When Kenneth C. Montague Jr. ran for a 3rd District City Council seat in 1983, he ignored the naysayers who told him a black candidate couldn't win in a predominantly white district.
Montague, an attorney and longtime civic activist, ran a well-financed, non-racial textbook campaign in northeast Baltimore.
He finished a distant fourth.
He lost because he got only a handful of votes in white precincts, while his white opponents did well in black precincts.
White voter rejection of black candidates remains a fact of life in Baltimore. It's one reason that the City Council is 63 percent white, while the city is almost 60 percent black.
Today, black activists hope that redistricting will help them gain more City Council seats by creating more districts with black majorities.
But an Evening Sun analysis of voting patterns, registration figures and census data, plus interviews with candidates, indicates that numbers alone may not do the trick because:
* Elections often hinge as much on organizational clout as on a district's racial composition, and whites tend to have stronger political organizations.
* Those organizations can influence voter turnout and concentrate voting strength behind a slate of candidates.
* While blacks and whites register to vote in nearly the same proportion, blacks are far more willing than whites to vote for candidates of the other race.
"There exists in the minds of some whites a presumption against black candidates," said Montague, who finally won a seat in the House of Delegates in 1986 and was re-elected last year.
"There is a presumption that blacks may not be able to do the job or would not represent the entire district. Black voters tend to be much more objective and open-minded."
REMAP PLAN WEIGHED
Montague's experience is instructive as the City Council wrestles with Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's plan for redrawing the lines of Baltimore's six council districts.
Several civil rights groups have attacked the Schmoke plan, saying it dilutes black voting strength by allowing two of the districts to retain large white majorities and a third to be about 52 percent white. The other three will continue to have substantial black majorities.
As a result, they say, the Schmoke plan offers little hope that blacks will make any gains on the council, where they now hold only seven of 19 seats.
Their argument is based on the assumption that a black candidate cannot win in a district that is less than 65 percent black.
Schmoke, however, said his plan could produce a majority black council.
"If you look at the map, and people only voted on racial lines, the map I submitted would produce 11 black council people," he said. "But I didn't design it to guarantee any particular result. I designed it to afford the opportunity for black representation, but not to guarantee it."
The Evening Sun's analysis shows that the city already has three districts with black majorities of at least 60 percent. Politically and geographically, it would be possible to make a fourth.
But, if the patterns in other districts hold, the new black district might elect at least one white council member. And taking black voters from other black districts could jeopardize black candidates there.
There is no question that blacks have the potential voting power to elect more black council members if they vote on strictly racial lines. Neither blacks nor whites have a disproportionate edge in voter registration. And white voter turnout, on average, is only slightly better than black turnout in city elections.
COMPUTER EMPLOYED
Using a computer, The Evening Sun matched voter-registration figures with new 1990 Census data in voting precincts with populations that are at least 90 percent black or 90 percent white.
About 64 percent of the city's voting-age population lives in precincts segregated to this extent.
Overall, 57.4 percent of the city's 556,145 voting-age citizens are registered, The Evening Sun found. Statewide, an estimated 66 percent of the voting-age population is registered, elections officials say.
In the overwhelmingly black precincts, 61 percent of the voting-age population was registered, compared with 58 percent the white precincts.
This slight advantage is offset by the more youthful profile of the black population. While blacks make up almost 59 percent of the population as a whole, they make up only 56 percent of the voting-age population. Likewise, whites account for 39 percent of the city's population but 42 percent of its residents of voting age.
The fact that blacks register in roughly equal proportions to whites may soften -- but hardly eliminate -- opposition to Schmoke's plan, one council member predicted.
"I think that the courts are more inclined to look at the results that occur in an election -- the number of black council members -- rather than the demographics and dynamics that lead to them," said Councilman Timothy B. Murphy, D-6th. "These [registration] facts are good news but maybe they are not good enough to satisfy the courts."
Arthur Murphy, a political consultant, said that the numbers don't change the overall picture. "There are as many dormant white voters as there are blacks," he said. "And that still means that a black will not break through in some districts, as they are currently constituted."
COMPLEXITY NOTED
Rodney A. Orange, chairman of the Political Action Committee of the Baltimore branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- one of the groups threatening to take Schmoke's plan to court -- said the registration numbers underscore the complexity of trying to increase black council representation.
