BALTIMORE — Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is running for reelection, she announced in a video posted to her overhauled campaign website, setting up a rematch of the 2018 Democratic primary under the unprecedented backdrop of her federal indictment.
With the filing deadline for the primary set for Friday, the two-term Democrat did not yet appear as a candidate on the Maryland Board of Elections website as of Tuesday morning.
Mosby has been campaigning behind the scenes for weeks, with videos emerging online last week appearing to depict a campaign kick-off event in front of her Reservoir Hill home in March. That event features prominently in Mosby’s new campaign video.
Speaking to a crowd of a supporters, she jabbed the media for highlighting that her campaign website and social media pages had been taken offline in February. About a month later, while Mosby remained coy about her plans to run, the page returned with a link for donations and a bold-type statement telling visitors to “stay tuned.”
By Tuesday, the website featured a new look and a new URL, shesbuiltforthis.com, which draws from comments she made with a defiant tone at a news conference the day after she was federally indicted on perjury and false statement charges: “I’m built for this,” she told reporters outside the State’s Attorney’s Office on Jan. 14. The new domain name was purchased in February, online records show.
Indeed, her run for reelection could be defined by her criminal case. Federal prosecutors accused her of committing perjury when she applied for early withdrawals from her city retirement savings under the guise of having suffered financially from the coronavirus pandemic, and of making false statements on loan applications to buy a pair of properties in Florida.
Mosby pleaded not guilty, and maintains her innocence. Much of her defense to date has targeted federal prosecutors, claiming the indictment is a result of animosity from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors fired back by claiming Mosby “invented a tale of victimhood” to distract from her charges.
Originally scheduled for May 2, a federal judge postponed Mosby’s trial last week after Mosby walked back her demands to be tried within 70 days so as not to interfere with her bid for reelection. She’s now slated to stand trial Sept. 19, leaving registered Democrats in Baltimore to choose a state’s attorney candidate to advance to the November general election without knowing the outcome of Mosby’s case.
Mosby faces familiar challengers in defense attorney Ivan Bates and career prosecutor Thiru Vignarajah. They ran against her in the 2018 Democratic primary. Mosby won comfortably a second term with almost 50% of the vote, while Bates and Vignarajah split the remaining ballots that year.
Seeking her third four-year term as Baltimore’s elected prosecutor, Mosby appears to be leveraging a narrative that her federal indictment is proof she’s being persecuted for her policies as state’s attorney — policies like ending arrests for certain low-level offenses that disproportionately impact Baltimore’s Black communities. The video appears to debut a campaign slogan, “We’re built for this 2022.”
In the video, Mosby touts her efforts to reform the city’s criminal justice system to ensure “one standard of justice,” while saying she holds violent repeat offenders accountable. The footage features a mock-up Baltimore Sun front page with headlines that mention Mosby or highlight a conviction secured by her office. She professes her love for Baltimore over the song “Jesus Walks” by Kanye West.
“I’m running for reelection as state’s attorney because I love Baltimore and I love our people. We take whatever is thrown our way and we keep fighting, we keep pushing,” Mosby says in the video. “Baltimore, we’ve come a long way together, and the best is yet to come. Why? Because we’re built for this.”
———
