I first met Len fourteen years ago when he founded and chaired the Citizens for Bowie Police – a grassroots organization that helped educate residents and lobby councilmembers about a referendum to bring a police force to Bowie. The organization prevailed, and Len went on to serve as the first chair of the Bowie Public Safety Committee where he participated in the creation of the Bowie Police Department.
Len later went on to serve on the city’s BGE task force which resulted in the implementation of the Bowie Electric Reliability Plan (BERAP). Power outages in Bowie’s Levitt neighborhoods were reduced as a result of those efforts.
Len also served as the city's lobbyist in Upper Marlboro and Annapolis to bring county and state funding to Bowie projects. Some of his successes include acquiring funds to support the senior center, parks, schools, the Bowie Center for the Performing Arts, and the police department’s state-of-the-art call center.
Some of the issues that Bowie residents have identified this election cycle as top priorities are addressing school overcrowding, getting a new high school in Bowie, land use authority for Bowie, addressing traffic congestion and road improvements on Route 197, Route 214, Route 301, and Church Road. Resolutions to all of those issues require county and state help. We need Len’s experience at the city, county, and state level to help us navigate those waters.
I know Len to be a man of high integrity who values community and family. He's been a fixture in Bowie since he moved into his Somerset section home as a young boy in 1962, and he's committed to keeping Bowie a great place to live.
Len has held leadership positions in various organizations, including the Greater Bowie Chamber of Commerce, the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, the Prince George's County Chamber of Commerce, and the Maryland Government Relations Association. I'm looking forward to having him put those leadership skills to good use as the next mayor.
See below for my analysis of the mayoral race and the other candidates.
Mayoral Race
Bowie is about to get a new mayor for the first time in more than twenty years after Mayor G. Fred Robinson decided not to seek reelection. The election for a new mayor and the six council seats will take place tomorrow, Tuesday, November 5th from 7am to 8pm.
Five candidates are vying for the mayor’s seat, making it likely that the new mayor will be elected by a plurality rather than a majority of voters.
Three candidates are considered to be stronger than the others, and it’s conceivable that the next mayor could win with as little as 34% of the vote. If turnout is similar to the 2015 election, the next mayor of this city of nearly 60,000 residents could be elected with as few as 2,300 votes.
All of the candidates seem to have similar policy positions.
- Address overcrowding in the schools
- New high school for Bowie
- Improvements to county and state roads to deal with traffic congestion.
- Support arts and entertainment district in Old Town Bowie
- Adequately fund and support the Bowie Police Department.
- Be fiscally responsible and preserve Bowie’s triple-A bond rating
- No overdevelopment
- Bowie to have greater say in land use decisions
- No support for high density development on the Freeway Airport property
With similar policy positions among most of the candidates, the challenge for voters is to determine who has what it takes to serve as the chairperson for the Bowie City Council, and to work with staff and the other councilmembers to address Bowie's challenges.
Keith Jackson
Keith Jackson is running for mayor for the second time. The 25-year-old candidate is operating a barebones campaign, and his monthly campaign finance reports indicate that he’s raised no money through mid-October.
Jackson participated in several of the candidate forums, and his answers to questions show that he lacks a basic understanding of the issues affecting Bowie.
Emerson DeWitt Ruth
Ruth unsuccessfully ran for the District 5 seat on the Prince George’s Board of Education in 2006, shortly after moving to Maryland from the west coast.
Ruth’s involvement in city affairs is mixed. He has served on the city’s Board of Personnel Appeals for fourteen years, but voting records show that Ruth hasn’t bothered to vote in the last two city elections.
It was a strategic error for Ruth to wait until September to start his campaign. He doesn’t have the same name recognition as other candidates, and Ruth should have given himself more time to play catch-up by knocking on doors and attending community events throughout the spring and summer. He didn’t.
I think it’s unlikely that Ruth will win the election, but his hard work over the last several weeks could yield him several hundred votes. That could be enough to affect the outcome if the vote totals for the top three contenders are close.
Tim Adams
Despite his business successes and stints on the boards of several non-profits, Adams has had little involvement in local Bowie matters. He did serve as chair for the Bowie State Foundation (an endowment for the university), and he received an honorary doctorate degree from the school two years ago. However, Adams has never served on a city committee, and he hasn’t even bothered to vote in the last several city elections.
Adams offers no major policy differences from the other candidates, but his campaign has changed the fundraising dynamic of the race, forcing the other candidates to raise more money to compete.
Tim Adams made his first run for political office in 2018 by launching a primary challenge against incumbent Doug Peters for the Maryland District 23 Senate seat. Adams spent a whopping $475,000 of his own money on his failed bid for the Senate seat – a prelude for his mayoral run.
As of October 15th, Adams contributed $46,000 of his own money to his campaign, and he loaned the campaign another $10,000 (loans to campaign are sometimes paid back in part or in full). To put those contributions in perspective, the combined expenses of all mayoral candidates in the 2015 race was $44,000, which is less than what Adams spent himself for just a portion of the 2019 race.
Business executives have had mixed success making the transition to public office. With Adams lack of participation in city affairs and his lack of familiarity with city government and land use issues, that transition would come with challenges.
Dennis Brady
After spending 22 years on the Bowie City Council, Brady has a group of loyal supporters. In some ways he's like an incumbent, and the other candidates have had the burden of earning name recognition with the voters.
Brady is campaigning with the tag line, "Experience Matters!" Primarily he's referring to experience on the council, although he also served on the Maryland Municipal League, the Prince George's County Municipal Association, and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Government Board of Directors.
Brady hasn't been on the council since 2015 when he lost the race for mayor to G. Fred Robinson, but he kept himself busy by organizing a grassroots group, Citizens against the Super Conducting Magnetic Levitation Train (Maglev), to lobby against the construction of a Maglev rail line through Bowie.
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