Even with a Jewish candidate on the ballot, there’s little talk of Israel and Gaza in a race for mayor of a city just 30 miles from the U.S. Capitol.
Instead, the candidates are debating issues like housing, economic development, public safety, budgets and parking—the stuff that usually dominates local government races.
The election between Jared Littmann, a Jewish Democrat who is a lawyer and owner of a hardware store, and Bobby O’Shea, a Republican who is a business consultant, in Maryland’s capital city of Annapolis stands in contrast with New York City, where the anti-Israel views of the Democratic nominee, state representative Zohran Mamdani give former New York governor Andrew Cuomo a line of attack as he courts votes in the largest Jewish community outside of Israel.
The two major party candidates in Annapolis are running to succeed term-limited Democrat Gavin Buckley. Before Buckley, a Republican, Mike Pantelides led the city. Pantelides defeated O’Shea in the GOP primary in 2013.
Annapolis is in Anne Arundel County, which has almost 44,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, with around 60,000 independents.
The talk isn’t about the “river and the sea” but rather the bay. Specifically, the Chesapeake Bay, which is known to overflow its boundaries and flood the downtown business district.
“I’ve been campaigning on issues that are directly impacting residents’ needs,” Littmann, a lawyer and environmental engineer who owns a local hardware store with his wife, told JNS.
“I’ve been listening to what residents say is important to them, and they don’t bring that up as an issue,” he said. “They bring up very bread-and-butter kitchen table-type issues of our city’s flooding, the concern about taxes. They’re concerned about crime. They’re concerned about services.”
O’Shea, a consultant to defense and medical companies, said he, too, is focusing on the basics.
“We’ve had a pretty good race,” he told JNS. “We’ve literally stayed pretty darn focused on Annapolis. Annapolis is not an ‘R.’ Annapolis is not a ‘D.’ Annapolis should be an ‘A’ for Annapolis, because we want to make it so that everybody in all the wards feels as though they’re part of the community.”
In fact, O’Shea told JNS that he received unsolicited advice to attack Littmann about Israel, but said it was irrelevant to the race.
“Do you know why I’m not?” he said. “Because we’re talking about the city of Annapolis. To me, this is not part of the race. I am not going to stoop to that level. I am talking about the issues of Annapolis.”
“Every single forum we’ve done has been focused on Annapolis,” he said.
‘On everyone’s mind right now’
Littmann previously served on the Annapolis City Council. He grew up in New Jersey in a Jewish household and received a bar mitzvah. His son and daughter also had b’nai mitzvot.
Not only don’t the residents he meets ask about Israel, but he declined to talk about his position on the Middle East when JNS asked.
“I have very strong feelings about it,” he said. “But none of those feelings have a relevance to what I can do for you as mayor.”
Littmann acknowledged that being Jewish is “part of my identity, certainly,” and the “fact I’m Jewish also exposes me to additional potential violence.”
“I do feel like Annapolis is a particularly open, inclusive society, and so I do feel safe here,” he told JNS. “I don’t feel overly threatened, but you know. It’s on everyone’s mind right now.”
He said that he learned so much from running the store, serving on the board of the industry cooperative, budgeting, managing people and serving the council, combined with his background in environmental law and environmental engineering.
He started thinking, “If I was mayor, I would do this differently and I would do that differently,” he said. “I would communicate with the public differently. I would budget differently. We could be more efficient in how we provide services.”
And when the time was right, he ran, he said.
O’Shea, who grew up in Western New York state, is divorced. He has one son. He lost the Republican primary in 2013 to Mike Pantelides, who served one term as mayor before losing his bid for reelection to Buckley.
He is calling for change after years of Democratic rule. “They’ve been there for eight years,” he said. “I need people to get out and say, ‘I am sick and tired of this.’”
For example, he said that the city should spend money to fix up low-rent apartments that are showing their age. Landlords often repaint apartments and replace worn carpets in between tenants. The city doesn’t, he said.
“Affordable housing is not affordable housing if it’s not livable,” he said. “If we fixed those apartments, we could have nice places to live.”
And the flooding at City Dock remains a problem, he said.
“We’ve been talking about this for years,” O’Shea said. “We’re in Bill Murray’s ‘Groundhog Day,’ referring to the movie where the hero wakes up every morning and it’s always Feb. 2.
His one foray into national politics came when he suggested that a Republican mayor in an otherwise Democratic city in a Democratic county in a Democratic state might be able to get through to the White House.
“I think I could have a discussion and divert some money back here,” he said.
The race shows that local concerns matter the most even in an era of growing Jew-hatred and anti-Israel feelings, said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, a Jewish leader from Annapolis and Democratic donor who is supporting Littmann.
“Antisemitism is everywhere, including Annapolis, but the kitchen table issues are so acute and especially so in Annapolis, because you have such a large number of federal employees or federal contractors who live here,” she told JNS.
“The pressing issues that are every-day-in-your-face are so large that in a mayor’s race, what happens thousands of miles away is just not top of mind to people who can’t afford to pay their bills,” she said.
