With the general election behind her, Mayor Sheila Dixon said she can now focus on Baltimore’s climbing murder rate and crumbling schools.

“Safety is a big issue, and we have to work on our school system,” she said.

“I want to continue the Cleaner and Greener Initiative and make the city healthier.”

Dixon said her first job will be to appoint the best department heads and agency leaders.

This story continues below
Advertisement

“Whoever’s in leadership is going to have a tough task,” said Amenu Webb, a real estate agent who voted at St. Leo’s Church in Little Italy.

He said he believes Baltimore’s rising homicide count reflects the downward spiral of society as a whole.

Dixon’s unsuccessful Republican opponent, Elbert Henderson, said he would continue working as an administrator for the D.C. Department of Corrections.

“I won’t be mad at Baltimore, but our lives have to go on, too,” he said Tuesday in a phone interview.

Voters didn’t know who he is, what he stands for — or if he even lives in the city, said Michael Howard, chief Democratic election judge at the Waverly Library on 33rd Street.

Dixon supporters created controversy by questioning Henderson’s address. He lives in Baltimore but also has properties in Baltimore County and Carroll County.

“If that’s the best they can do, that says I’m a pretty good candidate,” Henderson said.

A Republican mayor was last elected in Baltimore four decades ago.

One party’s dominance often results in low voter turnout in municipal general elections, said Donald Greenberg, a politics professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Democrats outnumber Republicans 6-1 in Bridgeport, Conn. “We have not had a 40 percent turnout in local general elections for at least 40 years,” Greenberg said.

“This situation is not uncommon in many Northeast cities where the Democrats have been the dominant party for a very long time. In suburban areas ... it is the Republicans who dominate.”

kvolkmann@baltimoreexaminer.com