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With barely a month to go until Election Day, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott retains a sizable cash advantage over his rivals, including former Mayor Sheila Dixon, reporting nearly double the balance of his leading challenger in campaign finance filings submitted Tuesday.
Dixon out-raised Scott since the last filing deadline in January, bringing in almost $273,000 compared to Scott’s $231,000 over that stretch. But Scott has raised substantially more over the course of the campaign cycle, leaving the incumbent with $908,000 in the bank at the April 9 filing deadline, nearly double Dixon’s $497,000.
Meanwhile, a third candidate, Thiru Vignarajah, has raised a competitive war chest using the city’s new public financing system, which multiplies small donations if candidates forgo contributions larger than $150 and donations from unions, corporations and political action committees. Vignarajah disclosed Tuesday that he has amassed $698,000 since entering the race in January, including a more than $150,000 contribution from the city fund that he qualified for over the weekend.
The latest fundraising numbers come as mayoral campaigns are entering the final, intense weeks before next month’s Democratic primary election.
Just this week, Scott and Dixon have traded big-name endorsements, with the first-term incumbent securing the backing of both Maryland senators and his challenger drawing the support of State’s Attorney Ivan Bates. While Dixon has continued to campaign aggressively in recent weeks — debuting her campaign’s first commercial, which features Bates declaring his need for a “stronger partner in City Hall,” on Tuesday — the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge has turned the national spotlight onto Scott.
The Democratic primary will be held on May 14, and in deep-blue Baltimore its result will effectively decide the city’s next mayor. One more campaign finance disclosure deadline, on May 3, remains before Election Day.
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Over the course of his re-election campaign, Scott has looked to sell voters on the importance of sustained, stable leadership in City Hall, touting the reduction Baltimore has seen in gun violence over the last year and often arguing that Dixon would return Baltimore to outdated policies of her late 2000s tenure. The latest numbers from Scott show he has continued to spend conservatively, burning $158,000 in the latest reporting period while retaining a nearly $1 million war chest with the most competitive weeks of campaigning still to go. The incumbent reported $835,000 in the bank at the last reporting deadline in January.
Scott has fundraised widely in Baltimore’s business and developer communities over the course of the cycle, drawing on maximum $6,000 contributions from donors behind Seawall Development, Beatty Development Group, Hess Construction and MCB Real Estate, the local company redeveloping Harborplace. Numerous MCB employees have also supported the mayor individually.
Maximum donors to Scott’s campaign in the latest reporting period include the labor union Metropolitan Baltimore Council AFL-CIO, the Philadelphia-based Laborers District Council PAC. Political allies also chipped in to Scott’s balance, with former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake transferring $6,000 and Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman transferring $5,000 to his campaign. Scott pulled in almost $17,000 from various state PACs.
In Dixon’s bid to retake her old office, she has billed herself as the superior city manager and harked back to the relatively low homicide rate the city experienced when she was in office between 2007 and 2010. Dixon’s campaign has also been marked by the scandal of her mayoral tenure. While in office in 2009 as the first female mayor of Baltimore, Dixon was convicted of embezzlement for taking gift cards intended for the poor, and she stepped down in 2010 after pleading guilty to perjury in a separate case.
Among the maximum donors to Dixon’s campaign were Rex Wheeler of Canton Port Services, Joseph and J. Mark Shapiro of Continental Realty Corp., construction attorney Catherine Lawrence and Daniel W. Bythewood, co-founder of La Cité, the New York-based developer that has been contracted for nearly 20 years to redevelop the West Baltimore neighborhood of Poppleton. Bythewood also contributed $2,000 to Scott’s campaign, while his La Cité co-founder Ian Arias added another $4,500 to Dixon’s haul.
In the previous fundraising period, Dixon pulled in maximum donations from members of the influential Smith and Luetkemeyer families, whose patriarchs, David Smith and John “Jack” Luetkemeyer, have financed a pro-Dixon super PAC. Numerous sitting and former city elected officials also contributed.
Not factored into Dixon’s half-a-million dollar balance is $62,000 her campaign said it paid out for its first commercial, hitting airwaves this week. In the ad, Bates expounds on his work to combat crime in the state’s attorney’s office and states that he’s “not worried about the past” but “focused on the partnership for the future.”
“We’re making progress. But I need a stronger partner in City Hall,” says Bates in the ad. “That’s Sheila Dixon.”
While Scott and Dixon have courted bigger-dollar donors, public financing powered Vignarajah into a strong financial position. The former Maryland deputy attorney general has called this year’s mayoral contest a $1 million race and said Tuesday that his fundraising windfall shows that small donations and publicly financed campaigns can compete with the well-financed establishment candidates.
Vignarajah has spent only a few thousand dollars of his total donations, leaving him with a hefty war chest to draw on in the final weeks of the race. About $100,000 of Vignarajah’s haul came in through direct donations of $150 or less, money he has been able to pool with an additional $600,000 in matching funds.
“There is plainly unbelievable momentum as people realize they’re not stuck in a choice between corruption and incompetence, a choice between the lesser of two evils,” Vignarajah said Tuesday, declaring that he has the resources “to make this a competitive race.”
Meanwhile, businessman Bob Wallace has around $410,000 on hand, according to his April filing, largely thanks to loans he has made to himself.
So far this cycle, Wallace has loaned himself about $350,000 — including $150,000 he loaned to himself on April 1 — and has a balance of outstanding loans totaling more than $695,000. Wallace ran for mayor four years ago as an independent candidate, and on the Democratic ballot this time around he has pulled in donations from across the state and from a range of industries, including health care, government and finance. In his 2020 run, Wallace loaned himself nearly $343,000.
Super PACs remain an X-factor in the race — backers have formed PACs supporting Dixon and Scott — their potential weight still unclear.
Neither the Working for Baltimore PAC nor the Baltimore Forward PAC, both formed in support of Scott in recent weeks, had yet filed a campaign finance report as of 10:00 PM Tuesday.
The committee backing Dixon, the Better Baltimore PAC, though, funded a television attack ad against Scott last month.
The committee boasts the backing of Baltimore County developer Luetkemeyer of Continental Realty Corporation, and David Smith, the executive chairman of the national TV network Sinclair, Inc. and the new owner the Baltimore Sun. Formed last August before Dixon had officially declared her candidacy, the PAC has raised more than $500,000 to date thanks almost exclusively to donations from Smith and Luetkemeyer, who has lately emerged as a financial force in local races.
The Dixon-aligned PAC did not report any new contributions on Tuesday.
Reporter Hallie Miller contributed to this story.
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Adam Willis covers city government for The Banner, including the impacts of the large COVID-19 stimulus package that Baltimore received from the federal government.
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