BACK ON HIS OWN TERMS

Former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke has enjoyed being out of the
public spotlight, but he's not above returning to make a political point.

After six years spent largely outside the public spotlight, former
Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke was suddenly back - in one of the
more remarkable images that followers of local politics have seen in
recent years.

There, in a photograph on the front page of The Sun on Oct. 21, was
Schmoke and his longtime nemesis and predecessor as mayor, William
Donald Schaefer, flanking the man who finally got them on the same
side of a political issue: Montgomery County Executive Douglas M.
Duncan, who was announcing his candidacy for governor with their support.

Schmoke's endorsement immediately triggered speculation: Was the
former mayor, who took office with such promise but left it 12 years
later to much disappointment, back in the game? Was he himself going
to run for office, maybe as Duncan's running mate?

Schmoke is quick to head off questions about a political comeback
with an emphatic "No."

No, he's not interested in being lieutenant governor.

No, he doesn't have his sights on the U.S. Senate.

No, he's not trying to gauge his following among local voters.

In fact, Schmoke wanted "no" understood before he would even consent
to an interview.

"I certainly wasn't announcing my return to elective office," he
said, "so the subsequent [speculation] I saw suggesting I might be a
lieutenant governor candidate has no basis in fact. I can put a nail
to that one."

That his support of Duncan would cause such a buzz is testament to
the lingering curiosity about Schmoke, even now that he's reached the
settled age of 56. He seemed, from his high school days on, destined
for high public office, and his election as mayor in 1987 was
considered just the first step.

But instead, he left office in 1999 with the city's murder rate
skyrocketing - more than 300 people were killed in Baltimore every
year in the 1990s - the schools that he vowed to improve in disarray
and the sense by many that he never realized his political potential.
Although he remained personally popular with voters, he retreated
from public life, and three years ago became Howard University's law
school dean.

"He was mayor during a very difficult time, and I think he learned as
he went along," said Michael Cryor, a Baltimore political consultant
and veteran of Schmoke's campaigns. "I didn't get a sense he enjoyed
it. I got a sense he felt a responsibility to it.

"He was a real statesman and a great professor. But just the real
world of politics, I just got the sense at times that it was not his
natural world, but a world he was willing to operate in on behalf of
his community."

Today, he seems more at home in his current job. His office on the
Washington campus is filled with his favorite artwork, snapshots
taken with U.S. presidents, a bobblehead doll of Supreme Court
Justice John Paul Stevens and a photo of his Rhodes scholar class.

"I'm on the second row in the photo, and there's [former Fannie Mae
CEO] Frank Raines standing behind me," said Schmoke with a soft
smile. His attire is Harvard Review meets Gentlemen's Quarterly: gray
designer slacks, cool-blue dress shirt and magenta suspenders.

The one time during the interview that Schmoke's soothing voice
ventured above nightly news level was when he was asked what he
missed most about being mayor.

"I miss the car and the driver," he said. Then he reared back,
tightened his eyes and roared with laughter at his own punch line.

"Seriously," he said, back in his more businesslike mode, "I do miss
the opportunity to make improvements in people's lives."

He still believes he can do that, without being in office himself.

"I'm interested in [Duncan] as a candidate because I know him as an
elected official, as a friend," said Schmoke. "I know there is real
substance and integrity about the guy, and I think he would make a
great governor."

He says his endorsement shouldn't be viewed as a criticism of Mayor
Martin O'Malley, who is also running for governor, and who, as a city
councilman, was among those frequently critical of Schmoke during his
tenure as mayor.

Schmoke aims to make Duncan more visible in Baltimore's black
communities, and to that end he has canvassed black barber shops and
beauty salons with Duncan in tow. He plans to become more involved
with Duncan's campaign in the spring.

Beyond that, he says, "I have not talked about my being lieutenant
governor with Duncan, other than to let his senior staff people know
that I am not interested and that they shouldn't even hold that out
as a possibility."

Time in office Six years has given Schmoke plenty of time to reflect
on his political career and move on, and he has done both. He talks
candidly about his tenure as mayor, about the joy that came with the
opportunity to better the city, but also about things he wished he
had done differently.

Among those regrets is the issue that brought him nationwide fame:
his controversial stance on drug decriminalization. He argued against
setups and stings to nab drug criminals and penalties that, in his
mind, didn't curb the escalating drug problem.

Rather, he advocated a public health approach to the problem, a
stance that garnered him national attention. But it came at a time
when a crack-cocaine epidemic - and the violence associated with it -
was spreading across the country, and popular opinion favored tougher measures.

"Kurt proposed the decriminalization of drugs and was pilloried. He
wanted to start a national discussion, and he got national
condemnation," said Herbert Smith, a political science professor at
McDaniel College.

Schmoke believes he was right in tackling the issue publicly but
regrets that he didn't have an effective and immediate course of action.

"I remember now that [former New York Governor] Mario Cuomo had a
great quote in his diaries," Schmoke says. "He said, 'Politicians
have to distinguish between ideas that sound good and good ideas that
are sound.'"

Schmoke's drug-decriminalization stance was largely viewed as
intriguing intellectually but a hard sell in a city where the growing
drug culture seemed to fuel the rampant crime. Some viewed Schmoke as
too cerebral and distant to handle both problems - a perception due,
in part, to the fact that his approach followed the flamboyant,
do-it-now mayoral style of Schaefer (with Clarence H. Du Burns
serving for about a year as mayor in between).