"Registration for [blacks] has never seemed to be the problem," Orange said. "The problem has always been the follow-up and getting them to the polls and getting information to them so they can make intelligent choices."
Indeed, the numeric analysis and politicians agree that organization plays a key role.
Black candidates for City Council lose by huge margins in white, working-class precincts controlled by old-line political clubs fielding all-white tickets. No black city council member has been elected from a district with a white majority.
But many of those losing black candidates were victims of much more than racial voting, according to a review of voting patterns in the 1983 and 1987 municipal elections.
Some could not unify black support in their districts. Others lost because of undernourished campaigns or because a large number of black candidates splintered black voting strength.
Meanwhile, white candidates often benefited from the power of incumbency and by disciplined voting fostered by the city's still-potent political clubs.
Item: In two 3rd District precincts with more than a 90 percent black majority, Montague defeated the other council candidates by better than 2-1 in 1983.
But two well-known white incumbents, Frank X. Gallagher and Martin E. "Mike" Curran, ran second and third in those precincts despite the presence of other black candidates.
Meanwhile, in two 90 percent white precincts, black candidates got only a handful of votes. In one white precinct in Hamilton, the ticket of Gallagher, Curran and Joseph T. "Jody" Landers 3rd smoked Montague by almost a 10-1 margin.
Montague fared better in a white precinct in more affluent, liberal Homeland, where the voters are less likely to follow the organization line. There, Montague lost by a 2-1 margin to Landers and Curran, and by a 3-1 margin to Gallagher.
If Montague had been able to sustain even that relatively low level of support throughout the white areas of the district, he would have been elected.
STONEWALL POWER
Likewise, council elections in South Baltimore's 6th District have always followed the script written by the Stonewall Democratic Club.
That script calls for whites in the role of council members, even though the district is more than 40 percent black and blacks are more likely to be registered than whites.
Like their counterparts in other predominantly white districts, black candidates in the 6th have been unable to break the hold that incumbents and their political clubs have on the council seats.
But former Sen. Harry J. McGuirk, the Stonewall patriarch, rejects the notion that 6th District voters won't support black candidates. "Look at the record," he said.
Indeed, Clarence H. Du Burns, who is black and has close ties to Stonewall, led two white candidates in the district during his successful 1983 run for the City Council presidency.
Also, two black Stonewall members have been elected to the Democratic State Central Committee: Rosa McCoy and Gwendolyn Johnson.
The lesson: Organizations can deliver white votes for black candidates. But they haven't chosen to support blacks for the council so far.
"Blacks feel disenfranchised in the Sixth. They feel like their vote doesn't count," said Orange, who may run for council this year.
If Schmoke's plan survives, the 6th District will become 48
percent black. As a result, local bosses are talking seriously about putting a black candidate on the ticket if a vacancy occurs. An opening may be imminent, since Murphy is being considered for a District Court judgeship.
"I would think you would see a strong black be recommended to the group that will interview to fill a vacancy," McGuirk said.
Political clubs have operated quite differently in two other districts with substantial black majorities.
Both the 5th and 2nd districts have histories of fielding successful biracial council tickets. And in both districts, those tickets spawn significant cross-racial voting.
Item: In a 90 percent white precinct in Upper Park Heights, 5th District incumbents Rochelle "Rikki" Spector, who is white, and Iris G. Reeves, who is black, finished first and second in the 1987 Democratic primary. The third member of the ticket, Vera Hall, who also is black, finished a close fourth, with 324 votes.
In a 90 percent black precinct in Forest Park, Hall and Reeves finished 1-2, while Spector finished a strong fourth.
"From what I can see, this integrated approach to politics came ** from political leadership and biracial community groups," said Herbert C. Smith, a political science professor at Western Maryland College who has managed campaigns and been a candidate in the 2nd District.
This cross-voting is what Schmoke envisions as a result of the modest changes contemplated in his redistricting plan. But, he said, it will take good candidates as well as unprecedented flexibility from the political clubs to bring his vision to life.
"Under my plan, there would be a significant increase in the number of blacks in the council if good candidates step forward, register people and turn them out to vote," Schmoke said.