A new poll shows that Thiru Vignarajah, City Council President Brandon Scott, former Mayor Sheila Dixon and Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young are all bunched together in the race for the Democratic nomination for mayor.
Vignarajah, a former federal prosecutor and Deputy Attorney General of Maryland, and Scott were tied at 18 percent, but both Dixon (16 percent) and Young (15 percent) fell within the poll’s margin of error of plus-or-minus 6 percent.
Former Baltimore Police Department spokesman T.J. Smith is within striking distance at 11 percent. Progressive state Sen. Mary Washington was the only other candidate to register significant support, at 7 percent. The rest of the Democratic field, a group that includes at least a dozen other candidates who have already filed to run, received 2 percent of the vote.
Twelve percent of voters said they were undecided.
Breaking the numbers down to the nearest decimal point, Fox 45, which commissioned pollster Gonzales Research & Media Services to conduct the survey, gave a slight edge to Vignarajah, who in 2018 ran for Baltimore City State’s Attorney and finished in third place.
The lawyer’s camp immediately seized on that story, saying Vignarajah’s plan to tackle Baltimore’s crime was resonating with voters.
“Ending the bloodshed and stopping rampant corruption are not unique to any one neighborhood—they are core values shared by every citizen of Baltimore. This is why our support will only continue to grow,” Vignarajah said in a statement. “The people of this city are saying enough is enough, they want concrete solutions, not empty platitudes, from someone with a record of addressing crime.”
According to the poll, Vignarajah performed best with older and white residents. He had a 20-point lead over the next closest candidate, Scott, among white voters, and a three-point advantage with voters age 60 and older. Meanwhile, Scott captured a majority of voters ages 18-39, with 30 percent support to Vignarajah’s 17 percent.
In a majority black city, Vignarajah only had 10 percent support from the city’s African-American residents. Their votes were divided almost equally among Scott (21 percent), Dixon (20 percent) and Young (21 percent).
Overwhelmingly, city voters said crime is one of their biggest concerns. Sixty-five percent said it is the most important issue, followed by corruption, education and taxes.
And they didn’t seem to have much faith in where the city is headed. Only 19 percent of respondents said things were moving the right direction, with 71 percent countering that the city is getting worse. Ten percent had no response.
Unsurprisingly, this does not bode well for the current mayor. Only 29 percent of respondents said they trusted Young to run the city, described as a “three billion dollar business with 10,000 employees and 600,000 residents.”
The poll gave an equally grim picture for other officials. Overall, 77 percent of respondents said they did not trust the city’s political class and the leadership at Baltimore City Public Schools.
Per Maryland Matters, Gonzales contacted 319 likely Democratic primary voters between Dec. 23-Jan. 3. Mary Miller, a former U.S. Treasury Department official in the Obama administration and T. Rowe Price executive, joined the race four days after the poll was conducted.
The primary election is scheduled for April 28, and the Jan. 24 deadline for candidates to file is fast approaching.
I like how this version doesn’t focus on ranking the candidates but on it is still a toss-up for the four who lead. Nice work. KC