First District City Councilmember James Kraft has served eight years in office in one of the city’s most dynamic and diverse districts. The neighborhoods of Fells Point, Canton, Highlandtown, Little Italy, Harbor East, and Patterson Park have grown during the past decade, buoyed by the housing boom and an influx of Hispanic immigrants, as well as major developments such as 1st Mariner Tower and, well, Harbor East. In this year’s Democratic primary election, Kraft faces two challengers, both political newcomers, both schoolteachers. Both say that Kraft is not sufficiently responsive to community concerns and has acquiesced to high property taxes. Neither challenger, however, is so far running the kind of aggressive campaign that shook up the last election.

Jason Kahler, 35, is a Baltimore native (he says his great grandfather came here in 1891) who has lived all over town and went to college in California, He spent 10 years in sales and marketing and then applied for the Baltimore City Teaching Residency program and became a teacher last year.

He teaches law in the Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts in Sandtown, a public high school established in 2004 and currently ranked a one out of 10 on the Great Schools web site. “We were a turnaround school,” he says. “This year we had an 82 percent graduation rate.” Kahler says his students encouraged him to run for City Council.

“This is basically why I’m running—we need to create a community in Baltimore,” Kahler says. “Do you know what happened last week in Baltimore? Two hundred people left! And the week before that, 200 people left! And the week before that, and the week before that.”

The exodus is easy to understand: “As soon as you find out you’re having a child, it’s time to get out of the city,” says Kahler, who has a 9-month-old son, “because of the schools, high crime, and taxes.”

Kahler and his wife paid $250,000 for a two-story rowhouse on Baylis Street in 2007. The house assessed at less than $230,000 this year, yet Kahler says his property-tax bill keeps rising. He pays more than $400 per month just in taxes—about what a place like that would rent for a decade ago. “We need property-tax relief for citizens who are doing the right thing,” Kahler says, adding that a dollar-auction giveaway of surplus city-owned houses (“to any takers”), combined with a 10 percent annual tax on vacant units, would spur redevelopment.

“Kraft will continue to develop this area, but he won’t create a community,” Kahler says. “This city has this huge divide, with million-dollar condos on Key Highway and children sleeping in vacant buildings in Sandtown.”

Kahler says Kraft and his high-priced campaign staff have broken the law by posting signs too early (he cites the law that says no signs can be posted until July 16). He also contends Kraft’s experience and fundraising are questionable. “Why does he need $100,000—$50 per vote—to win a $40,000 job?” Kahler asks. (Councilmembers are actually paid a base salary of $57,000.) “Raising that much should cause alarms, not support.”

Helene Luce, 53, lives four blocks from Kraft. During an interview, Kraft pays her the ultimate backhanded compliment, saying she “has been very generous in her campaign. There has been no negative campaigning.” And Luce returns the favor during an interview at City Paper. “I like Jim,” she says. “I don’t have anything against him personally.”

But Luce says her Patterson Park neighbors are not getting the constituent service they expected. “I feel he’s been more reactive than proactive,” Luce says of Kraft. “I’m from the old school. I return phone calls.”

Born in New York City and raised in New Jersey, Luce says she has lived all over the East Coast. She came to Baltimore several years ago to tutor the young actors on the set of The Wire, and stayed because of the sense of community she found. She is also a lawyer who taught in Virginia public schools for 11 years.

Asked how much money she plans to raise for the campaign, Luce calls it a tough question. “I know what I need,” she says. “I don’t know if I can raise it.”

The number is $50,000, she finally says. But if she doesn’t collect that much, “I’m very good at stretching a dollar.”

Luce says she would look for waste and bloat in city government to fund property-tax cuts. “We have the fifth-largest Housing Authority for the 26th-largest city,” Luce says. “Do we need 15 City Council members? We could get by with nine.”

Luce would charge the owners of vacant houses a 10 percent property-tax rate, an idea that has been in force in Washington, D.C., since 2009 and seems to be all the rage among Baltimore candidates this year. “You own a $3,000 house, the guy pays $65 a year in property taxes,” Luce says. “That’s less than a parking ticket.”

Though Luce says the biggest crime she sees on her street is “people not picking up after their dog,” she knows many people experience things differently. “It doesn’t do us any good to have Baltimore Street be safe and Fayette Street be a war zone.”

Kraft says getting people to feel safe in their homes is one of his major priorities. “And I really distinguish between feeling safe and being safe,” he says. “We can show the statistics—90 percent of murders aren’t random. Break-ins are down . . . but if someone breaks in next door or someone steals your bike from the backyard, it’s a crime wave.”

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