A tale of intrigue?

Our local "big city" had a relatively recent shakeup.

Even though I haven’t lived in the city of Salisbury since 2017, I still follow their politics and knew this year was an election year. It’s been a tumultuous year for city government because former Mayor Jake Day resigned last winter to become the state’s Secretary of Housing and Community Development. With that, City Council member Jack Heath was appointed as the new mayor and his District 3 seat was taken by Megan Outten a few weeks later when she was appointed. Salisbury voters may have recalled Heath made an ill-fated independent bid for Wicomico County Executive in 2018 but rebounded to win the District 3 seat a year later.

At first, all indications were that Heath would run for a full term for mayor this November. But Heath’s last-minute withdrawal from the race allowed for a game of musical chairs as some people switched races midstream and others exited the field entirely. It also eliminated any possible primaries except for the Mayor’s race, which will have an interesting three-person dynamic now that Heath left the race and was quickly replaced by his previous successor. That’s the part which is most interesting to me.

You see, Democrats have a habit of doing this around here. We’d seen this movie before in a state Delegate race where former Delegate Rudy Cane stayed on the ballot long enough to dissuade all but his chosen successor, current Delegate Sheree Sample-Hughes, from entering the race. Once he withdrew at the deadline for getting out, she had a walkover.

So I have a hard time believing that Heath - who had a lot of Democrat support despite running as an independent for Wicomico County Executive in 2018 - ever really had an intention for another term. I think - and this is just my opinion, as I have no inside information - that he was staying in to keep some other candidates from establishing a foothold in the race, and there was already a succession plan in place with Outten, a youngish Democrat female who failed in her 2022 bid for a at-large Wicomico County Council seat. It makes sense, right? Megan already had her campaign announcement in the can when she switched races, and I’m sure Jack knew he had his health issues. Good on him for deciding to retire before he did so feet-first.

With the rapid series of appointments and campaigns, Outten has been placed on the same sort of fast track that Jake Day was on a decade ago as he only served a couple years on City Council before running for and winning the mayor’s race. Upon Heath’s withdrawal, Megan dropped out of her District 3 election bid and is now in a three-way mayoral contest with local businessman Randy Taylor and basketball coach and entrepreneur Jermichael Mitchell, who ran into a little trouble with the law earlier this year.

One of these three will be eliminated in the September primary (well, unless there’s a tie for second, which oddly enough has happened before.) But when the last-minute filings and switches began Monday morning, there were only a handful of contested races:

• Mayor: Heath, Mitchell, Taylor, and Wayne King were in the race Monday. Heath decided to retire, and Wayne King wisely stepped back because he ran against Day in 2019 and lost by 70 points. (Not 70 votes, 70 percentage points.) King would withdraw and join in the District 2 fun, as there was a development in that contest, too. And Outten got in.

• District 1: incumbent April Jackson is up against Von Siggers. That race, which I think is a rematch of a previous election, remained unchanged. That’s the race that 100 votes may win in one of the two majority-minority districts.

• District 2: on Monday it was incumbent Muir Boda and D’Shawn Doughty. Boda opted to exit his race as well - he was the last person I voted for in Salisbury since I lived in the district and the 2015 mayor’s race was horrific, as in there was none. So Wayne King filled the void, meaning that district will have a newcomer.

• District 3: Incumbent Megan Outten was unopposed until the last day, but when she moved up two more newcomers moved in: Sharon Dashiell and Joan Michalowicz.

• District 4: Incumbent Michele Gregory was unopposed until that Monday when Harvey Evans stepped in. Good.

• District 5: Incumbent Angela Blake already had a challenge in Michael Lankford.

In looking at the field, I feel sorry for Salisbury. They already have two members of their City Council in the Lower Shore Progressive Regressive Caucus (Boda and Outten) and may as well have Gregory there too.

What Salisbury needs is a common sense caucus that prioritizes strengthening its neighborhoods instead of a downtown-centric focus and worries more about creating the conditions to encourage entreprenurship and job creation than painting streets with rainbows and enacting silly bag bans. Remember, this is the city that had a cow because Franklin Graham - a respected man of the cloth - was coming to save some souls.

Instead of complaining about the conservative bent of the county at large which placed a Republican majority on County Council and in the county executive’s seat, why not embrace it? Notice that more people live out in the county and have little to no interest in being annexed into the city? Wonder why? Maybe they don’t want to become Baltimore South.

It may take another election cycle, but positive change can be had in the city of Salisbury. Lord knows we need it.