I have suddenly found myself on 9th District City Council candidate Chris Taylor’s email list. I received the following email (posted below this post) a few minutes ago. It gives some insight (from Taylor’s point of view) into the 9th District race and the media’s coverage of the race. I am glad to see Taylor going all out in this race. He is one of four pretty well known challengers trying to unseat Pete (the son of Agnes) Welch. It is unfortunate that all these challengers may split the anti-Welch vote to a point where none of them can win. They probably should have had a pow-wow after the legendary vacant seat hearing back in January (Taylor was in attendance at the hearing although he did not apply for the job back then) and come up with a strategy where most of them would have dropped out and supported one challenger.
If Baltimore had many voters who did some research and did not just blindly vote for a last name then Welch would have no shot and there would be no problem with all these challengers. In order to have a shot I would advise the challengers to rip down Welch as much as possible and avoid drama amongst the challengers.
I know how frustrating lack of media coverage and minimization by the media can be in a race. I remember in 2007 when similar occurrences happened to me in the 11th district race. Since the local media has virtually no coverage of city council races, not that many people expect their local media organizations to give them much useful information on local races. I would not worry too much about being minimized on a quick media piece because the likelihood that more than ten eligible voters in the 9th district were paying attention is not very high. To use the slight to organize volunteers is a good idea though. I think door knocking is the best way to combat well known last name recognition. Good luck to all of you!
“Hey all,
I could really use 5-10 minutes of your time today. We have to fight on every level of this campaign to have the best chance at winning. Please read below and take action!
In short, the reporter, Bobby Marvin never interviewed me (or several other candidates), but instead interviewed 3 of our opponents and labeled one of them, Abigail Breiseth as the “toughest challenger to Welch.” He discussed Michael Johnson as the “executive director of the Paul Robeson Institute, an urban research group,” but if you try to google or look up this institute, it doesn’t seem to exist. He mentions me and other candidates in an aside at the end, without reaching out to any of us. The reporting was one-sided, not well researched, and uninformed and we’d like people to email or call WYPR to voice our concerns.
You can send an email or call: Sunni Khalid at
skhalid@wypr.org or call him at 410-235-1660 and request his extension at 1759.
If you can, please do this today. It will be most effective if we all call within the same timeframe. Here’s the basics and/or things to use in your email or phone call:
–On WYPR’s website, there is a podcast by Bobby Marvin about the 9th district city council race.
–In the podcast, he interviews 3 candidates and gives them air time, but says the rest of the candidates “an odd collection” who ”are political novices.”
–Chris is labeled among the “political novices” as “a real estate developer”…As we know, Chris is not a political novice and here are some things you could mention: he was elected as president of the Union Square association for five years and proceeded to build the largest community association in the 9th district. He has been an educator who co-created a program for at-risk youth in the Baltimore City Public Schools. He is a small business owner who has created jobs in our district and given several ex-offenders the opportunity to change their lives. He has renovated over 20 vacant houses and brought much-needed tax revenue and investment back to our district. And before he even got in the race, there were not many people within the city government and our community leadership that did not know him.
–Two of the three people he interviewed (Abigail Breiseth and Quianna Cooke have experience in education–not politics, but they are not labeled as “novices”).
–He calls Abigail Breiseth “perhaps Welch’s toughest challenger”…but where does that come from? What research was done to support that? What are her qualifications? He doesn’t mention any experience she has, only that she is a teacher (but doesn’t mention her job is at a private school that no one in our district can afford) or that most people in the district do not know who she is. He cites that she has raised over $11,000. Compare that to our campaign: We have raised over $15,000 and are on track to raise over $20,000 and Chris has walked over 80% of our district, knocking on close to 5,000 voter doors. If anyone is out in our communities, talking to the leaders, all the talk is that Chris has a real chance of beating Welch. The “white guy with the faux-hawk” is out there.
–We are concerned with the lack of effort and research that went into the article and would request that a reporter attends one of the upcoming debates to see for him/herself: St. Edwards Roman Catholic Church, 901 Poplar Grove Street, August 22, 6pm OR St. James Episcopal Church, 1020 West Lafeyette Avenue on Wednesday, August 24th at 6pm.
–We also believe he should do his research and re-do the article, interviewing all candidates.
THANK YOU!
Chris Taylor”
Adam is the most recognizable face of the recent resurgence in Reservoir Hill. He has appeared on many national and local radio shows, in several news publications, and at numerous events discussing his innovative urban redevelopment ideas and his unique lifestyle. Adam is a successful entrepreneur, community activist, and a local political guru who ran for city council in 2007. He is the founder and director of the TechBalt.com Buy a Block Project and BaltimoreHourly.com. His fearless local political commentary has rocked the local blog scene for most of this decade and he plans to take it to the next level in the next decade here on Charm City Current.