Cohen outspends Mosby 4-to-1 in Baltimore council president race as candidates take contest to TV

The challengers for Baltimore City Council president have outspent or kept pace with incumbent Nick Mosby, taking the competitive race to television as they attempt to oust the embattled president.

Mosby, the council president since December 2020, has been trying to beat back challenges from both Councilman Zeke Cohen and former Councilwoman Shannon Sneed. He defied expectations of some City Hall insiders by entering the race at all. Cash-poor in his campaign fund and his reputation damaged by testimony he delivered during the federal criminal trial of his ex-wife Marilyn Mosby, Nick Mosby waited until the eve of the Feb. 9 filing deadline to officially jump in.

Since then, Cohen and Sneed have been outpacing the council president in fundraising while Mosby has struggled to deliver accurate reports to the Maryland State Board of Elections.

Cohen, a Democratic councilman who has represented District 1 since 2016, has outspent Mosby nearly 4-to-1 since the start of the year. In April, he made his biggest media purchases to date, dropping $330,000 on television commercials, online advertising and robocalls to city residents. He spent an additional $25,000 on printing.

Supporters of Cohen’s campaign include numerous labor unions and some noteworthy business owners. In his last finance report, he reported maximum $6,000 donations from the Baltimore Teachers Union and Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ. Earlier this year, he reported a $5,000 donation from Bill Stromberg, former CEO of T. Rowe Price, $2,000 from Scott Plank, founder of developer War Horse Cities, and $3,000 from Community Dev. Holdings, a company located at the address of the Cordish Companies.

Cohen, who now represents areas including Highlandtown, Fells Point and Canton, has remained largely positive in his advertising for the citywide council president race despite past disagreements with Mosby that have spilled into the public. Cohen’s television ads have touted support from Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, a Democrat who endorsed him, and featured supporters in the small business community.

Sneed, who represented an East Baltimore district before losing a 2020 bid for council president to Mosby, has taken her publicly financed campaign in a different direction — lobbing attacks on both Cohen and Mosby. In an online ad funded by Sneed, a narrator accuses Cohen of being “funded by developers and bankers.” A separate ad takes aim at Mosby, displaying headlines about his unpaid water bills and an accusation made by prosecutors during his ex-wife’s trial that he claimed fraudulent charitable contributions on his taxes. Mosby has not been charged with a crime.

“Baltimore can’t afford more corruption. We can’t afford Nick Mosby,” the ad states.

Sneed has run separate ads on television with a more positive spin. In those, she emphasized that her campaign has been funded by public money. “I’ll be focused on Baltimore’s problems, not my own,” Sneed said in the ad.

“No skeletons here,” said her daughter Rae Sneed as she opened a closet door.

The ads are evidence of spending by Sneed that has not been reported on her campaign finance disclosures. Sneed has received $243,000 in public campaign financing, but only reported spending $37,000. Kevin Gillogly, her campaign manager, acknowledged omissions and said her actual spending ahead of the last campaign finance reporting deadline was about $136,400. The campaign plans to amend several past reports to include the expenditures, he said. Gillogly estimated that the campaign has spent another $100,000 on media since the April 26 closing date for those reports.

Because Sneed is receiving public financing, her donors can give no more than $150 each. She has claimed contributions from 640 city residents, Gillogly said.

“I feel like we’re the ma and pa (stores) running up against Walmart,” Gillogly said of the fundraising differences in the campaign so far. “But at the same time we’re in this fight. We fundamentally believe we’re in this.”

Polling suggests otherwise. A poll conducted for The Baltimore Sun, University of Baltimore and FOX45 from April 7-11 showed Cohen with 40% of the vote to Mosby’s 21% among likely primary voters surveyed. Sneed trailed with 17% support. Another 19%, however, said they remained undecided.

2024 voter guide: Candidates for Baltimore City Council president

Mosby’s campaign has been less visible than those of his challengers. During a fundraising push in late 2023 Mosby raised $168,700, and he’s collected $111,400 since then. Between January and the end of April, he reported spending $148,500, about $68,000 of it for mailings to voters.

Mosby’s donations have been in question since he submitted a report in early April detailing more than $49,000 in contributions from credit card processor Paragon Solutions. His campaign acknowledged at the time that the donations were an error and said they would file an amendment.

That amended report, containing more than 100 new transactions, was filed on April 18, but it still contained numerous errors. A $9,281 donation was listed from Baltimore Gas & Electric PAC, a total that would have been a violation of the state’s $6,000 maximum if accurate. BGE spokesman Nick Alexopulos said at the time that the PAC had given only $450 to Mosby’s campaign.

A second amended report was filed May 3 detailing $28,000 in new contributions from at least 23 donors. More than $11,000 of new expenditures were added, and the donation from BGE’s PAC was corrected to reflect a $450 donation.

In late April, the Maryland State Board of Elections sent Mosby a letter noting the potential errors on his report and ordering him to provide receipts, disbursements and bank statements to support his filings for the entire election cycle.

Asked about the mistakes, Mosby said his campaign treasurer, Erika Aisha Dorsey, was new to the job. (Records show she was replaced on Tuesday.) Mosby acknowledged that numerous items were incorrectly entered.

“She did the best job she could do. She did the first report fine, but made a lot of errors in the second report,” Mosby said. “That’s why we went out and hired a compliance firm to just go through the entire report. We’ve moved on.”

Newly reported donors to Mosby’s campaign include CMDS Management, Dawei Liu and Kevin Pfeffer who each gave $6,000. Clinic Management and Development Services (CMDS) runs a residential treatment center in northeast Baltimore, and Pfeffer is the group’s CEO and founder. In 2020, the group tried to open a residential treatment center on Harford Road that was blocked by the Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals. CMDS sued the city over the decision in 2021, and litigation is ongoing.

Roger Hartley, dean of the University of Baltimore’s College of Public Affairs, said the council president race has been overshadowed, as it often is, by the mayoral race this cycle. But with the incumbent Mosby at risk of losing his seat and the chairmanship of the city’s spending board on the line, it’s far from a sleeper, he said.

“Usually in a race like that, you’re not going to attract a serious challenge if the incumbent is well-liked,” Hartley said.

Hartley said he doubts the final margin will be as wide as polls have indicated, but if it is, the winner could emerge with a “super mandate.”

“That could be a very interesting race,” he said.

Baltimore Sun reporter Hannah Gaskill contributed to this article.