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Heavy Competition In County Council Race For Jewish Vote

Experience, religion and connections are part of the County Council’s hot District 2 race.

William Donald Schaefer called the Annapolis governor’s mansion home. The Orioles were a perennial contender. The Fells Point-based television show “Homicide: Life On The Streets” was in its second season.

Surely that was a long time ago.

That’s the span of time since Baltimore County voters saw an open, unpredictable race for the Council District 2 seat.  As a result, many within its borders — which include the heavily Jewish Owings Mills and Pikesville areas — are increasingly commenting on this season of proliferating lawn signs, door-knocking and campaign fliers.

As those backing candidates know, the Democratic winner in the Sept. 14 primary is the de facto new Council representative. Not one Republican filed to compete in the Nov. 2 general election.

So it is that this summer six candidates vie for the spot that Councilman Kevin Kamenetz is leaving after 16 years. (He’s saying goodbye to that safe seat in the hopes of becoming county executive, which has pitted him in a close race against fellow Councilman Joseph Bartenfelder.)

Each of the candidates for the District 2 seat has a base of support; there is no clear favorite at this point. Further, since at most 20,000 voters are expected to cast a ballot, a roughly even split among only three top candidates means that a victor can net as few as 4,000 votes — a smaller number than the amount of people who each day ride through one of the area’s major intersections.

In short, every ballot truly counts.

While there are no urgent issues now, long-term ones abound — gaining funds for a new public school, continuing to revitalize downtown Pikesville, helping Stevenson University create a college town atmosphere, balancing the desire of developers with those of community associations and grappling with failing infrastructure. (The
importance of that last matter literally gushed up earlier this year in the form of a Glyndon-Owings Mills-Reisterstown water main break.)

Some candidates also are talking about the Owings Mills Mall, with whom people increasingly associate the word “failing.” While it sits just over the line in the Council’s 4th District, it clearly impacts the larger area. Others wonder about reconfiguring Green Spring Station and how future zoning rules could impact the sale of tracts of land that might come on the market.

And there’s this: For 44 years, District 2 has been represented by a Jew. In this highly competitive campaign, some declare that it should remain that way. Others respond with equal force that simply the best candidate should win.

After looking at the issue of the “Jewish seat,” we offer the results of interviews with the candidates — in alphabetical order only.

A ‘Jewish Seat’
For 44 years, the County Council District 2 representative has been Jewish.

Should that be important to Jewish voters in a district with a large and diverse Jewish community?

Those who say “yes” say they worry about what could happen if a non-Jew wins and if Kevin Kamenetz — who is Jewish — loses his county executive race. In addition to having a council that does not represent a vibrant segment of the county, they say when the occasional “Jewish issue” arises there will be no natural champion.

In addition, redistricting is on the table next year. Without a Jewish official actively involved, scenarios exist in which “the Jewish district” could be carved up — meaning the Jewish vote would be split into multiple districts, minimizing its impact. That, they say, deeply weakens Jewish political strength.

The candidates who disagree — including some Jews — talk about an area that includes non-Jews, Hispanics,  African-Americans, Asian-Americans and more. They each note their work with the Jewish community, familiarity with it and the need for the best person to win.

The candidates hear the buzz.

“I’ve heard privately and publicly — especially when I first announced that I was going to do this — that this is a Jewish seat and you can’t possibly win this,”  Vicki Almond said,.“My response needs to be that I am the most qualified and best person for the job.”

She added, “Is the county executive job a Jewish seat? Traditionally the person has not been Jewish, so are we going to say Kevin [Kamenetz] can’t run? Of course not. The whole thing has been blown out of proportion. I have been involved with the Jewish community. To me that’s part of my community. To the people who say it to my face or privately, I say I think you’re wrong and that’s it.”

The four Jewish candidates have no unanimity on the matter.

“I’m the most qualified and I’m from this community and have represented this community and I think that’s very important,” Sherrie Becker said. “I know that this district is over 70 percent Jewish and for 44 years we’ve had a Jewish representative and I think that is important.”

Ted Levin agreed — while considering himself most qualified.

“The African-American community is comforted that they have Ken Oliver whether they like him or not, he said. “That helps them on county issues because they have an African-American face representing their issues. It says this is a welcoming county. Having a Jewish Council member would say there is a local official the Jewish community can call if, say, Bais Yaakov needs a traffic light. It’s those picayune issues that make a difference.”

Alan Zukerberg and Al Harris felt differently.

“I go back to who is the best representative and I’m the best representative, and I want the quality of life for everyone in this district,” Mr. Zukerberg said. “Religion doesn’t matter in that.”

Not surprisingly, the race’s other non-Jewish candidate concurred with that last sentiment.

“To a certain extent, I’d rather not talk about it because the Jewish voters are very important, obviously, in this race,”  Timmy Ruppersberger said. “The issues that are faced in Pikesville are the issues that are faced throughout the county. So I hope that the people of the 2nd District will look for the most qualified candidate. I believe at the end of the day that is what they are looking for.”

Vicki Almond

Vicki Almond had it all — but opportunity came knocking.

Upon learning that Mr. Kamenetz would not seek re-election, she had a heart-to-heart talk with her boss, state Sen. Bobby Zirkin (D-11th), for whom she worked on constituent services.

“It’s the first time in 16 years that seat was open,” she said. “I said to Bobby, ‘I know I have my dream job, but I feel this would be my one and only shot to run. My children are grown. Local government is where my heart is and where I started from my volunteer days and where I can make the most difference.’ ”

So, at the end of December 2009, she left her job to run full time.

“I came into it thinking that I know what the district needed and I realized very quickly that I knew a little bit but I don’t know it all,” she said with a laugh. “I learned that we have an incredibly diverse area, that there were so many people that I needed to get to know and cultures to get involved in.”

She quickly developed an outlook. “My philosophy is balance,” she explained. “To have prosperous communities you need good schools, safe communities and businesses around them that they can support. As far as development, they will need those two key things to prosper to attract people and professionals into the area. People moving into the area are not all necessarily going to go to the older areas.”

After talking about the need to bring everyone to the table, she is asked why the existing public hearings structure is not sufficient.

“The mechanism is in place, but we don’t use it properly,” she said. “As president of ROG [the Reisterstown-Owings Mills-Glyndon Coordinating Council] I learned to get people to the table and use skills in mediation. If someone said, I want to build a dozen townhouses, I said, come to ROG and let people see you and get to know you before you do that. People are distrustful, particularly of development.”

She and the other candidates agreed that the Owings Mills Mall is important to the entire region.

“If Liberty Road fails,” she said, “it’s a matter of time before Main Street [in Reisterstown] fails and so on,” she said. “Do we have to tear [Owings Mills Mall] down? What’s the plan? I’m not sure, but whatever happens there you have to incorporate the mall into it.”

Then there is her emphasis on creating a college town atmosphere in Owings Mills for the growing Stevenson University.

“College kids spend money and work,” she said. “Their parents spend money and come to visit. I think Stevenson can become an anchor in that area. I worked hard with Sen. Zirkin on the acquisition of that Rosewood area [for Stevenson]. We’re going to get some green space out of it, which we’re desperate for.”

She also is passionate about the county buying land at the corner of Gwynnbrook Avenue and Owings Mills Boulevard for new public schools.

“We got the state to put aside 54 acres to purchase and the county has not done that,” she said. “It’s the only piece of land big enough to put in a school. Pikesville Middle is so over-crowded. There’s enough land there for an elementary and a middle school. We have people in Worthington Park whose kids are going to Deer Park. Is that community? Without a new school, it doesn’t bode well for people moving into the community.”

Sherrie Becker

For these past eight years, Sherrie Becker has been the main stop for all things Pikesville.

Ms. Becker is confident that she can take what she has learned as executive director of the Pikesville Chamber of Commerce and successfully apply all that to the broader district and county.

“This is a natural transition from what I’m doing now,” she said. “It’s time to have a woman on the Council, and a businesswoman on the Council, and it’s time to have experienced leadership with the changing of four or five Council seats” resulting from both the retirement and the pursuit of higher office of existing Council members.

An immediate concern is keeping area neighborhoods connected as the mandated political redistricting is about a year away. “We have a unique district in that we have wonderful neighborhoods, wonderful schools and a low crime rate,” she said. “We don’t have any other major issues. Our district is in very good shape and I want to keep it that way. I don’t want to see it carved up.”

As for her immediate area’s overall health, she explained, “Pikesville is doing much better than many of the revitalization areas in the county. We have growth; we have vacancies, but not many. In terms of smart growth, we have seen tremendous growth in White Marsh, but we have not seen that in Owings Mills. We have a dying mall and now with the nearby Solo Cup Co. closing in a few years and taking jobs with it, we need to do something different with the mall.”

What to do, of course, is open for debate.

“Should we take the library and the community college and put it in the mall, which has been done in places like New Jersey?” she asked. “We have the beginnings of that area because of the housing next to the mall. Transportation-based projects are big growth areas in the state, but Owings Mills has not come to be. Maybe we need to look at that to see if there’s something we can try to do to spur growth there.”

Public schools, too, are going to be more strained in the next few years, she said, due to rising tuition expense and the subsequent decline in private school enrollment — including the closing of a Catholic school in Mount Washington.

“The No. 1 priority in this district is education,” Ms. Becker said. “For the first time in my children’s lives — my kids are 18 and 21 — the schools are at capacity. That’s a big change.”

That means working with the school board, where she noted her strong contacts with school board superintendent Dr. Joe Hairston and David Uhlfelder, the area’s school board member who is a past president of the Pikesville Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s about relationships and working together and realizing common goals,” she said.

Likewise, she wants to work on contacts with area banks to help small businesses take advantage of existing county programs as well as seek new ones.

“I’d like to bring the banks into partnership with the county probably through a pre-qualification process that the county does in partnership with the banks,” she said.
Her final word: “The thing that distinguishes me is that while everyone says the same thing — ‘We’re concerned with education, public safety, infrastructure and parks and green space’ — the truth is I have done it.”

Albert ‘Al’ Harris

Why not?

That Baltimore Orioles slogan from an improbable championship run in 1989 is applicable to Albert “Al” Harris’ first try for elected office.

A successful retired businessman, he grew up in the city part of the Reisterstown Road area, stayed local and eventually founded several local-based computer software companies — Disc Inc. and The Harris Group.

“I have never held office, but I have always had a great interest in politics,” he said. “Times are getting tougher and tougher and it bothers me to see the politicians doing things the way they’re doing it. They look out for themselves and their donors second and their constituents third.

“I have always in business loved to solve problems that are business problems and people problems,” he added. “Government is a business, but it’s not run like a business. It’s run like a personal game.”

As he sees it, managing finances is at the heart of the challenge for the next County Council.

“The federal government can’t support the city and the city can’t support the county,” he said. “The government needs business people who are used to solving problems and focusing on problems.”

So he filled out some forms, wrote a $25 check, and drove to offices in Towson and Catonsville to register.

For certain, his campaign is not the traditional one. If there are donations, they will be limited to $25; additional amounts will go to the charity of the giver’s choice. There will be no signs, no fliers and no knocking on doors.

As he said, “I don’t want signs. I hate them. If I see signs I won’t vote for them.” So to find out his views, voters must look at his blog, which went live this week. (See Box “Websites For More.”)

But what issue is he truly passionate for?

“There are a thousand issues in the county,” he said. “Zoning, crime, police. I can tell you all my opinions on the issues, but the truth is they’ll come and when you are in office you have to deal with them.”

So, he is asked, how about focusing on one — development in Owings Mills. “I would probably get the developers together and try to get them to work as a team and have a solution because developers can make it work,” he said. “What’s happened [at the mall] is a crime. They’ve let it go and ruined the area. It’s got to be solved by the people capable of solving it.”

Does he really think he can beat competitors experienced in dealing with local issues?

“Well, I’m for motherhood and apple pie, too,” he said, “but I really believe that most of the people running are politicians in some form. I certainly believe that it’s time for business people to take the responsibilities for government. I absolutely believe I can win. After looking at the people running, I’m the most qualified and I’ll look out for my constituents and the county. I have already had my careers and I won’t make a career of this.”

Ted Levin

Ted Levin is on the move.

Literally.

When he’s not riding his motorcycle in the area,  it’s hard to miss Mr. Levin. He might be jogging, greeting friends in an area eatery (Goldberg’s Bagels is a favorite) or walking the beat of “my precincts” while handing out fliers.

He is gregarious and experienced, having served 20 years in the Maryland House of Representatives while representing the Pikesville-Owings Mills-Randallstown areas.

“I’m a social worker and I have a law practice that deals with people problems — divorce, fighting with neighbors and adoptions,” he said. “That got me into thinking that I enjoy helping people with their problems and helping people with their community and the community doesn’t look the way I like it to look. I live off Reisterstown Road and I jog by boarded-up businesses… It’s my shul or my community or business.”

He added, “I am not interested in being an elder statesman because that’s a code word for retirement.”

His main issue: creating more livable communities.

Take, for example, the district’s commercial heart — Reisterstown Road, which stretches from the county-city line to Reisterstown.

“You have businesses and the only way to connect with them is if you hop in your car, and that’s particularly not good for business or for Pikesville people who say I don’t want to hop in the car and drive there,” he said. “We want people to be able to walk; Baltimore City is doing this and communities in Florida are doing this. They have the Circulator bus, where it’s no cost or minimal cost. There’s no bus service here that strictly serves the local area. Let’s say you could hop on a bus and go from Giant to the Trader Joe’s. You can’t do it now.”

He also wants a series of bike paths and sidewalks. In particular, that will help the area’s Orthodox community, which he said stabilizes Pikesville with young families.

If needed, he added, the county can make that happen by applying eminent domain laws to take “little strips of land.”

He continued, “My approach to Owings Mills is coming in and redeveloping the area. You have got Jim Smith and a countywide issue in Catonsville, Dundalk, Essex, where they come in and update retail establishments and get a box store, but the fundamentals have not changed. It’s the old model.

“You have to come in and say to heck with all this long-term solutions,” he said. “You have to talk to real estate planners. You plan it out long-term, but there’s a contradiction because things are done very innovatively and then every four years you have the zoning process, which can put in variances. … In Owings Mills the county is very proud of what it’s done. They have a corporate center and that’s great, but where do the people live?”

To counter such situations, he wants four- and five-story residences above stores in Pikesville, “like in the old East Baltimore days.”

It can happen, he said, because colleagues on the Council will let it happen.

“There’s a huge deference on the Council by others to the district [of the councilman making a suggestion,],” he said. “So there’s a tremendous opportunity to do good or evil and I’m looking to do good.”

Timmy Ruppersberger

The classic desires pushed Timmy Ruppersberger — an area attorney — into seeking elected office.

“After practicing law for 30 years and raising a family and doing a lot of volunteer work, I really decided it was time to give back to a community that I care deeply about and that’s provided me with a lot of opportunities,” she said. “When it became clear that Kevin was not going to run I started thinking about the possibilities and that I had a skill set that uniquely qualifies me for the position. I have been a local finance attorney, worked with school systems, and with economic development and revitalization.”

For the next four years, she said, it’s all about money, and she is ready to tackle the issues. While Baltimore County is in good fiscal shape, she noted, the state’s woes will be felt here due to diminished funds for counties. As a result, protecting the county’s AAA bond rating is critical as it will allow for the financing of future projects.

“The issue over the next four years is going to be allocating the money,” Ms. Ruppersberger said. “I want to take a hard look at new services or provide and find economies of scale which are more effective ways to deliver these services so Baltimore County can continue to live in its budget the way we all have to,” she said.

The county, she said, might even explore an employee health care program with surrounding governments, creating a larger pool and hopefully lower costs to fund health care plans.

Throughout the district, she said, voters are telling her about the need to improve public education.

“Everyone is concerned about it,” she said. “We have schools that are high performers and some that are under performers. We need to raise the lower ones to the level of the higher ones.”

Another issue constantly brought to her is focusing on revitalizing the Reisterstown Road corridor “and filling the empty spaces.”

“I’d like to look at how we can do that,” she said. “Clearly the property is owned by lots of small property owners and there’s a lack of parking and that creates an issue. If we could develop something in Pikesville that’s a tourist attraction it would bring new visitors to Pikesville, which would then bring new business for restaurants and spin off shops.”

While noting that the county school board is a separate entity from the county government, she said the Council can throw around some weight.

“At the end of the day, it’s the county funding the school system, so it’s up to county officials to pay particular attention to the budget and dissect the budget to make sure the money is going into the classrooms and not just for administrative services,” she said. “We don’t have direct influence, but we can advance on behalf of our citizens and work to have good, high-performing schools.”

She also wants more public transportation to help deal with congested roads.

“At the end of the day, it’s in everyone’s best interest to have less cars on the road,” she said. “I don’t think that’s necessarily bad for business because it will get people who don’t live nearby to come to Reisterstown Road businesses if they’re not worried about bumper-to-bumper traffic on Reisterstown Road.”

Alan Zukerberg

Anyone who closely follows local zoning disputes knows Alan Zukerberg.

The neighborhood association activist makes his presence known and is quick to say that he is fighting against the self-interest of developers and politicians.

“When you have to play against big elected officials who know that their campaign funds are coming primarily from big development interests, you have to play for the community,” he said. “I’m at a stage in my life when big development interests aren’t going to sway me and I don’t have to kowtow to them.”

Taking a jab at the current holder of the seat he wants, he said, “The vision Kevin [Kamenetz] has expressed that Reisterstown Road should be restaurant row is not enough because restaurants alone bring rats in the trash in the back.”

If politics is the art of compromise, how will he deal with the give-and-take of governing. His response is not as direct.

“I understand compromise, but let me give you an example,” he said. “When the developers came to the community to do zoning for Druid Ridge Cemetery [several years ago], they asked for what I considered to be the moon and the sun and the stars. What they would have asked for theoretically was 1,000 houses, even though they said they would only build hundreds.

“Politics is the art of compromise, but when the other side is in a different stratosphere are you supposed to engage with them and their resources?” he added. “The answer is no.”

He also wants to create what he called the “European village” style of life here.

“I have traveled all over the world and seen the great little villages and towns and they have a sense of community,” he said. “You can pull up to an area and see a sign that says ‘central’ and you pull up and park your car and you can walk and people are eating outside and people are all talking to each other. People live there. Condos are on top of stores. They feed each other commerce and they are concerned about the quality of life. We can attain that. Maybe not tomorrow, but if that kind of vision isn’t put into place it never will be.”

The area’s schools are another strong focus for Mr. Zukerberg: “I want every school in the district to be top quality, all excuses set aside,” he said.

How would that happen? “You get the accurate statistics and you have them interpreted to find out exactly what’s going on in each school and you don’t disregard those facts,” he said. “It’s not unknown to me that a lot of parents are concerned about the disciplinary problems in Pikesville High and Middle School. I don’t think you can blame it all on the teachers. You have to get the kids early in life. You have to get them in preschool programs and balance that against being a baby-sitting service.”

Mr. Zukerberg, who four years ago unsuccessfully ran in the Republican primary to challenge then-Rep. Ben Cardin in the U.S. House of Representatives, said he wants to be a person “who doesn’t hide his head in the sand and should be able to say yeah I’m a Democrat, but my fellow Democrat needs to change the law and it hasn’t been done.”

He also wants to make parkland mandatory in new developments, retrofitting what he calls “pocket parks” in older communities with benches and lights, and he wants county department heads to sign “non-competes for a reasonable period of time after they leave county employ so they are not tempted to feather their nests in anticipation of leaving or retiring.”

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