Ballot questions in Baltimore almost never fail.
Over the past two decades, more than 100 questions have been put to city voters, probing their thoughts on issues ranging from borrowing money to making it easier for the City Council to oust a mayor. During that time, voters have rejected only one question, a 2004 effort to lower the minimum age to become a council member.
That makes the odds high that Baltimore voters will approve a proposed two-term limit for the city’s top elected officials. The question was the only one to emerge from numerous efforts that gathered petition signatures this year in hopes of getting issues on the ballot.
The suggestion is to amend the city’s charter to limit the mayor, council members, council president and comptroller to two terms of four years each. The cap would not begin until 2024, and the count of terms would start that year — even for longtime officeholders. Also, officials could serve in different offices over the course of their careers, as long as they abide by a two-term limit for each office.
Term limits have been proposed before in Baltimore — City Council members introduced bills in 2015 and 2018 to make it happen by legislation. But in the hands of council members who would ultimately have been affected by the restraints, the bills didn’t garner enough votes.
Now the issue will be put to voters. Jovani Patterson, the chairman of the group that backed the petition, said that’s the very group he hopes to empower.
“The whole petition was to return power back to the people,” said Patterson, a city resident and former Republican candidate for City Council president. “When you’re not getting new, fresh ideas and faces, that takes away from civic engagement.”
Patterson is the face of the petition effort, but a bigger name was in the background during the petition process. David Smith, chairman of Hunt Valley-based Sinclair Broadcast Group, funded the drive to collect signatures for the term limit petition, as well as another that would have sought to establish recall elections. That petition failed to gather the 10,000 signatures necessary to appear on the ballot.
Patterson said his interest in term limits grew during his 2020 bid for office. The Republican Central Committee, with which he is active, was also interested, he said.
“It just kind of spread from there,” he said. “You find a way to work together.”
Asked how he connected with Smith, who donated $385,000 to finance the petition campaign, Patterson said: “I forget how that happened.”
Sinclair’s Baltimore station, WBFF-TV, has repeatedly reported on recall elections and the idea of recalling Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott. The station, also called Fox 45, has done less reporting on term limits.
“When you’re putting these ideas out and through people, somehow you get connected,” Patterson said. “It just so happened to work that way.”
In a city where incumbents had, for many years, a lock on reelection, the new term limit effort has faced little pushback thus far. And several current top officials have stood behind past efforts to establish term limits.
Scott, a two-term alumnus of the City Council who is now in his first term as mayor, said he remains committed to his previous pledge to limit himself to two terms. Scott voted in favor of the 2018 term limits bill proposed by Democratic City Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer; it failed to move beyond a council committee.
While he still favors term limits, Scott said he is troubled by Smith’s involvement in the ballot question.
“It is concerning that a media organization executive, who should be committed to providing unbiased and fair news coverage to the public, would be funding matters pertaining to local government and elected officials,” he said.
Mitchell Schmale, a spokesman for Smith, said Smith is a lifelong Maryland resident who owns multiple businesses in the city. Smith “cares deeply” about Baltimore’s future, he said.
Fox 45’s news coverage is “unbiased and fair,” Smith said via Schmale.
“As Mayor Scott and other politicians in Baltimore City are well aware, truth and honesty often fall by the wayside, whereas Mr. Smith understands the media is held to a higher standard of credibility and excellence,” Schmale added.
Comptroller Bill Henry, a three-term council veteran who has occupied the comptroller’s seat since 2020, defended the petition, arguing anyone can finance a drive. Ultimately, it was residents who signed it, he said.
Henry, a Democrat, is a longtime proponent of term limits. His proposal in 2015 called for council members to be limited to three terms, while the mayor and comptroller would have been restricted to two.
Term limits give the electorate the chance to benefit from officials with different sets of goals and experiences, Henry said.
In the two most recent election cycles, Democratic voters of Baltimore have picked winning challengers in primaries, sending several high-profile incumbents packing without the aid of term limits. Those compelled to leave office included Henry’s predecessor, Joan Pratt, who was comptroller for 25 years. Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, too, lost in the 2020 primary, while State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby lost in July’s primary as she sought the nomination to run for a third, four-year term.
Henry said he views the recent movement against incumbents as a pendulum swing rather than a course correction. Voters seem to be demanding more change in city government since the 2015 uprising in the wake of Freddie Gray’s death, Henry said. Gray died from injuries suffered while in police custody.
“I was impressed that the charter amendment petition went through,” Henry said. “Given the ones that did not make it onto the ballot and did not get enough signatures, I think it says that this is something that people do feel really strongly about. We need to not just have the same people in the same jobs doing the same things over and over again, decade after decade.”
Studies have shown term limits are popular with voters. A wave of state legislatures adopted term limits between 1990 and 1992 during a movement by the Republican Party to take control of state governments, said Seth Masket, a professor of political science and director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver.
The play was effective, Masket said. Republicans were able to flip seats by convincing voters that the old guard had lingered too long.
The effectiveness of term limits, however, is debatable, Masket said. Research has shown that legislative branches typically weaken with term limits as less experienced lawmakers occupy seats. Power shifts to executive branch policymakers or lobbyists and unelected staff who have been around longer, he said.
As of Friday, no ballot question committees had registered with the state to mount a campaign to defeat the Baltimore term limits measure, which will appear on the ballot as Question K.
While a segment of Baltimore’s 394,000 registered voters signaled support for term limits via the petition, the careers of some of Baltimore’s best remembered political figures would have been stymied by such restrictions.
Democrat William Donald Schaefer, the mayor who championed transformational projects such as the development of Harborplace, served four terms. Thomas D’Alesandro Jr., the patriarch of the D’Alesandro political family of Democrats, and Democrat Kurt Schmoke, Baltimore’s first Black elected mayor, each served three terms as mayor.
On the City Council, lengthy tenures are even more common. Seven members are serving their second term. First-term Council President Nick Mosby previously served a term on the council. Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton has been in office since 2007. All are Democrats.
Former Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, one of the council’s longest-tenured members, said term limits would have hampered her efforts to build relationships with residents and use her historical knowledge to their advantage. The Democrat served 32 years on the board over the span of 45 years, including two terms as president, before retiring in 2020.
“If you have across-the-board term limits and you’ve got someone in there who is building a history, building relationships, reflecting the idea of a single-member district, that person is going to be eliminated along with someone who didn’t show up at the office,” Clarke said.
Clarke cited her relationship with the Y of Central Maryland as an example of how her tenure assisted her in the job. When she was entering office, the Y’s Stadium Place project at the former Memorial Stadium site was just getting underway. One of her last efforts on the council was helping with the development for more space for the Y’s child care program.
“I think voting is the best term limit,” Clarke said. “They’ll keep you, or they’ll cut you out the next time around if you’re [not] doing a good job. A lot of things take some time. You build a history and you build some of the connections. This is what it’s all about.”
