The same day that police arrested Freddie Gray in a high-crime part of Baltimore, that city’s mayor was on NBC’s Meet the Press dishing her opinions on Hillary Clinton, the health of the Republican Party and the wisdom of police body cameras.
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is used to being on television, and over the past week, she’s hardly ever been off of it.
Baltimore’s mayor, tested by the mysterious death of Gray that is raising questions about potential brutality by Baltimore cops, is earning plaudits from some political observers for her omnipresence as the city works its way through a public relations landmine.
Rawlings-Blake has navigated with media savvy and political dexterity, but as the situation becomes more violent in Baltimore, she’s also faced increased criticism of her leadership.
“Any challenge is also, from a political perspective, an opportunity,” said Oscar Ramirez, a Democratic lobbyist from Maryland who has watched Rawlings-Blake’s career.
As the protests turned violent Monday, with rioters jumping on police cars and police deploring the “outrageous” escalation, Rawlings-Blake earned criticism for seeming to encourage some expression of pent-up anger. The mayor said at a recent press conference that it was important that her police “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.”
That sentiment was later walked by a spokesman, but critics interpreted her directive as permission for Baltimore to devolve.
“No one gets ‘space to destroy’ public or private property,” tweeted talk show host Montel Williams, who grew up in Baltimore.
Rawlings-Blake has taken guidance from how other cities have handled these similar crises. After riots erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of another young black man, she served on a committee that drafted ideas how to improve community-police relations.
“It is important to take into account optics — how things look,” was one of the report’s conclusions.
On that score, at least, Rawlings-Blake is succeeding, said Doug Thornell, a Democratic political strategist with experience in Maryland.
“Not every single executive would’ve done it. There are very recent examples of executives who would’ve essentially climbed into a bunker and not answer every question,” Thornell said, comparing the reaction in Baltimore to local leadership’s response in Ferguson.
In one example of Rawlings-Blake’s willingness to confront hard issues in the wake of the Gray controversy, she didn’t back down in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper when he asked about a measure she nixed requiring body cameras for Baltimore cops.
“The council sent me a bad bill. I’m against bad legislation, I’m for body cameras and my track record speaks to that,” she said. “I want to make sure we do it and we do it right. If the council sends me a bad bill, I can’t sign it. But that doesn’t mean we’re not going to have body cameras and it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m against them.”
Yet some in Baltimore’s African-American community have criticized Rawlings-Blake, who is black, for only rising to the occasion once Gray died and video surfaced of how police treated him — and not while he remained in a coma.
“We didn’t hear the outrage from her when the man was in a coma,” Jamal Bryant, a Baltimore preacher, told The Washington Post. “It felt like a politician was talking — that this is politically correct and I think that’s the sentiment in the street.”
Rawlings-Blake may draw on training from her background. Born to a medical doctor and a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Rawlings-Blake, 45, jumped from city council to mayor in 2010 after her predecessor was convicted on embezzlement charges. In 2013, national Democrats realized her potential and named her secretary of the Democratic National Committee. She’s also the vice president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
As a DNC official, she traveled the country and expanded her national profile, winning face-time with Democrats who could back future ambitions.
The Baltimore mayor looks like she’ll take a pass on running for a soon-to-be-available Senate seat in Maryland, but some speculate that she may run for governor in 2018, when newly elected Republican Gov. Larry Hogan will face re-election.
“If you look at her profile — relatively young, woman, African-American who comes from humble beginnings and has really accomplished quite a bit, a lot of Democrats in the state see a very bright future,” said Thornell.