Brandon Scott, Bolstered By CRE Support, Wins Baltimore Mayoral Primary
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is likely to secure a second term after winning the city's Democratic primary.
Scott led former Mayor Sheila Dixon by a 51% to 43% margin with 71% of the votes counted, and the Associated Press called the race for him at 11:24 p.m. ET Tuesday.
The Republican primary for Baltimore mayor was won by Pastor Shannon Wright, who faces long odds in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 10-to-1.
The incumbent Scott appeared to be the favored candidate of the commercial real estate industry, as developers contributed significantly more money to his campaign than Dixon's, Bisnow reported in March.
The high-profile real estate executives backing Scott with over $10K in contributions included 28 Walker Development CEO Mark Sapperstein, Beatty Development Group founder Michael Beatty and Himmelrich Associates founder Samuel Himmelrich Jr. He also received $10K from affiliates of Caves Valley Partners.
Scott has championed major developments in the city, such as MCB Real Estate's $500M overhaul of the Harborplace retail pavilions into a mixed-use development. He signed a pair of bills in March to allow the project to move forward — one amendment still must be approved by city voters in November — and he has praised MCB's David Bramble as "a West Baltimore boy who understands and knows Baltimore like no one else."
The mayor was on hand to celebrate the opening of the Lexington Market redevelopment in Baltimore's Westside neighborhood early last year, and he has hailed the progress on the Baltimore Peninsula megaproject.
He held his victory party Tuesday night at Baltimore Peninsula's new Rye Street Market building, where the 40-year-old walked on stage to Kendrick Lamar's Drake diss track, "Not Like Us," the Baltimore Banner reported.
The mayor has also taken on the issue of housing affordability in the city, signing a pair of inclusionary housing bills in January that were the first such legislation passed in Baltimore since 2007.
In December, he announced a plan to invest $300M in city funds to eliminate up to 45,000 vacant properties in the city. And he has overseen a drop in violent crime in Baltimore, with homicides down 20% in 2023, the first time in eight years that the city had fewer than 300 murders, CBS News reported.
Scott was thrust into the national spotlight when Baltimore's Key Bridge collapsed in March, a crisis that could have major implications for the city's economy and especially its industrial real estate market. In an April poll conducted by Goucher College and The Baltimore Banner, 61% of city voters said Scott's handling of the bridge collapse was "excellent" or "good," compared to 35% who said his handling was "fair" or "poor."
Tuesday also featured the primary for Maryland's hotly contested Senate race.
In the Democratic primary, Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks defeated Rep. David Trone, the owner of Total Wine & More, who poured a record $62M into his own campaign. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan won the Republican primary, setting up a general election race that could swing the control of the U.S. Senate.
