I'm disappointed.
I voted for Sheila Dixon proudly, both in the Democratic mayoral primary and in the general election. I supported her in my personal blog. I defended her to friends who felt that she was too divisive and that feared that she was another crooked politician. And now I feel like I've been served a big heaping helping of "I told you so."
I was piddling away on the internet and vaguely ignoring the television when MSNBC filled me in: 4 counts of perjury, 3 counts of theft, 3 counts of misappropriation, and 2 counts of misconduct. That's a lot. The Baltimore Sun has more detail, but the site crashes my iMac when I try to load it. Perhaps you'll have better luck.
I acknowledge that she's innocent until proven guilty, that an indictment is not a conviction, that it's possible that she did nothing wrong. But in this moment, I'm still frustrated and disappointed and feel even worse about Baltimore. I lived in Baltimore for two years, became involved with the Maryland Democratic Party for the 2006 general election, and cared about having quality governance for what many would consider to be a struggling city. Baltimore has problems: crime, unemployment, homelessness, epidemic levels of drug abuse and sexually transmitted infections. When a city enacts a major campaign to boost civic morale by asking people to Believe in itself, that's a bad sign. And these charges will just take attention away from focusing on all of the things that need to be fixed in Baltimore while making the place look even more broken to people who don't know it.
Maybe I'm rambling and injecting a bit too much of my own hopes and frustrations with a city into a discussion of one woman's possible misdeeds. But it makes me feel bad both for and about Baltimore. The city needs help and it needs quality leadership. I don't have the feeling that it's getting either.