The Media Mogul Trying to Buy Baltimore’s Mayoral Race

By Pete Tucker

Baltimore’s mayoral election tomorrow will be shaped by “the single biggest donation to a political campaign in city history,” but search campaign finance records, and you won’t find it anywhere. What you will find, however, are plenty of other donations from David Smith.

“Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think,” Sinclair chair David Smith told New York (4/2/18).  “This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.”

Smith heads up the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and if Sinclair rings a bell, it’s likely from the Orwellian splash the network made six years ago when it required anchors at its local TV stations across the country to read from the same Trump-like anti-media script. This departure from journalistic norms was far from a one-off for Smith or his family’s network, which has quietly become the second-largest in the country, owning or operating 294 TV stations in 89 markets across the country.

“Smith may not be as identifiable as Rupert Murdoch or Jeff Bezos,” noted New York magazine (4/2/18), “but he’s as powerful.” And nowhere has Smith exercised his power more concertedly than his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland.

By “hometown,” I mean where Smith grew up, not where he lives. For many years, both Smith and his company have resided outside the city, in Baltimore County. But Smith still feels a certain kinship for the city where he grew up. Kinship, and a sense of ownership.

In his capacity as Baltimore’s self-appointed overlord, Smith has determined the city needs a new mayor. And he’s taken the liberty of selecting her.

The vetting process wasn’t extensive. Smith settled on his chosen candidate after she agreed to his “checklist” of demands, which included firing the police and schools chiefs, and dismantling a violence-prevention program.

That’s according to a jaw-dropping report by Mark Reutter at Baltimore Brew (1/17/24). Smith’s pick for mayor, Sheila Dixon, denies the Brew’s account. And Smith surely would, too, only he didn’t respond to the Brew—which isn’t surprising, considering Smith’s feelings about print media; they’re “so left wing as to be meaningless dribble,” he told New York.

But it’s undeniable that Smith is backing Dixon, a former mayor, in a big way. A super PAC supporting Dixon’s candidacy, the Better Baltimore PAC, has received $250,000 from Smith, plus another $100,000 from Smith’s nephew, Alex Smith (Baltimore Sun, 5/4/24). (The PAC’s third major donor, developer John Luetkemeyer, has contributed $350,000.)

‘Biggest donation…in city history’

Justine Barron (FAIR.org, 2/16/24): “Over the last 20 years, Smith and his family have become increasingly powerful in Baltimore’s political, corporate and media landscape, and they have used their local media holdings to promote their agendas.”

And Smith’s efforts on behalf of Dixon may not end there. As FAIR (2/16/24) reported, Dixon’s candidacy has been aided by her consistent presence on Fox 45, Sinclair’s flagship Baltimore station.

Controlling one of Baltimore’s major television stations, while simultaneously wielding hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations, adds up to serious political clout. But apparently it’s not enough for Smith.

In January, Smith personally purchased the Baltimore Sun, Maryland’s largest newspaper, for an undisclosed sum  (FAIR.org, 2/16/24). (Smith claims he paid “nine figures,” meaning $100 million or more.) Smith bought the Sun from hedge fund Alden Capital, which had taken ownership of the paper in 2021, when it bought the Sun’s parent company, Tribune Publishing. (Alden, a hedge fund known for sucking newspapers dry, is now the second-largest newspaper chain in the country, a fact that depresses me to no end.)

Any hope that Smith would leave his right-wing politics at the Sun’s door was dashed in his first meeting with the paper’s staff. Smith encouraged Sun reporters to focus on the failures of Baltimore’s public schools, so its students don’t turn into “those people, that class of people” who are “always going to be on welfare” (Baltimore Banner, 1/18/24).

At the same meeting, Smith openly bragged about using Fox 45 to pressure elected officials. Naturally, he used a Baltimore Democrat as his example:

If I do a poll that asks a very simple question: Should [Maryland state senate president] Bill Ferguson be thrown under the bus? You know what the answer is? Unequivocally, yes…. You know what Bill Ferguson’s view of that poll is? It scares him to death. And you know what it says to him? Maybe I better rethink what my political posture is.

