With current mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake not seeking re-election and a dozen Democratic candidates throwing their hats in the ring, the 2016 mayoral race is the talk of the town in Baltimore. (Check out our on-going interview series with the candidates here.) But that’s not the only important campaign going on in the city this year.
Yesterday, Robert Curran and Rikki Spector both announced that they won’t be seeking reelection to their seats on the Baltimore City Council. That means six of the fifteen city council members won’t be running for reelection this year. (Two of them, Nick Mosby and Carl Stokes, have stepped down because they are running for mayor.)
According to the Sun, this period of turnover “is likely to result in a younger council that might feel compelled to address the city’s perennial problems, such as deeply entrenched poverty, a prevalence of lead paint poisoning and widespread drug use in some communities.” It’s also going to mean a ton of campaign signs plastered all over town, at least until the Democratic primary is held on April 26.
