As if that city hadn’t suffered enough. Via the Baltimore Sun:
In a surprise move, civil rights activist DeRay Mckesson jumped into the already crowded contest for Baltimore mayor Wednesday night, shaking up the Democratic field minutes before the deadline to file.
“Baltimore is a city of promise and possibility,” the Black Lives Matter member told The Baltimore Sun. “We can’t rely on traditional pathways to politics and the traditional politicians who walk those paths if we want transformational change.”
He said he planned to release a platform within a week.
It would be difficult to think of a candidate less likely to improve the situation in Baltimore. As I wrote last summer, McKesson has tweeted his way to fame by puerilely framing every even-tangentially race-related occurrence as an example of “whiteness” oppressing “blackness.” Unsurprisingly, McKesson is unconcerned about facts or evidence that might disconfirm his preferred theses; hence his penchant for outright conspiracy theory, as when he accused police of murdering a Texas woman in her jail cell without a follicle of evidence.
These would not seem to be desirable qualities in a chief executive, and, mercifully, the Democratic primary (which effectively decides the mayor’s race) has twelve alternatives. Then again, Baltimore’s heavily Democratic electorate has been making terrible choices in leaders for a half-century.
DeRay McKesson: Baltimore Mayor's Race Will Include Black Lives Matter Leader