Dixon’s sorry she got caught
Your headline on the news story about Dixon running for offices says, “Former Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon to run again in 2024, apologizes again for crimes that forced her from office.” What choice did she have not to say she was sorry again? To run, she was forced to apologize again. What she was most sorry about was the fact that she got caught to begin with.
Crimes are not mistakes
The op-ed “I am truly sorry for the mistakes in my personal life” demonstrates that Sheila Dixon clearly has a different definition of the word criminal as meaning mistakes to her.
If Dixon was Baltimore’s best mayor, ‘Heaven help us all’
I read the op-ed written by the still (to me) “dishonorable” Sheila Dixon. Ms. Dixon, I see that you are still blowing your own horn and you continue to extol the good deeds you have been doing in the community since your removal from office for theft. However, in the campaign of 2020, you had the audacity and arrogance to label your opponent, Brandon Scott, as an “opportunist.” Wasn’t your admitted theft of gift cards, which were earmarked for distribution to the needy, a crime of opportunity? Ms. Dixon, I personally don’t believe that this incident was the only time you stuck your hand into the cookie jar. Thieves steal whenever the opportunity presents itself. They usually get caught when they get either greedy or desperate. Ms. Dixon, you besmirched the Office of Mayor and were a real disgrace. Who could ever trust you again to serve as the linchpin of the Board of Estimates, which makes all of the fiscal decisions of any consequence for Baltimore City and answers to nobody?
Ms. Dixon, the volunteer work in your church and the community in general you describe must be labors of love, which should always be performed in anonymity. There should be no mention of these good works coming from your lips or from anybody on your committee to reelect you. To me, all of the actions that you chronicled that were carried out in the church and the community were your merely “casting bread upon the waters.” If you really wanted to make amends, you may have donated all of your Baltimore City pension every year to those more needy folks among your former constituents whose trust you violated. Then, after all of that, maybe you could’ve gotten a real job paying taxes and you possibly could’ve gotten in touch with some humility in the process. I truly believe that you are sorry only because you got caught.
Finally, what’s even more frightening for the remaining residents of Baltimore City is that your potential political rivals all will have their own shortcomings. You will still have a good chance to return to the Mayor’s Office despite your past. Are you really “the best mayor Baltimore ever had?” If so, heaven help us all!