National Perspective : Politics : Baltimore Voters Going Colorblind in Mayoral Race : Strong black support of white candidate ‘reflects fertile climate to stop doing everything based on race,’ expert says.

When Baltimore sent Kurt Schmoke to City Hall 12 years ago, it became the last of the nation’s predominantly black cities to elect a black mayor in hopes of reversing urban decay. Instead, Baltimore has fallen on still harder times and Schmoke is widely blamed for doing little to bring vitality to the town’s poorer sections.

In the race to succeed him, a white city councilman, Martin O’Malley, is casting himself as the agent of change. “The future of this city is a tough fight that I refuse to back down from, despite the color of my skin,” O’Malley said during a recent mayoral debate.

O’Malley stands a solid chance of winning the Sept. 14 Democratic primary and--given the party’s dominance in Baltimore--becoming the first white candidate to replace an African American mayor in a predominantly black city. He also would join a long line of whites who have succeeded black mayors in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and a host of other major cities with large--but not majority--black populations.

Far from demonstrating a dilution of black voting power, however, many analysts believe that the trend suggests blacks are looking past skin color for the candidate who can do them the most good.

“I think everyone knows that Baltimore has big social problems with its schools, with crime, with unemployment--you name it,” said Cheryl A. Benton, a political consultant. “The fact that so many black voters are willing to consider [O’Malley] reflects a fertile climate to stop doing everything based on race.”

As gains from the civil rights movement empowered black voters in the 1960s, cities with large black populations took pride in sending African Americans to City Hall. But over the last 30 years, as political and economic power has migrated from city halls to suburban jurisdictions, many of those black mayors discovered that race-based appeals crippled their relationships with white residents and business executives, who provided much of the tax base for their cities.

“Urban politics in most places has become comparatively more deracialized and significantly more pragmatic than it used to be,” said David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Washington-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which tracks black political activity. “Black voters are realizing that it doesn’t serve their interests to have a black mayor who is totally black-identified and deals only in black issues but drives everybody white away. So, black voters are looking for someone--even a white mayor--who can make a difference on the issues that matter to them.”

Baltimore, perhaps more than most other big cities, has been especially hard hit by a plethora of social problems. While its downtown and waterfront areas attracted glitzy development and tourist dollars in recent years, inner-city neighborhoods suffered. Public health officials estimate that 59,000 people--nearly 9% of the 675,000 city residents--have undergone drug treatment. Baltimore’s 8.4% unemployment rate is twice the national average. Two years ago, state officials agreed to spend $254 million over five years on the city’s schools in exchange for greater control over curriculum and other issues. Yet four of every 10 students who enter public high schools fail to graduate.

Black voters had hoped that Schmoke, a Baltimore native and former White House domestic policy advisor in the Jimmy Carter administration, would be their champion after he won the first of his three mayoral terms in 1987. Before that, he had been the first black person to win a citywide vote in 1981 when he was elected Baltimore’s chief prosecutor.

In his first mayoral race, he was widely embraced by many white voters, who seemed impressed with his education at Yale University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. Ultimately, though, Schmoke proved unable to please either blacks or whites.

“Schmoke had one of the 10 greatest resumes in America,” said Jim Brady, a Baltimore consultant who worked on Schmoke’s first campaign and served on his transition team. “But he’s turned out to be the most disappointing politician I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Faced with popularity ratings in the teens and limited support among black or white voters, Schmoke decided against running for a fourth term, leaving no clear-cut favorite as his political heir.

Early on, two black candidates--former school board and City Council member Carl Stokes and City Council President Lawrence Bell--rushed to fill the void. But many black and white Baltimore voters held out hope that NAACP President Kweisi Mfume would enter the race.

Support for Mfume, who represented a Baltimore congressional district for 10 years, was so strong that the City Council passed legislation waiving a residency requirement and allowing the next mayor to accept income from speaking engagements to supplement his salary. Those moves were widely acknowledged to be sweeteners to persuade Mfume to move from his suburban home and give up a larger salary at the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People for a run at the mayor’s office.

When Mfume declined, his supporters sought other potential candidates, including former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaffer and former Police Commissioner Bishop Robinson, both of whom decided against running.

“We asked everyone but Warren Beatty to run for mayor,” said Brady, who was active in the effort to draft Mfume. “After all the sideshows with the other potential candidates, it made those who actually entered the race look even worse than they really are.”

The reluctance of voters to rally around the two leading candidates encouraged O’Malley to enter the race. In the recent debate, O’Malley told Mfume, who served as the moderator, that he is not a “political opportunist” seeking to benefit from a divided black vote. “I was hoping someone of your stature would get in,” he said directly to Mfume.

In this city, where Democrats outnumber Republicans 9 to 1, the winner in the 16-candidate Democratic primary is considered a shoo-in as the next mayor, said pollster Carol Arscott of Gonzales/Arscott Research and Communications Inc., a Maryland political consulting firm that has tracked the Baltimore mayor’s race.

With less than two weeks left to campaign, the firm’s recent polling shows Stokes with 32% support and O’Malley at 30%, a statistical dead heat. Bell, who had 33% support at the beginning of the summer, trails the leaders with 20%. Thirteen other Democrats are on the ballot, but each had less than 2% of the potential vote. Six Republicans are also running for their party’s nomination.

Some political observers say that many of Baltimore’s black voters are turning to O’Malley because the field of black hopefuls strikes them as unimpressive. O’Malley’s campaign got a boost when prominent black political leaders in the state Legislature endorsed him, but a series of miscues by his challengers probably has played a greater role in his increased support among voters.

Stokes, who entered the race early, stumbled after he was forced to apologize for misleading voters by claiming erroneously in campaign literature that he is a college graduate. Bell, who has raised more money than any of his opponents and was the early front-runner, saw his lead evaporate after the press reported his personal financial problems, including having his car repossessed and being evicted from his home by a landlord.

Additionally, six of the other candidates had arrest records and another was taken away in handcuffs by police after being spotted during a televised campaign appearance as someone they wanted on an outstanding arrest warrant.