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lowercase thought.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

O'Malley takes credit for the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Today's email from the Martin O'Malley campaign touts an article in today's WSJ on rising housing prices and increased investment thereof as proof that Marty's done a great job for the City of Baltimore.

Well, if you actually read the article, it does a pretty good job at showing the Baltimore housing boom for what it is--an effect of the skyrocketing prices in the D.C. area. While O'Malley would like you to think that folks are moving into Bawlmur because the violent crime rate has gone down, that simply isn't the case. Baltimore still has one of the top-5 murder rates in the nation at 44 per 100k (as noted in the article), and drug use and STD rates are still ridiculously high. In fact, it is these depressing figures that has kept the Baltimore City real estate market reasonable while suburbs such as Columbia, Ellicott City and Elkridge have ballooned.

If the greatest accomplishment that our mayor can point to is housing prices rising at a similar rate to the rest of Maryland, then I think it's safe to say that he's pulling at straws in order to combat the Ehrlich strategy of "Tie O'Malley to Baltimore City". I don't think a message of, "I decreased violent crime in Baltimore" is going to play in Purple counties like Anne Arundel, Howard and Baltimore County when they still see the City with the highest murder rate nationwide. The same fear soccer moms have of driving through Park Heights in their minivan will become associated with O'Malley if the GOP has anything to do about it--and they do.

Once again as in the Steffen saga, the guy who makes out on all of this is Mont. Co. Exec. Doug Duncan. In fact, I was at a board meeting of a local organization Monday night at which numerous City residents spoke of how much they liked Duncan. It makes me wonder whether or not O'Malley can hold as much of his Baltimore City base as he's banking on.

Update: Has anyone noticed that the title of O'Malley's site says, "Welcome to Matin O'Malley's website"? Oy.
Docciavelli 2:24 PM

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