Not long past dawn after the dramatic cliffhanger election for governor, another political troupe descended on street corners in downtown Baltimore. The band of campaigners spelled out with successive signs: "Next election: Mary Pat Clarke -- Mayor -- 1995."
A cheerful Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who had kept a late vigil with supporters of Democrat Parris N. Glendening, was back in a high-ceilinged conference room at City Hall preparing for a routine financial meeting. Election officials across Maryland had just begun a tedious count of absentee ballots, but Mr. Schmoke already was celebrating the voter turnout in the city that would help give Mr. Glendening his slim margin of victory.
Mayor Schmoke clearly emerged as a winner when the Prince George's County executive clinched the hard-fought gubernatorial race with about 6,000 votes of the 1.4 million cast. The mayor, who already has close ties to the White House, now has a friend in Annapolis.
For the two-term mayor of Baltimore, delivering the votes the old-fashioned way for Mr. Glendening is likely to pay off next year in his bid to remain in office. Mr. Schmoke's sizable and savvy campaign organization got a chance to practice fund-raising and get-out-the-vote efforts.
Restless electorate
The gubernatorial contest also buoyed the hopes of Mrs. Clarke, who saw the response of a restless electorate to an underdog candidate with a clear message.
A progressive liberal, the City Council president, who is challenging the mayor's bid for a third term, has a radically different political philosophy than Ellen R. Sauerbrey, the conservative Republican who was defeated by Mr. Glendening. Yet like Mrs. Sauerbrey, Mrs. Clarke has a similar forthright appeal that has made her one of the city's most popular politicians.
"[Mrs. Clarke] has that personality. People are very responsive to her," said Herb Smith, a political scientist at Western Maryland College.
No two elections are alike. But three conclusions can be drawn from Election Day that may affect the mayoral race, according to rTC professors of government, political consultants, community leaders and ministers in Baltimore:
* The mayor's campaign organization successfully mounted a get-out-the-vote effort in what amounted to a trial run for next year's mayoral election.
Months before the primary, Mr. Schmoke backed Mr. Glendening
over two Baltimore-area candidates, Lt. Gov. Melvin A. Steinberg and state Sen. American Joe Miedusiewski of East Baltimore. Mr. Schmoke's endorsement immediately opened the door for Mr. Glendening. It also guaranteed an army of workers under the direction of Larry S. Gibson, the mayor's chief political strategist.
Mr. Gibson proved his prowess again with a city voter turnout of 43 percent, said political consultant Arthur W. Murphy. The Schmoke team was most successful in the largely poor, black neighborhoods on both sides of the central business district. Voters in predominantly black precincts supported Mr. Glendening by margins as high as 18-1.
73,000 vote margin
"Essentially on the strength of the mayor's recommendation, Parris Glendening carried Baltimore decisively," said Mr. Gibson, who described Mr. Glendening's 73,000-vote margin over Mrs. Sauerbrey as critical and "a testament to the extent of Mayor Schmoke's popularity."
Mayor Schmoke also stands to benefit from an ally in Annapolis to achieve some elusive legislative goals, including a state takeover of the Circuit Court and efforts to eliminate auto insurance rates based on geography that have resulted in especially high premiums in Baltimore.
"He will be able to say that he has this working relationship with Glendening at a time when we cannot expect a lot more from the federal government" with a Republican-controlled Congress, said state Del. Samuel I. Rosenberg, D-42.
* A church-based community group showed its own political clout and signaled its desire for change.
Ministers of the city's largest black churches and community activists with Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) turned out in force to register voters, canvass neighborhoods and arrange rides to the polls. Yet even as they worked toward the same goal, many of the ministers and BUILD leaders made clear that they want the Schmoke administration to pay closer attention to their goals.
From his first campaign for office, when he ran for state's attorney 12 years ago, Mr. Schmoke relied on the black clergy for support. BUILD leaders staunchly supported Mr. Schmoke in his 1987 mayoral bid after he pledged to fulfill their goals of reforming the city's troubled public schools and redeveloping the poor neighborhoods that lie beyond the Inner Harbor.
But the mayor no longer is guaranteed the backing of BUILD, the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the Baptist Ministers Conference. Some ministers and BUILD leaders disapprove of his venture in school privatization. They worry about the performance of the nine "Tesseract" schools run by the for-profit Education Alternatives Inc. under a five-year contract worth more than $140 million.
"We believe very strongly in the non-privatization of public schools. We've already seen Tesseract not produce the results people promised they would," said the Rev. William C. Calhoun, pastor of Trinity Baptist Church.
Like many ministers aligned with BUILD, Mr. Calhoun, the president of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, also is concerned about the decay of city neighborhoods and the need to pay service workers a "living wage," enough to support a family.
Mayor Schmoke has supported this "social compact" in principle. But he's frustrated BUILD leaders by failing to pick their choice of a manager for the Harrison's Pier 5 hotel and by threatening to veto a council bill that would raise the minimum wage of school custodians, parking attendants and other service employees hired under city contracts.
Flush with success
Flush with their success in rallying voters in 50 precincts, the ministers say they're planning another big registration and get-out-the-vote campaign. They want both Mrs. Clarke, Mr. Schmoke and any other mayoral candidates to respond to their agenda.
* Mrs. Clarke must find a clear-cut message to appeal to voters frustrated with status quo government. Mrs. Sauerbrey got a lot of mileage
out of her theme of less government and a 24 percent tax cut.
The council president "has to show why she's better candidate than the status quo, because certainly Kurt does represent the status quo now," said Baltimore Del. Kenneth C. Montague, D-43rd, who has worked on Mrs. Clarke's campaigns in the past. "He has a record of eight years."
In the past, the two-term council president has run a grass-roots campaign on the strength of her personality, her activism, her love for the city. She is viewed by many as being highly committed to solving social problems, but her critics have disparaged her as a publicity seeker.
Political observers say she has to articulate a few key issues, perhaps her opposition to school privatization or the audit that criticized the city housing authority, to compete with the mayor.
Mayor Schmoke, after all, enjoys the benefits of incumbency, the support of the business community and a sizable campaign chest. He also has consistently drawn strong support from the largest group of voters -- black women between the ages of 45 and 70.
"He's the son every mother wanted," Mr. Murphy said. To persuade the people of Baltimore to throw out their first elected black mayor for the white council president, she has to wage a "guerrilla war to see if she can undermine the mayor's strong base of support," he said.
Mrs. Sauerbrey's campaign also offers another hopeful model for Mrs. Clarke. It shows that a persistent underdog can cause problems for a much better-financed favorite.
'Will be war'
State Sen. John A. Pica Jr., D-43rd, said he believes the campaign "will be war, pure and simple."
"When you combine her skills with the anti-incumbent mood and voter frustration, it's going to be nasty." he said. "She won't have the financial resources, or the benefits of incumbency, but it will be tough. Mary Pat Clarke is a rare animal. She doesn't leave stones unturned."
Mr. Smith, the political analyst also predicts a hard-fought race. He says the only thing he can readily forecast is a voter turnout at least 10 percentage points higher than in the gubernatorial race.
The proper turn-out model, he suggests, is the 1983 campaign between then-Mayor William Donald Schaefer and well-known attorney William H. Murphy Jr. On Election Day, 62 percent of registered voters in Baltimore cast their ballots. The overwhelming majority voted for Mr. Schaefer in a rout.
JoAnna Daemmrich is a City Hall reporter for The Baltimore Sun.