Thoughts on the 2023 Salisbury elections

For awhile it was my hometown, but more importantly it's where I work. So this election affects me, too.

On Tuesday, Salisbury voters can be the new broom that sweeps clean. But it’s more likely they’ll retain “the usual gang of idiots” (h/t Mad Magazine) to further erode a once-fine town into Baltimore South.

I base that bold assertion on one fact and one fact only: I’m looking at the financial disclosures most of the listed candidates (save one) filed back on Tuesday.

Let’s first look at the amount each of the candidates has raised, starting with the five Council districts and ending up at Mayor. I’ll point out first that the maximum allowed contribution is $250, so when I refer to outside interests you can assume they donated the maximum.

• District 1: Von Siggers $1,800, April Jackson (incumbent) $1,775. Most interesting to me is that the local Democrat club has donated to both, although they donated to Jackson first. The Realtors PAC has donated to Siggers, but AFSCME has donated to Jackson. Siggers was placed over the top by a small loan of $100 (probably seed money) she still has out. Jackson has 15 individual donations, Siggers 12.

• District 2: D’Shawn Doughty (appointed incumbent, see below) $4,858, Wayne King $1,004. Doughty has donations from the Democrat club and Central Committee that occurred before his appointment and the Realtors PAC and AFSCME afterward. On the other hand, King has self-financed his campaign to the point where he never cashed the one outside donation check he received. Thus, Doughty has a 63-1 edge in individual donations. Muir Boda was the incumbent, but withdrew at the filing deadline because he took a job as Director of Housing and Community Development for the city. He had a pro forma report showing no financial activity prior to his leaving the race.

• District 3: Sharon Dashiell $3,700, Megan Outten $3,556 (was appointed incumbent, withdrew to run for mayor but did not disperse account), John Foley (write-in) $331, Joan Michalowicz $0. Dashiell has a contribution from the Realtors PAC. Outten had 52 individual donations, Dashiell 21, Foley 4 (all but one himself), and Michalowicz none.

• District 4: Michele Gregory (incumbent) $1,575, Harvey Evans $300. Out of her 17 total, Gregory has donations from the Delmarva Central Labor Council (DCLC) and AFSCME as well as the Democrat Club. Evans has just two donations.

• District 5: Angela Blake (incumbent) has $451 in donations from seven people, while her opponent Michael Lankford failed to file a timely report. Included in Blake’s total is a donation from the Democrat Club.

• Mayor: Randy Taylor $9,800, Megan Outten $7,420, Jermichael Mitchell $3,215. Total donations: Outten 70, Mitchell 53, Taylor 46. Big donations for Outten include DCLC, Friends of Johnny Olszewski (the Baltimore County Executive), Sierra Club Maryland, and AFSCME. Taylor has the Realtors and the Wicomico County Republican Club, and Mitchell has none. Almost all of Mitchell’s donations are small-dollar, and none from lobbying groups. (But he has the support of the local Indivisible group.) Jack Heath had raised $13,125 before he opted not to serve another term as mayor, and dispersed his campaign monies to a number of local charitable organizations per city ordinance.

Of course, there are several things that jumped out at me. First of all, based on contributions vs. expenditures, there are two mayoral campaigns running a deficit at this time: Outten’s and Mitchell’s. The Mitchell campaign is about $600 behind, but Outten has a deficit of nearly $3,000, which suggests to me that she’s comingling the funds from her abortive district council campaign (which was over $3,000 in the black) and mayoral run. I think a proper accounting would have been for her to disperse her Council funds to her mayoral campaign but she chose not to. After enduring questions on her residency and being cleared by the (all-Democrat) election board, this is another question which needs to be asked of Outten.

The second thing is the outside influence. Certainly the state Board of Realtors PAC is a longstanding donor to city campaigns, but it’s strange to me that Outten is getting money from statewide environmental groups and the Baltimore County Executive. It’s worth noting that, as a renter, she is not as anchored to a location as a homeowner would be. However, the address she lists is literally on the border of Carl Anderton’s House District 37B (to the point where she’s in another district if she walks across the street) and she could run from cover in 2026. Outten has ran for county office before and I think she’s being groomed as a potential statewide Democrat in the vein of Jake Day, beginning with a run for a very vulnerable GOP-held district seat.

There was also a comment I wanted to address. I don’t remember where I saw it, but what was said was the purported description of Taylor, King, and Evans by one of the proregressive groups around here as “ultra MAGA.” Given the direction Salisbury’s taken over the past few years, I think we could use that voice in elected office around here. Remember, to a Democrat anyone to the right of Stalin is “ultra MAGA,” but in this case it’s more of a focus on the neighborhoods outside of downtown - you know, where the people live. It’s worrying about issues like crime and quality of life and not building bike lanes and roundabouts and enacting plastic bag bans.

As it stands now, in Salisbury the outgoing mayor is a closet Democrat and the City Council is all Democrat, thanks to the appointment of Doughty to the seat formerly held by Muir Boda. (Boda was a member of the Republican Party when he first won office in 2015, but left in 2016. He has also run as a Libertarian for Congress prior to that.) The only question is whether they’re somewhat sane Democrats like Blake and Jackson or looney-tunes ones like Doughty, Outten, or Gregory - the latter two of whom had a hissy fit about a respected man of the cloth coming to town.

This partisanship is why they gave the advantage of incumbency to Doughty when they were aware he was in a contested election against Wayne King.

Yet, in opposition, the only viable candidate seems to be Taylor, as King is basically running a vanity campaign at this point and (sadly) Evans is a non-factor. (The only reason I knew he was running was because my barber has his sign out front.) It’s sad because out of all the political crazies, Gregory takes the cake. Unfortunately, in the city of Salisbury proper, there is no safe conservative district because most of them live outside city limits. (Hence the reason Wicomico is, on balance, a GOP-leaning county.)

Taylor may have a path to victory, though, because the infighting on the regressive side may split the vote between Outten and Mitchell - which is why the regressives were trying to minimize Mitchell’s campaign. They did a fine job of alienating the minority population, though. Out of those two there is one thing I like about Mitchell’s stance on development as he questions why some development hasn’t occurred despite sweetheart deals from the city to its favored developers. However, Taylor isn’t getting much bang for the buck in his campaign as far as I can tell.

So Salisbury is assured of new blood at mayor and in Council Districts 2 and 3, since Doughty has been on the job for less than two months. But if you don’t like the direction things are going, you can vote all of them out - not guaranteeing the alternative is better, but at least you can take the chance. We should know by late Tuesday night since they only had 2,900 ballots to count last time (a paltry 17.64% turnout) and the prospects for more aren’t that great.

Choose wisely.