate judge on the city’s old Supreme Bench. He was Baltimore’s first African-American city solicitor.

Russell (who just turned 95) was smart, sophisticated, tough and dignified. It was 1971, when the city was still in its long recuperation from the ’68 riots.

To many, Russell seemed the right man at the right time to reach across racial lines and contribute to the healing process.

I was working for The News American back then. I’d spent time with Schaefer and Russell, and with other Democratic mayoral candidates, including young Del. Clarence Mitchell III and Orphans Court Judge Francis Valle, and Republican candidate Dr. Ross Pierpont.

In the primary campaigns’ closing days, I was summoned to the office of The News American’s executive editor, Tom White. The paper was about to make its editorial endorsements, which meant a lot back then. I didn’t have a vote in that process, but White wanted to know my impressions since I’d spent time with all the candidates.

“The most impressive guy out there,” I said, “is George Russell.”

“That’s what we think, too,” White replied.

“So the paper’s going to endorse him?”

“No,” White said. “We’re afraid to. We’re afraid if we endorse him, we’ll lose 5,000 subscribers.”

He meant white subscribers.

Who knows how history might have played itself out with an endorsement of Russell, who would have been the city’s first Black mayor. Russell went on to a distinguished legal career.

The News American lasted another 15 years, with its circulation intact but its courage in question.

And Schaefer did OK. Mayor for 15 years, governor for eight and comptroller for eight, a man now honored with statues and plaques and entire buildings named after him.

The next mayor of Baltimore, whoever he or she is, should give us such an honorable run.

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore” (Johns Hopkins University Press) and “Michael Olesker’s Baltimore: If You Live Here, You’re Home” (Johns Hopkins University).