Baltimore Fishbowl asked candidates running in this year’s election to share their views on the three most important challenges facing Baltimore and the region, and solutions they support to make progress. We asked candidates to submit a video answering that question, so you can hear their ideas and goals in their own words.
Doug Gansler, a Democrat and former attorney general, is running for governor, and named crime, transportation and business as the three most important issues he would address as governor.
Transcript
Hi, I’m Doug Gansler. I was your attorney general and for eight years, worked every day in Baltimore. I’m the Baltimore candidate in this election; I’ve been going to Baltimore for 50 years, longer than any other candidate in this race. I love Baltimore City. And I want to tell you the three things that I think are the most important things in Baltimore, for the next governor to address.
Crime
Number one is obviously crime. When you have almost 400 people slaughtered a year on the streets of Baltimore City, that is intolerable, and absolutely despicable.
And Baltimore is the city of so much promise and can realize that promise. There’s nobody else in this race that has a background in criminal justice. As I mentioned, I was your attorney general for eight years, I was the state’s attorney for eight years before that. And I was a federal prosecutor for six years before that, under Eric Holder, fighting homicide cases, gun cases, and so forth.
So I understand how the system works, I understand how to fix the system. Some of the things we’re going to do for Baltimore City, we’re going to add 1,000 new police officers, well-trained, trained in de-escalation, because we recognize that crime disproportionately impacts communities of color, underserved communities. So we have to bring crime down, while lifting justice up.
We’re going to put SROs in every school so that your children are safe when they go off to school in the morning, and make sure we stop that pipeline of children into the criminal justice system.
We’re gonna put 10,000 lights on the streets of Baltimore City, because crime happens in darkness. And we want to illuminate the streets of Baltimore. So crime, I can talk about that forever. Obviously, I’m the only one that knows about crime in this race. And so I’m excited to do that.
Transportation
The second issue is transportation. And you know, when Governor Hogan cancelled the red line, it was like taking a sledgehammer to Baltimore City.
One-third of folks in Baltimore don’t have a car to drive, and how they’re going to get to work if they can’t, and how they’re going to survive, put food on the table if they can’t get to work.
So we need to make sure that we reinstitute the red line, but have more of a regional transportation system, like other big cities in America. Baltimore should not be left behind.
Business
And the third thing is business. I’m the only moderate pro-business, pro-law enforcement, practical Democrat in this race. And in fact, all the polls show I’m the only Democrat in this race, who could beat Kelly Schultz. So none of the issues that people come and talk to you about matter if you’re a Democrat, if we can’t win the governor’s race. We’ve lost three of the last five, this is going to be a tremendous Republican year, we need to have somebody that can win because we need to bring back business into Baltimore City. That’s how we’ll bring back people. That’s how we’ll bring back commerce.
Crime is holding Baltimore City back. It’s a city that has, as I mentioned, incredible promise and the biggest asset Baltimore has is people. And I’ve met over decades, people that love and care so much and so deeply about Baltimore City, and they just need a governor that can work with the mayor, to work with the governor to work with the stakeholders, and the citizens of Baltimore, to make it the great city that it should become.
And we need to infuse money into Baltimore to bring back its businesses, clear out crime. We have the most educated population in America. And we have Johns Hopkins, number one hospital in the world, University of Maryland system, Mercy Sinai, all the great medical systems that are there.
We have biotech and tech. We just need leadership. And this is our time. I hope you will consider voting for me for governor, Candace Hollingsworth for Lieutenant Governor. She’ll be the first black woman Lieutenant Governor in Maryland’s history and she’ll be the best Lieutenant Governor in history because we’re the only team that has executive experience that is ready to go on day one.
None of this consultants, none of this out-of-state money, none of this flash and celebrity stuff, real workers to bring Baltimore back.
Thank you for thinking about us and really appreciate you’re considering supporting us for Governor.
Biographical information
Name: Douglas F. Gansler
Age: 59
Political Party: Democrat
Professional Background: A lifelong Montgomery County resident, Gansler served as Maryland’s Attorney General from 2007-2015, and focused on cases against predatory lenders, polluters, and human traffickers. He was the first statewide office to support marriage equality, and established a human trafficking task force. Previously, he served as Montgomery County state’s attorney. He is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia School of Law, and was an all-Ivy lacrosse player.
