http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/lifestyle/bal-to.schmoke27dec27,1,7063290.story?coll=bal-artslife-today
Back on his own terms
Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke has enjoyed being out of the public
spotlight, but he's not above returning to make a political point.
By Joe Burris
Sun reporter
December 27, 2005
After six years spent largely outside the public spotlight, former
Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke was suddenly back - in one of the more
remarkable images that followers of local politics have seen in recent
years.
There, in a photograph on the front page of The Sun on Oct. 21, was
Schmoke and his longtime nemesis and predecessor as mayor, William
Donald Schaefer, flanking the man who finally got them on the same side
of a political issue: Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan,
who was announcing his candidacy for governor with their support.
Schmoke's endorsement immediately triggered speculation: Was the former
mayor, who took office with such promise but left it 12 years later to
much disappointment, back in the game? Was he himself going to run for
office, maybe as Duncan's running mate?
Schmoke is quick to head off questions about a political comeback with
an emphatic "No."
No, he's not interested in being lieutenant governor.
No, he doesn't have his sights on the U.S. Senate.
No, he's not trying to gauge his following among local voters.
In fact, Schmoke wanted "no" understood before he would even consent to
an interview.
"I certainly wasn't announcing my return to elective office," he said,
"so the subsequent [speculation] I saw suggesting I might be a
lieutenant governor candidate has no basis in fact. I can put a nail to
that one."
That his support of Duncan would cause such a buzz is testament to the
lingering curiosity about Schmoke, even now that he's reached the
settled age of 56. He seemed, from his high school days on, destined
for high public office, and his election as mayor in 1987 was
considered just the first step.
But instead, he left office in 1999 with the city's murder rate
skyrocketing - more than 300 people were killed in Baltimore every year
in the 1990s - the schools that he vowed to improve in disarray and the
sense by many that he never realized his political potential. Although
he remained personally popular with voters, he retreated from public
life, and three years ago became Howard University's law school dean.
"He was mayor during a very difficult time, and I think he learned as
he went along," said Michael Cryor, a Baltimore political consultant
and veteran of Schmoke's campaigns. "I didn't get a sense he enjoyed
it. I got a sense he felt a responsibility to it.
"He was a real statesman and a great professor. But just the real world
of politics, I just got the sense at times that it was not his natural
world, but a world he was willing to operate in on behalf of his
community."
Today, he seems more at home in his current job. His office on the
Washington campus is filled with his favorite artwork, snapshots taken
with U.S. presidents, a bobblehead doll of Supreme Court Justice John
Paul Stevens and a photo of his Rhodes scholar class.
"I'm on the second row in the photo, and there's [former Fannie Mae
CEO] Frank Raines standing behind me," said Schmoke with a soft smile.
His attire is Harvard Review meets Gentlemen's Quarterly: gray designer
slacks, cool-blue dress shirt and magenta suspenders.
The one time during the interview that Schmoke's soothing voice
ventured above nightly news level was when he was asked what he missed
most about being mayor.
"I miss the car and the driver," he said. Then he reared back,
tightened his eyes and roared with laughter at his own punch line.
"Seriously," he said, back in his more businesslike mode, "I do miss
the opportunity to make improvements in people's lives."
He still believes he can do that, without being in office himself.
"I'm interested in [Duncan] as a candidate because I know him as an
elected official, as a friend," said Schmoke. "I know there is real
substance and integrity about the guy, and I think he would make a
great governor."
He says his endorsement shouldn't be viewed as a criticism of Mayor
Martin O'Malley, who is also running for governor, and who, as a city
councilman, was among those frequently critical of Schmoke during his
tenure as mayor.
Schmoke aims to make Duncan more visible in Baltimore's black
communities, and to that end he has canvassed black barber shops and
beauty salons with Duncan in tow. He plans to become more involved with
Duncan's campaign in the spring.
Beyond that, he says, "I have not talked about my being lieutenant
governor with Duncan, other than to let his senior staff people know
that I am not interested and that they shouldn't even hold that out as
a possibility."
Time in office
Six years has given Schmoke plenty of time to reflect on his political
career and move on, and he has done both. He talks candidly about his
tenure as mayor, about the joy that came with the opportunity to better
the city, but also about things he wished he had done differently.
Among those regrets is the issue that brought him nationwide fame: his
controversial stance on drug decriminalization. He argued against
setups and stings to nab drug criminals and penalties that, in his
mind, didn't curb the escalating drug problem.
Rather, he advocated a public health approach to the problem, a stance
that garnered him national attention. But it came at a time when a
crack-cocaine epidemic - and the violence associated with it - was
spreading across the country, and popular opinion favored tougher
measures.
"Kurt proposed the decriminalization of drugs and was pilloried. He
wanted to start a national discussion, and he got national
condemnation," said Herbert Smith, a political science professor at
McDaniel College.
Schmoke believes he was right in tackling the issue publicly but
regrets that he didn't have an effective and immediate course of action.
"I remember now that [former New York Governor] Mario Cuomo had a great
quote in his diaries," Schmoke says. "He said, 'Politicians have to
distinguish between ideas that sound good and good ideas that are
sound.'"
Schmoke's drug-decriminalization stance was largely viewed as
intriguing intellectually but a hard sell in a city where the growing
drug culture seemed to fuel the rampant crime. Some viewed Schmoke as
too cerebral and distant to handle both problems - a perception due, in
part, to the fact that his approach followed the flamboyant, do-it-now
mayoral style of Schaefer (with Clarence H. Du Burns serving for about
a year as mayor in between).
"My critics said that I was too much of a policy wonker," Schmoke says.
