Gov. Martin O'Malley, 1999-2007
"My advice to anyone who does the job of mayor, whether they do that job in Baltimore, Boston or any city in the world, is this: Make your city a cleaner city, a safer city and a city that becomes a better place for kids to grow up. Where businesses know they can invest their dollars and their hard work will be returned.
"If you make a city cleaner, safer and a better place for kids, the people of the city start to do the rest of the work themselves."
And in a reference to the recent hullabaloo over the city's attempt to levy an $800 minor privilege fee for the giant ornamental bird gracing Hampden's Cafe Hon, he advised: "Don't mess with the pink flamingos."
Kurt L. Schmoke, 1987-1999
"One [bit of advice] would be on a personal level. I would urge her to plan her schedule with her family to make sure that she leaves enough time for them, for family life. That's very important.
"It's a real challenge. I used to average about 60 invitations a day and we had to decide, my staff, which things I would go to. Often, family things would get pushed to a secondary position. That is not very good."
"The political - take Mayor D'Alesandro to lunch." That would be 80-year-old Thomas D'Alesandro III, mayor during the late 1960s. "He is not only a very wise person, but he has a perspective on that job that Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake would benefit from hearing.
"He's seen it over a long period of time as a son of a mayor, as the council president, as a mayor himself during a transition period for the city, and then over the last few decades as a practicing lawyer and a private citizen.
"His views are really very insightful and helpful. I hope she could spend some time with him."
Any other advice?
"That's it. Everybody's got their own challenges, their own time in office. ... She's going to have to find her own voice now as an executive, and not a legislator. It has to be authentic, has to be hers."
Thomas D'Alesandro III, 1967-1971
"You've got to establish your priorities, and my priority would be to fight crime. That has so many different ramifications in so many different areas. It affects almost every walk of life and every aspect of life. It affects business, it affects education, it affects everything."