The Smith Family, Seeking Political Influence at City Hall, Gets a Slapback from Voters

Tuesday was a bad night in Baltimore for some corporate interests and purveyors of dark money, chief among them David D. and Alex Smith, the uncle-nephew team that heads the Sinclair Broadcast Group, controls Fox45 News, owns the Baltimore Sun and operates the Atlas Restaurant Group.

Together with other Smith family members and the intertwined Paterakis real estate and bakery clan, the two businessmen sank at least $466,000 in cash to advance the campaign of ex-mayor Sheila Dixon, only to see their anointed choice rejected in the Democratic Party primary.

In a day of remarkably low turnout, Dixon came up 9 percentage points short of Mayor Brandon Scott’s vote count. That’s four times above the margin of her defeat at Scott’s hands in 2020.

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