By adding the Sun to his Baltimore media holdings, Smith is that much closer to becoming the city’s kingmaker. “David has always thought of the Sun as an obstacle to Fox 45, so why not buy it and turn it into Fox 45,” a person with knowledge of Smith’s thinking told the Brew (1/17/24). “Who buys a major newspaper four months before a mayoral primary?” this person asked. He added that Smith’s purchase is “the single biggest donation to a political campaign in city history.”

‘Unprecedented territory’

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott campaign said that Fox 45 had “showcased themselves to be entirely incapable of being impartial and ethical in their approach” (Baltimore Banner, 3/14/24).

The only thing standing in Smith’s way is the incumbent mayor, 40-year-old Brandon Scott, who narrowly defeated Sheila Dixon four years ago (in the Democratic primary, the election that matters in deep-blue Baltimore).

In their May 14 rematch, Scott won’t have the Sun’s endorsement, like he did four years ago (5/22/20). In fact, Smith’s media properties have been so biased against Scott that the mayor refused to participate in an April debate jointly hosted by the Sun and Fox 45. “We are truly in unprecedented territory,” Scott’s campaign manager said, “when the owner of the news outlet hosting a debate is also the leading political donor to one of the candidates participating in the same debate.”

The moderator for the debate only heightened Scott’s concerns: It was to be Armstrong Williams, and the event was to be branded “The Armstrong Williams Town Hall.”

A little history is in order. Williams first shot to fame when he was found to be in the pocket of the George W. Bush administration. In exchange for $240,000, Williams quietly agreed to provide Bush’s policies with positive coverage. Whenever I see Williams’ name, these details rush back to me. But there’s another aspect of the scandal that I’d forgotten, and it involves Smith.

To satisfy the terms of the secret deal, Williams had to reach a national television audience. “Fortunately for Williams,” noted Rolling Stone (2/24/05), “he was good friends with David Smith.” And Sinclair agreed to air Williams’ segments. (A Sinclair producer described one of them as “the worst piece of TV I’ve ever been associated with…. Clearly propaganda.”)

For his part, Smith claimed he didn’t know about Williams’ secret deal; but he was also untroubled by it, calling the controversy surrounding it “foolish.”

‘Only rank partisans’

“The residents of Baltimore deserve better than Scott’s revisionist crime data,” Armstrong Williams (Baltimore Sun, 4/29/24)—referring to Baltimore’s 20% drop in homicides in 2023.

In the subsequent two decades, Smith and Williams have remained personally and financially close. While maintaining a continued presence on Sinclair’s airwaves, Williams has purchased several divested Sinclair stations at suspiciously low prices; and also been made co-owner of the Sun.

But it wasn’t just Armstrong Williams’ shady past that made him an imperfect debate moderator; like Smith, he also appears to favor Dixon. In the buildup to her announcement, Dixon spoke with Williams on Fox 45 for a full hour (6/22/23).

“With his totally softball and praising interview, the host fulfilled what I assume was his assignment: promote Dixon as an alternative to the incumbent mayor,” Sun columnist Dan Rodricks (6/27/23) wrote, six months before Smith purchased the Sun.

Three months after Smith’s purchase, Williams penned his own Sun column  (4/29/24) on the mayoral race, which noted Baltimore’s declining homicides and shootings, and asked, “But who deserves the credit?” One might think that the city’s top official deserves some of the credit—but Williams informed readers that “only rank partisans credit Mayor Scott.”

Anyway, Baltimore—a city with more than its fair share of challenges—finished 2023 with homicides under 300 for the first time in almost a decade. Meanwhile, Scott “also can tout a growing economy and robust employment rate,” according to the Baltimore Banner (12/7/23). 

So, despite David Smith’s media empire aiming square at him, Mayor Scott has a fighting chance at winning reelection tomorrow, with polls showing him slightly ahead of Dixon.

Of course, when it comes to Baltimore, there’s a certain non-resident who feels entitled to having the last word. And I’d like to give it him—or, more specifically, to his well-coiffed, on-air captives, who in 2018 were required to read the following:

We’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country…. Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.

This article originally appeared on FAIR's website on May 13th, 2024.

  

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