Down the annex hallway of the Enoch Pratt Free Library — the big, beautiful central library on Cathedral Street — there’s a new exhibit of items from Maryland and Baltimore political campaigns, pulled from a collection in the Pratt’s Maryland Department.
Covering about 180 years of political history, some items in the exhibit will ring familiar — accusations of election fraud and anti-immigrant literature from the mid-19th Century, nativist handbills from the early 20th Century, and what the Pratt calls “the realignment of the Democratic and Republican parties in Maryland around issues of race.”
Regarding the latter, Exhibit No. 1 is from the most infamous Maryland campaign of the 20th Century: George P. Mahoney’s quest for the governorship 60 years ago this summer.
Mahoney was a Democrat, a wealthy Baltimore County businessman who ran for office frequently. In 1966, he ran for governor with the slogan: “Your home is your castle, protect it.”
That was no racist dog whistle. That was three dogs howling.
Mahoney’s blunt appeal was to white voters opposed to open housing — an end to discrimination in the sale or rentals of houses and apartments. He declared opposition to any law that would take away the right of a homeowner to sell or rent a home to anyone he wanted.
“Your home is your castle,” Mahoney said, “and anyone who says otherwise is trying to cheat you of a constitutional right!”
The civil rights movement was in full gear. President Lyndon Johnson had signed the Civil Rights Act two years earlier and the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) declared Baltimore the most segregated city in America and demonstrated for open housing.
But here in Maryland — and Baltimore, particularly — there was considerable resistance. A white-hot racist named Connie Lynch staged rallies in the city to fire up opposition to the Baltimore City Council’s efforts to end discrimination locally. Lynch called for violence in resistance to racial integration, and his ugly pleas incited fights in and near Patterson Park during the summer months. The city went to court and won an order to stop Lynch from holding more rallies.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan came to town to demonstrate against Mayor Theodore R. McKeldin’s attempts to get the owners of apartment buildings to agree to rent to Black tenants.
McKeldin, the city’s last Republican mayor, was a long-time supporter of civil rights. He was a moderate, and a proud Republican at a time when the GOP included governors, senators and representatives with a wide range of political beliefs.
McKeldin had been mayor in the 1940s and governor for two terms in the 1950s. He was elected to a second term as mayor in May 1963 at the age of 62. He inherited a big city (population 942,000) with brewing problems, including rising racial tensions and white flight.
Noted historian William Thompson in an award-winning essay for the Baltimore City Historical Society: “For McKeldin, no year presented him more challenge than 1966, a time when in the aftermath of the civil rights bills, cities in particular were facing a white ‘backlash’ combined with an increased militancy among African-American activists … .”
In the midst of all that, George Mahoney narrowly won the Democratic nomination for governor in September, and his candidacy split the party, creating an instant advantage for a Republican in the November general election.
That Republican was Spiro T. Agnew, the Baltimore County executive at the time. Compared to Mahoney, Agnew was seen as a moderate. He benefited from Mahoney’s extremism, winning the support of Black voters and never-Mahoney Democrats.
Agnew beat Mahoney by 81,775 votes. During the next two years, Agnew exchanged his moderate colors for those of a reactionary conservative and went on to become Richard Nixon’s vice-president.
McKeldin chose not to run for re-election in 1967. Maryland continued to elect a few moderate-to-liberal Republicans — Charles “Mac” Mathias served three terms as U.S. senator, Wayne Gilchrest served nine terms in the House of Representatives, and Constance Morella won eight terms on Capitol Hill.
But those days are long gone now. Even the Reagan Revolution looks moderate in some respects compared to the extremism of the MAGA Republican Party under Donald Trump. And the likes of George P. Mahoney would not get very far in today’s Democratic Party in Maryland. The politics he branded in 1966 would be a better fit on the other side of the hall.
Dan Rodricks writes weekly for Baltimore Fishbowl. He can be reached via danrodricks.com
