Mosby manhandles male challengers in State’s Attorney debate
By: Hassan Giordano
It was being billed as the Battle of the Titans, as three of Baltimore’s legal giants were vying for the hearts and minds of the voters of Charm City. At both challengers for the position of State’s Attorney, Ivan Bates and Thiru Vignarajah, came into the debate touting their legal knowledge, experience, and superior court skills; it wound up looking more like the champion of the courts during yesterday’s debate was the incumbent, Marilyn Mosby.
Watch the Debate: https://www.facebook.com/baltimoresun/videos/10156469044619712/
Having to fight off attacks from her left and her right, literally as both men were staged on each side of her; Mosby made her case against two giants who appeared like Pallas (Titan god of warcraft) and Perses (Titan of Destruction). However, while they made the case that the first-term incumbent was more like Hysminai (the female spirit combative feistiness and fighting), Mosby appeared more like Athena the Goddess (the goddess of wisdom, reason and strategic battle) when it was all said and done.
After months of both candidates complaining about Mosby refusing to debate them, something she did to the incumbent state’s attorney Gregg Bernstein four years ago; Mrs. Mosby finally agreed on three debates – or at least it appeared. It was first reported by the Baltimore Sun last month that the three candidates would face-off against one another on June 7th, which was yesterday’s debate on WJZ-TV which was hosted by UB and combined with the Sun; as well as two radio debates on WOLB on June 13th and WYPR at a later date.
However, it appears that the Larry Young Morning Show debate on WOLB next week, a day before the start of Early Voting, will be the last chance we get to see these candidates “Square Off”, as it appears as if WYPR could not schedule the three busy candidates. And while next week’s opportunity presents the challengers with another crack at the incumbent, radio is a far cry from a television debate, so they really had to step up their game yesterday in order to try and win over voters 20-days ahead of Election Day.
It appeared that Mosby’s perceived toughest opponent, Mr. Bates, was “staying on script”, which had him stumbling through his opening and closing remarks, as well as some of the answers to questions that he has been known to speak to eloquently in the past. At one point, he deviated from the script and jumbled his words to such a degree that audience members looked at one another as to wonder what was meant from what he just said.
“When I sit down and look at our city, it’s clear that we just don’t…we don’t care, but we do,” Bates said in his closing statement, which had people scratching their head.
But the bright lights of the big stage can throw any person off their game, especially if it’s their first time being there. And for the experienced attorney Bates it was his first televised debate and it clearly showed; while Mosby showed her poise, even during her challengers’ attacks, as this wasn’t her first rodeo.
“I have to set the record straight,” Mosby said frequently throughout the debate, in rebuttal to various attacks on her record as state’s attorney over the past three years. And in almost every instance, neither opponent chose to rebut her “correction” of their attacks.
“My opponent [Mr. Bates] likes to talk about how he never lost a trial, when in fact the last criminal case he had as a prosecutor he lost to me,” said Mosby, which seemed to be the turning point of the debate that shifted the momentum to Mrs. Mosby.
“Both of my opponents like to talk about my lack of trial experience, yet I have more prosecutorial experience than both of them and trial experience doesn’t equate to being a state’s attorney,” Mosby continued. “I’m the only one who has been the state’s attorney, whose had to manage hundreds of prosecutors and a $44-million budget” in a city that is home of witness intimidation, birthing the whole ‘Stop Snitching’ mantra, having to work with four different police commissioners and following the riots that erupted after the death of Freddy Gray.
Mosby opened up with an attack on her opponents with a line that she repeated to Mr. Bates later in the debate after he spoke of being the only attorney on the stage who actually knows Baltimore and what and how the people think and feel. “I live in the heart of West Baltimore, I didn’t just move back into Baltimore for an election,” Mosby stated, referencing both of her opponents and the court cases that opened this campaign season that tried disqualifying both candidates for not living in the city in the 2-year period of time prescribed by law.
And while a Judge threw out both cases, it was put on the record that both Mr. Bates and Mr. Vignarajah had recently moved into the City of Baltimore, and were not longtime residents. Both did have ties to Baltimore, and both used to live in the city years ago; but both had moved to neighboring counties for personal reasons, whereas Mrs. Mosby bought a house in West Baltimore’s Reservoir Hill neighborhood with her husband Delegate Nick Mosby over ten years ago.
However, both challengers had their moments throughout the debate, like Thiru’s statement that Mrs. Mosby has a trend to take credit for everything good that happens, but takes no responsibility for the bad things that occur under her watch. “She likes to blame everyone else, from the judges, to the people, to juvenile services…but take credit for everything, much like the rooster taking credit for the sun rising,” stated Mr. Vignarajah.
He later followed that up by stating that his opponents both stop pointing fingers and take accountability for what’s happening across the city, something he says he will do as the city’s next state prosecutor. He differed from both candidates in relation to his stance on opposing a cash bail system, which he says is both profitable and predatory; and blamed Mosby for acting as if she doesn’t seek cash bail, by simply deferring to the pre-trial services people when they seek cash bail. “Technically she’s not seeking it herself, but she’s allowing for it by deferring to the state’s pre-trial folks who request the bails and she does nothing to stop it. We can end that system tomorrow by having a State’s Attorney like myself who will not ask for it or defer to anyone on the issue, but simply not allow this predatory system to exist, as the United States is only one of two countries who even allow a cash-bail system to exist.”
However Mr. Bates had a different take on it. He believes like most individuals who’ve either been incarcerated at one time or another in their life, or are an attorney who have defended innocent people incarcerated for bogus charges with no means of making bail; that cash-bail is a necessity until we find a balanced approach that no longer punishes the poor.
“We have seen since the new rule went into effect that judges are now remanding people to jail, since they now have no choice but to either hold them without bond or release them without a bail attached,” says Bates.
“And since Mrs. Mosby typically asks that they be held without bond, this has people like someone who may have had an old CDS possession charge from twenty years ago, now get caught with a few gel-caps of heroin because they are an addict, who now loses their job, house and family because they can’t get a bail and have to sit in jail for months (if they’re lucky) awaiting trial, only for the current administration to finally drop all charges because the arrest was bad or the police or witnesses don’t show,” Bates explains. “What sense does that make? It doesn’t do anyone any good, nor does it bring justice to the defendant or the community.”
“We have a system of violence that leads to a culture of silence,” Bates said, referring to the unprecedented amount of homicides and violent crimes we’ve seen over the past four years. “My question to you is this: Do you feel safer today than you did four years ago? If the answer is yes, than vote for Mrs. Mosby, but I suspect your answer is NO – and so I would ask you for your vote in order for us to change this culture of violence around immediately.”