"You can't be a mayor without critics, and I had some, but I never
agreed with those who believed I was a policy wonker."
Ripe for success
Yet there was no doubting that he had a background that seemed ripe for
success in politics: After graduating from Baltimore's elite City
College high school, where he was both the quarterback who led the
football team to a state championship and the student-body president,
he went on to Yale and won a Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford.
From there, he would graduate from Harvard Law School and join one of
the city's most establishment law firms, Piper & Marbury, before
going to work at the White House on President Jimmy Carter's
domestic-policy staff.
He returned to Baltimore, however, to get involved in local politics -
something that he was groomed for even in his youth, when he joined the
Lancers Club, a Baltimore organization that provided mentors for youths
and groomed them for civic leadership.
Schmoke was mentored and introduced to influential officials such as
U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes by the club founder, the late retired
Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert I.H. Hammerman.
Schmoke was elected state's attorney in 1982 and was on his way to
becoming Baltimore's first elected African-American mayor.
With his trademark room-brightening grin and cross-racial appeal,
Schmoke won over an often divided city.
"As we often say, he was every parent's desire," said Cryor, the
political consultant. "A wonderful human being as well as someone well
credentialed."
Everyone figured Schmoke would stick around in Baltimore long enough to
heal all that ailed the city and then run for Senate. Yet many of the
issues plaguing the city didn't get better under his tenure -
particularly the failing schools and the murder rate - and his tenure
as mayor ended Dec. 7, 1999.
"I think that conventional political wisdom was that there were high
expectations with Mayor Schmoke going in," said McDaniel's Smith. "His
tenure as mayor on a whole was disappointing, particularly with the
continued deterioration of public schools and a substantial increase in
crime."
Schmoke, not surprisingly, views his term much differently.
He points to his success, for example, in replacing high-rise and
high-crime public housing with more humanely scaled, mixed-income
homes. Seeing the towers imploded, he said, was one of the highlights
of being mayor.
"It's hard to do anything that fulfilling in a short period of time in
other jobs," Schmoke said.
He accepts that being mayor means "every day you make a decision that
half the people like and half the people dislike.
"Generally, for both me and my family, the good days outweighed the bad
days, and that's why I did it for 12 years," Schmoke said.
But nothing could have braced Schmoke for the toll the job took on his
family: He said that when his daughter, Katherine (now an actress
living in Los Angeles), was in sixth grade, she endured the wrath of a
teacher who questioned whether Schmoke was fulfilling salary promises
made to the teachers union.
But his wife, Patricia, an ophthalmologist, said that even the strain
on the family didn't keep Schmoke from enjoying his work.
"I think Kurt really loved his job, he did very well and he was always
upbeat," she said. "Even though the problems of cities at that time
were difficult, he felt the positive work was worth the personal
sacrifice.
"I run into people who ask, 'Are you going to let Kurt run again,'" she
added. "They think I'm placing heavy pressure on him, but that's not
true. I think he's always going to be civic-minded and a person who
wants to do things for other people, but he knows there are other ways
besides politics."
The couple met on a blind date during a summer break when he was at
Harvard and she was at the University of Florida.
"He had me laughing the whole night on our date," she said. "But he
wasn't intimidating or full of himself. He was just a real,
down-to-earth person."
The former mayor, who grew up in West Baltimore, and his wife live in
Ashburton and enjoy going to restaurants, like the Black Olive in Fells
Point, and traveling abroad. With their children grown - son Gregory is
an independent filmmaker in Albuquerque, N.M. - they've taken up
still-water kayaking.
Life after politics
Judging from his high-pitched laugh and the way he greets students at
every turn on Howard's campus, Schmoke's life after politics is good.
Before taking the Howard post, Schmoke worked for an international law
firm and ultimately set up the campaign that helped the president of
Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, get elected. He also taught at the U.S.
Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.
The Howard job began before the war college job ended, and for a while
he made the trek back and forth to both duties.
Nowadays, he's only heading to Washington: His commute is
nerve-wracking, except for the last 20 minutes, when he drives through
scenic Rock Creek Park, gazing at flowing streams and deer scampering
in the woods.
That he has landed at the historically black Howard takes him full
circle, in a sense. Schmoke's father graduated from another such
institution, Morehouse College in Atlanta - which produced such leaders
as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Julian Bond - and it was assumed
he would follow suit. But coming up at a time when the Ivy League was
more accessible to African-Americans than previously, he chose Yale.
Now, he's at Howard and as proud of its historic role as if he'd been
there for decades.
"When I first arrived, my secretary, who's been with me since I was
state's attorney, was about to move some portraits from behind my
desk," said Schmoke, pointing to the portraits that included one of
Charles Hamilton Houston, the legal strategist who laid the groundwork
that led to the landmark school-desegregation case, Brown v. Board of
Education.
"Just then a professor comes in my office, clears his throat and says,
'Deans come and go, but those portraits remain,'" said Schmoke,
laughing. "So they're still where they were before the deans before me.
It gives me a real sense of history and legacy of the place when I come
in each day."
Since his appointment as dean, Schmoke has implemented a
financial-assistance program for those who cannot pay for a bar-exam
preparation course and teaches a course in American elections law and
policy during congressional election years.
When the school recently won a prestigious mock-trial competition for
the first time, Schmoke got a call of congratulations from comedian
Bill Cosby.
Still, he doesn't expect to limit himself to academia. There is the
Duncan campaign to work on and his desire to remain involved in the
public arena.
"I learned a great deal as mayor; certainly I tried to implement a
number of my own ideas," said Schmoke. "I think you try to build on
your life lessons and use them to effect other experiences."
joseph.burris@baltsun.com
Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun