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13th District write-in candidate Shannon Sneed, right, discusses strategy with volunteers Rodney Burris, left, and Abigail Breiseth, after obtaining promise of a vote from Melvin Davis, who can be seen peering around storm door in East Balto. (VoB Photos/Alan Z. Forman)

SNEED & INCUMBENT CONAWAY
BOTH HOPE TO BEAT THE ODDS
AND  TO  UPSET  THE  SYSTEM

Conventional wisdom:
Write-in candidates
have little chance

By Alan Z. Forman

Two African-American women stand ready to make electoral history in Maryland if either one or both can pull off a major upset Tuesday and do what has never been done before:  Win a write-in election to the Baltimore City Council.

As far as Voice of Baltimore can determine, no City Council member has ever been elected running as a write-in candidate, at least not in recent memory, and few have accomplished the feat anywhere else in the U.S.

Conventional wisdom holds that write-in candidates have little or no chance of winning election.

The women are Shannon Sneed, who lost a squeaker of a primary in September to incumbent Councilman Warren Branch (D-13th) by 43 votes; and incumbent Councilwoman Belinda Conaway (D-7th), who lost to challenger Nick Mosby by 653 votes out of 5,089 cast in her district.

In the 13th, of a total 4,573 votes in a five-candidate Democratic primary field, nearly 2,800 — over 61 percent — went against the incumbent Branch. The election was not decided until days after, when the counting of absentee ballots was completed. Late on election night, Sneed was still maintaining a slight lead.

A SOPHISTICATED WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN

A former television reporter for WJZ-TV Channel 13, Sneed is now running a sophisticated write-in campaign, handing out glossy instruction cards to voters showing an easy three-step process with explanation on how to vote for her.

She is also knocking on doors — as is Branch, who by virtually all accounts, is running scared. Branch first won election to the City Council in 2007 when he defeated then-incumbent Vernon Crider by 51 votes, following the counting of absentee ballots.

Rather than pay for a recount, Sneed has put her money into her write-in campaign, a strategy which will either bear fruit or not at the polls on Tuesday.

In the meantime, two former candidates from other districts — Abigail Breiseth, who lost on September 13 to Councilman William A. “Pete” Welch Jr. in the city’s 9th District; and Rodney Burris, who ran unsuccessfully for House of Delegates in the 43rd Legislative District last November — are both knocking on doors, volunteering for Sneed.

Also running a write-in campaign is Michael E. Johnson, who came in fifth behind Welch in September.

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Write-in candidate Shannon Sneed, standing, center, converses in East Baltimore with voters Sandra Williams, seated, left, and Ethel Randolph, as Calvin Chappell, right, joins in. Abigail Breiseth, who lost her bid for a City Council seat in Baltimore's 9th Councilmanic District, looks on at left.

Breiseth attempted to get Johnson and another write-in candidate who lost the 9th District primary, Quianna M. Cooke, to join forces to challenge Welch, but was unsuccessful in her efforts.

Conaway describes Mosby’s primary victory as “the dirtiest campaign we have seen in Baltimore in years,” and charges Gov. Martin O’Malley and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake with orchestrating it to defeat the self-described “independent voice on the Baltimore City Council.”

Casting herself as the underdog on Election Day, she is asking voters to “Make a wrong …Write.” She also vehemently denies allegations that she lives in Randallstown, in Baltimore County, and not in her councilmanic district as required by law, a charge which was largely responsible for her loss to Mosby in September.

Phone calls and emails from VoB to Mosby and the mayor’s office have gone unanswered. However, Circuit Court Clerk Frank M. Conaway Sr., the candidate’s father and an unsuccessful contender in September for mayor, told the Voice he believes his daughter will win.

Noting what he termed “the large drop-off” in voter turnout for general elections in Baltimore City, where the Democratic primary has been the election of record since 1936, the senior Conaway predicted Belinda would get her supporters out in large enough numbers to win.

ONLY DEMOCRATS IN CITY COUNCIL

No Republican has been elected to the council in over 75 years, and only one has been elected mayor, Theodore R. McKeldin, who headed Baltimore City for one term in the 1940s and another in the 1960s, after serving as Maryland’s governor for two terms from 1951-1959.

When considering successful write-in campaigns, most pundits cite the reelection of Alaska’s United States Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who defeated the Republican nominee to whom she had lost the GOP primary, as well as the Democratic Party nominee in Alaska’s general election last year.

However that was only the second time a U.S. senator was elected by a write-in vote, the first having been South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond, who won by write-in in 1954 and went on to serve more than 47 years, retiring in 2003 as the oldest and longest serving senator in American history.

Thurmond was 100 years old when he retired from the Senate.

Another famous write-in campaign involved the grandfather of President John F. Kennedy — Boston Mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald — who, as the Democratic nominee for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in 1918 lost to write-in Independent Democrat Peter F. Tague.

PRESSMAN LOST DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY IN 1963

In Baltimore, Hyman A. Pressman was first elected City Comptroller in 1963 — after losing the Democratic primary — not as a write-in but by joining forces with former Governor McKeldin and campaigning as McKeldin’s running mate on the Republican ticket.

Thomas J. D’Alesandro 3rd, a Democrat, won election as City Council President that year, after which Pressman returned to the Democratic Party and went on to win six additional terms as comptroller, serving for 28 years in the post.

He left office in 1991 and died in 1996 just before turning 82.

Both Sneed and Conaway told Voice of Baltimore they expect to beat the odds and win on Tuesday, asserting that despite the conventional wisdom, it’s “not all that difficult” to get people to cast a write-in ballot.

“If you can use a cellphone or an ATM,” said Conaway, “you can write-in.”

“If the seniors get it — and they do — others will get it,” asserted Sneed.

alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org

CHECK OUT VoB’S OCT. 18 ARTICLE ON CONAWAY’S WRITE-IN CAMPAIGN  (click here) ^[3]