It was just after 1:30 Tuesday morning when Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) says he received the call from the city’s fire chief.
Scott, 39, said he threw on his official Baltimore city jacket and headed for the scene, calling the governor, the presidents of the state Senate and city council, and the city administrator along the way. When he arrived at the shore of the Patapsco River to see the wreckage, “you could still hear it moving at that point,” he said of the Dali, the 985-foot ship that had taken down the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
Just before daybreak, as Scott began appearing in national television interviews to speak of the “unthinkable tragedy,” the attacks started.
One user on X, called him “Baltimore’s DEI mayor,” a reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programs that have come under attack by conservatives who say they lead to minorities getting jobs over more qualified White candidates. Meanwhile, others attacked Scott for his facial hair and for not wearing a suit. “He looks like your average street criminal,” another X user wrote. Neither user responded to a request for comment.
“He was doing what anyone would expect an elected official to do, and you assign that to DEI. It is bonkers. It is absolutely bonkers,” said Caryn York, president of the nonprofit Baltimore Corps.
The collapse of the Key Bridge has complicated the young politico’s efforts to revive the city’s fortune, and it thrust him into the national spotlight, making him an even larger target for racist commentators. It’s to be expected, Scott said in an interview. “When you’re young and Black in leadership, you know that that kind of stuff is going to come,” he said.
The racist attacks haven’t been reserved for him, Scott noted. Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore (D), who is Black, and the immigrants who lost their lives in the collapse have become targets, too.
Being Baltimore’s mayor has never been an easy job. The city’s high unemployment and crime rates, along with miles of blighted property, have long made it a somewhat thankless task. But as a young Black man, Scott said, he faces an additional challenge: a barrage of racist dog whistles, from being called a “thug” to being accused of fathering “one more Baltimore illegitimate black baby.”
Scott is considered a political insider by many in Baltimore. He received more than 70 percent of the vote in the 2020 election, putting together a coalition that spanned the deep racial and economic chasms in the city. Indeed, many of his critics accuse Scott, a former city council member, of being a career politician too hesitant to attack head on the issues facing Black Baltimore residents.
“It’s so interesting that that’s the conservative backlash because I don’t see him as a Black mayor doing anything more or less for Black people or Brown people in Baltimore than any previous mayor,” said Marisela B. Gomez, a community activist and public health professional, who works in East Baltimore. “I haven’t seen the money really flow into these majority Black and Brown low-income communities.”
Despite the online attacks, Scott said, he is trying to stay focused on the crisis.
The bridge collapse is expected to have long-term economic consequences for the city, which has struggled for years to rebuild its finances. The incident cut off access to the city’s port, which experts say provides 20,000 direct jobs and brings in about $1.5 million in state and local taxes every day.
At least eight people fell into the water at the Port of Baltimore, officials have said. Two were rescued, one uninjured and one in serious condition, and two bodies were recovered Wednesday. The remaining four are presumed dead. The victims, members of a construction crew working on the bridge, were migrants from Mexico and Central America.
Scott is a Baltimore native raised in the city’s Park Heights neighborhood, a predominantly Black area plagued by crime and economic challenges after massive White flight in the 1960s. Growing up, he has said, he scrambled to flee gunfire and dealt with police harassment, once being handcuffed after being mistaken for a robbery suspect.
From a young age, he said, he knew he wanted to get into politics. After graduating from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, he secured a job in the office of the city council president. In 2011, he won a seat on the council and became its president eight years later. In 2020, he jumped into a crowded mayor’s race and defeated the incumbent.
Just a few hours before the bridge collapsed, Scott delivered his State of the City address, promising residents that the worst was in the city’s rearview mirror. He talked about how, under his leadership, the city had battled the twin crises of gun violence and the coronavirus pandemic but, and he declared, perhaps with an eye to his 2024 reelection bid, that a revival was underway.
“I am happy to report that the state of our city is stronger and more resilient than ever,” Scott said during the address, pointing to his violence reduction strategy, which a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found had reduced shootings without increasing arrests. The program, which offers those at the highest risk of gun violence social services, reduced crime in West Baltimore by a quarter over 18 months, the researchers found.
It will take time to address all of the city’s problems, including undoing the damage done by racial redlining, and the task has been compounded by the bridge collapse, he acknowledged in an interview. “But we’re doing it by investing in people and small businesses,” Scott said.
He has won over some former political opponents, including Lester Davis, who served as deputy mayor before Scott defeated his boss in the 2020 election.
“I’ve known Brandon for well over a decade, and I’ve seen his entire trajectory as an elected official,” Davis said. “He has faced a lot of challenges, but he’s done an excellent job as mayor. The reductions in violent crime and some of the economic markers are indisputable.”
Scott said the vitriol he has received as a public figure has only pushed him to embrace his image as a young Black man. After being attacked for wearing his Baltimore jacket, a dark gray varsity-style fleece with the city’s seal, on national television after the bridge collapse, Scott said, the next day, he purposely wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with the slogan “From Baltimore with love.”
He wanted to “let the people of Baltimore know that I’m ignoring the rest of them, and I’m focused on the people of Baltimore,” he said.
In the end, he said, the attacks are bigger than him; they’re a part of a fight over who should lead in an increasingly multicultural society.
“We are one of the few majority Black cities left, and that’s what they want to attack,” Scott said. “They want to attack Black leadership; they want to attack Black culture. But those aren’t things I’m going to shy away from.”
Erin Cox contributed to this report
