Last month, the Maryland Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s dismissal of bribery and perjury charges against City Councilmember Helen Holton (D-8th District). The ruling was a long-awaited piece of good news for Holton, who is seeking re-election. In 2009, she was indicted by a grand jury; state prosecutors had accused her of accepting $12,500 from developers John Paterakis Sr. and Ronald Lipscomb for a campaign poll, in exchange for voting for tax breaks for one of their projects. Holton pleaded no contest to a campaign finance violation—candidates are limited to donations of $4,000 or less from any one individual during a four-year election cycle—and paid a $2,500 fine as a result, but until the recent ruling, the more serious bribery charges remained unresolved. Despite the decision in her favor, the case continues to provide ammunition for her three opponents in the upcoming primary.

“I don’t wish any kind of hardship on anybody, but I still think that as a public or elected official you’re held to a higher standard,” candidate David Smallwood says. “The charges may have been dismissed but that doesn’t mean she didn’t participate in what was brought against her.”

“There’s kind of like a gentleman’s nod going on down there,” candidate Haki Shakur Ammi says, “like, OK, you got away with this one.”

“[Holton’s] a microcosm of what I think is the bigger problem in Baltimore,” candidate Dayvon Love says, “which is that many public officials have very close relationships with developers.”

Holton, for her part, has called her prolonged legal problems a case of “public persecution.” She says she did nothing wrong. “I wasn’t the one that wrote the check [from the developers],” she says. “I didn’t see it. It never crossed my hands.”

Holton has been in office since 1995, and financially speaking, she has the edge. According to recent campaign finance reports, she has about $16,500 in her campaign kitty and has spent another $13,000 on campaign expenses this year. Smallwood, who has run against Holton twice before, has spent more than $16,000 on his campaign, with about $2,000 remaining. Love, the youngest candidate for office in the city at 24 years old, has brought in about $2,400. First-time candidate Ammi hasn’t raised enough to warrant a campaign finance report; he says supporters have donated about $200.

The district these candidates are vying for occupies a big chunk of West and Southwest Baltimore. It includes leafy middle-class enclaves such as Dickeyville, Hunting Ridge—home to former mayor Sheila Dixon—and West Hills, where Holton resides. But the district also has its share of neighborhoods such Edmondson Village, which struggles with blight and crime. Due to this year’s redistricting, triggered by the 2010 Census, the 8th lost three precincts in the south—including Violetville and part of Morrell Park—and gained three in the north that border Forest Park Golf Course. According to census figures, the 8th District has the largest proportion of African-American residents of any district in the city, at more than 89 percent; about 8 percent of the residents are white.

Holton, 51, is a certified public accountant and works as a finance administrator at a local accounting firm; she holds an MBA from Johns Hopkins University. She was previously chair of the City Council’s powerful Taxation, Finance and Economic Development Committee, but after she pleaded no contest to campaign finance violation charges in October 2010, City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young (D) removed her from the position. As a legislator, Holton is a frequent sponsor of resolutions and only sparingly puts forward bills. “We have a lot of laws on the books already,” she says, “and rather than sponsor more laws that we’re challenged with enforcing, I’d rather start with a resolution process so we can really look at [if we will] benefit from the law.”

In June, for instance, Holton sponsored a resolution to investigate “how the City can best leverage its purchasing expenditures to encourage the growth of local, small, and disadvantaged businesses.” While short on specifics, the resolution encourages the council and city agencies to look into how other cities manage their small-business enterprise programs and subsequently design a program appropriate for Baltimore. “The big push is to get people in Baltimore City working,” Holton says.

Asked what she’s proudest of from her last few years on the council, Holton points to more concrete endeavors. She cites the completion of the Edgewood Recreation Center, which opened in 2005. Holton says she successfully convinced then Mayor Martin O’Malley to invest a million dollars in the center when the project ran out of funds. The rec center was the first to open in Baltimore in more than 30 years. She says she was also instrumental in making Edmondson Village part of the city’s Healthy Neighborhood Initiative, which helps struggling neighborhoods market their communities. (Holton cited this same accomplishment for a City Paper article on the 2007 race: “Behind the 8th Ball,” Campaign Beat, Aug. 1, 2007) And she touts having brought a satellite Community Action Center to the district, where residents can resolve problems and obtain resources from a variety of city agencies.

Holton says that if re-elected her priorities will be tackling vacant housing, creating jobs, and finding ways to shift funding to “youth opportunities,” such as after-school programming, rec centers, and summer jobs.

David Maurice Smallwood, 49, ran against Holton in both 2003 and 2007. (He garnered 25 percent of the vote out of a field of seven in the 2003 primary; in 2007, he came in second with 22 percent of the vote in a field of five.) Smallwood worked for the city’s Department of Recreation and Parks for 22 years in a variety of capacities, including director of the Ralph J. Young Recreation Center for nearly a decade. He currently works for the state’s Department of Juvenile Services as a recreation specialist. Smallwood is a certified “gang liaison” with the department, and says his long experience with young people makes him a good candidate for office. “A lot of the violence and the murders that occur in Baltimore City against our young people, the basis and the root of it has a lot to do with the gang culture,” he says. “What I would do is bring education to the community because people have to understand what’s around them.”

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