An ivy league mayor in a blue-collar world - Kurt Schmoke in Baltimore, Maryland

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 28, 1994 | by Chi Chi Sileo

At first glance, Baltimore seems an unlikely site for political experimentation. With its working-class ethos and Dickensian smokestacks, its crumbling infrastructure and packed ranks of welfare recipients, Baltimore is worlds away from the green-hilled, genteel and affluent counties that surround it. A traditional stronghold of old-style Democrats - including a strong labor element, machine-style politics, a population composed largely of poor blacks and ethnic whites - Baltimore seems to be the last place where conservative solutions to social problems would be welcomed - or where they would be expected to work.

But Baltimore has been a kind of political laboratory for the last seven years under the iconoclastic leadership of Mayor Kurt Schmoke. A Democrat in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 8-to-1, Schmoke has instituted a series of innovations that seem to be based heavily on conservative principles. In fact, Schmoke seems willing to borrow from a wide variety of approaches, adhering to a single criterion: If it looks like it might work, try it.

There's no question that Baltimore needs some serious help. In the past, factories, Chesapeake Bay - primarily producing oysters and crabs - and shipbuilding provided most employment opportunities; today, tourism, biotechnology and international business are the driving industries. However, many Baltimoreans lack the training and education for such jobs, and those who see opportunities don't see them in the city. Indeed, thousands of citizens leave Baltimore every year, fleeing high taxes, crime and unemployment for the greener pastures of surrounding suburban counties.

In Cities Without Suburbs, a study of declining urban centers, author David Rusk lists Baltimore among the 34 cities he calls "in true crisis." He cites three major factors inherent in a city's deterioration: population decline (Baltimore loses approximately 4,000 people a year); a disproportionate minority community compared with the rest of the region, which signifies abandonment by the white middle class (Baltimore is roughly 59 percent black and 39 percent white); and a growing disparity between incomes in the city and the surrounding counties, where residents earn, on average, twice as much.

On the other hand, this is the city - blue-collar and rambunctious - that chose Schmoke - white-collar and ivory-tower - over flashier candidates, not once but twice. And his reign has been unique among big-city mayors. The reserved, bespectacled Rhodes Scholar has no obvious role model: He lacks the hail-fellow-well-met charisma of Washington's Marion Barry and the dour liberalism of New York's David Dinkins. He shies from the media, insulates himself against special-interest influences, has a background free of either flash or scandal and lives quietly in his hometown with his wife and two children. The biggest complaint people have about Schmoke is that he's boring - and even his critics agree that he is likable and honest.

Schmoke, 44, came to politics after earning a history degree from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. He served on Jimmy Carter's White House domestic-policy staff, then returned to Baltimore as an assistant U.S. attorney and later was elected state's attorney for Baltimore. He was elected mayor in 1987, beating another black candidate in spite of - or perhaps because of - his deliberate distancing from Baltimore's powerful Democratic political machinery. To this day, his politics resist categorization: Schmoke's problem solving alternates between liberal, conservative and libertarian bases.

"This shouldn't surprise anyone", says Timothy Murphy, a city councilman who recently was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. "Consider his background. He has extraordinary credentials and training; one would expect him to be esoteric." Schmoke's influence has extended beyond Baltimore. "He is a highly active and respected, extremely visible mayor," says Mike Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Two years ago, Schmoke hosted a preinaugural gala in Baltimore for hundreds of mayors, and his call for a debate on drug policy surprised a conference audience. "We really had to duck for cover after that," Brown adds.

One factor is clear: Once Schmoke makes up his mind, he sticks to it. In an era in which voters bemoan political flip-flopping and lack of vision, Schmoke always has stood firmly on his idiosyncratic principles - even, note some observers, when it might be more prudent to back off. Defying the city's strong labor presence, Schmoke has flirted with privatizing government services such as schools and prisons. Over the protests of black police officers, he recently appointed a white police commissioner - although he has used minority set-asides for city contracting. And in a town that still relies on the political "machine" and grants almost full power to its mayor, Schmoke has maintained an intellectual policy-wonk image since his election in 1987. Apparently, it's an approach that works: Voters sent him back to the mayor's house in 1991 with an overwhelming majority.