"My critics said that I was too much of a policy wonker," Schmoke
says. "You can't be a mayor without critics, and I had some, but I
never agreed with those who believed I was a policy wonker."

Ripe for success Yet there was no doubting that he had a background
that seemed ripe for success in politics: After graduating from
Baltimore's elite City College high school, where he was both the
quarterback who led the football team to a state championship and the
student-body president, he went on to Yale and won a Rhodes
scholarship to study at Oxford. From there, he would graduate from
Harvard Law School and join one of the city's most establishment law
firms, Piper & Marbury, before going to work at the White House on
President Jimmy Carter's domestic-policy staff.

He returned to Baltimore, however, to get involved in local politics
- - something that he was groomed for even in his youth, when he joined
the Lancers Club, a Baltimore organization that provided mentors for
youths and groomed them for civic leadership.

Schmoke was mentored and introduced to influential officials such as
U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes by the club founder, the late retired
Baltimore Circuit Judge Robert I.H. Hammerman.

Schmoke was elected state's attorney in 1982 and was on his way to
becoming Baltimore's first elected African-American mayor.

With his trademark room-brightening grin and cross-racial appeal,
Schmoke won over an often divided city.

"As we often say, he was every parent's desire," said Cryor, the
political consultant. "A wonderful human being as well as someone
well credentialed."

Everyone figured Schmoke would stick around in Baltimore long enough
to heal all that ailed the city and then run for Senate. Yet many of
the issues plaguing the city didn't get better under his tenure -
particularly the failing schools and the murder rate - and his tenure
as mayor ended Dec. 7, 1999.

"I think that conventional political wisdom was that there were high
expectations with Mayor Schmoke going in," said McDaniel's Smith.
"His tenure as mayor on a whole was disappointing, particularly with
the continued deterioration of public schools and a substantial
increase in crime."

Schmoke, not surprisingly, views his term much differently.

He points to his success, for example, in replacing high-rise and
high-crime public housing with more humanely scaled, mixed-income
homes. Seeing the towers imploded, he said, was one of the highlights
of being mayor.

"It's hard to do anything that fulfilling in a short period of time
in other jobs," Schmoke said.

He accepts that being mayor means "every day you make a decision that
half the people like and half the people dislike.

"Generally, for both me and my family, the good days outweighed the
bad days, and that's why I did it for 12 years," Schmoke said.

But nothing could have braced Schmoke for the toll the job took on
his family: He said that when his daughter, Katherine (now an actress
living in Los Angeles), was in sixth grade, she endured the wrath of
a teacher who questioned whether Schmoke was fulfilling salary
promises made to the teachers union.

But his wife, Patricia, an ophthalmologist, said that even the strain
on the family didn't keep Schmoke from enjoying his work.

"I think Kurt really loved his job, he did very well and he was
always upbeat," she said. "Even though the problems of cities at that
time were difficult, he felt the positive work was worth the personal
sacrifice.

"I run into people who ask, 'Are you going to let Kurt run again,'"
she added. "They think I'm placing heavy pressure on him, but that's
not true. I think he's always going to be civic-minded and a person
who wants to do things for other people, but he knows there are other
ways besides politics."

The couple met on a blind date during a summer break when he was at
Harvard and she was at the University of Florida.

"He had me laughing the whole night on our date," she said. "But he
wasn't intimidating or full of himself. He was just a real,
down-to-earth person."

The former mayor, who grew up in West Baltimore, and his wife live in
Ashburton and enjoy going to restaurants, like the Black Olive in
Fells Point, and traveling abroad. With their children grown - son
Gregory is an independent filmmaker in Albuquerque, N.M. - they've
taken up still-water kayaking.

Life after politics Judging from his high-pitched laugh and the way
he greets students at every turn on Howard's campus, Schmoke's life
after politics is good.

Before taking the Howard post, Schmoke worked for an international
law firm and ultimately set up the campaign that helped the president
of Madagascar, Marc Ravalomanana, get elected. He also taught at the
U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.

The Howard job began before the war college job ended, and for a
while he made the trek back and forth to both duties.

Nowadays, he's only heading to Washington: His commute is
nerve-wracking, except for the last 20 minutes, when he drives
through scenic Rock Creek Park, gazing at flowing streams and deer
scampering in the woods.

That he has landed at the historically black Howard takes him full
circle, in a sense. Schmoke's father graduated from another such
institution, Morehouse College in Atlanta - which produced such
leaders as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Julian Bond - and it
was assumed he would follow suit. But coming up at a time when the
Ivy League was more accessible to African-Americans than previously,
he chose Yale.

Now, he's at Howard and as proud of its historic role as if he'd been
there for decades.

"When I first arrived, my secretary, who's been with me since I was
state's attorney, was about to move some portraits from behind my
desk," said Schmoke, pointing to the portraits that included one of
Charles Hamilton Houston, the legal strategist who laid the
groundwork that led to the landmark school-desegregation case, Brown
v. Board of Education.

"Just then a professor comes in my office, clears his throat and
says, 'Deans come and go, but those portraits remain,'" said Schmoke,
laughing. "So they're still where they were before the deans before
me. It gives me a real sense of history and legacy of the place when
I come in each day."

Since his appointment as dean, Schmoke has implemented a
financial-assistance program for those who cannot pay for a bar-exam
preparation course and teaches a course in American elections law and
policy during congressional election years.

When the school recently won a prestigious mock-trial competition for
the first time, Schmoke got a call of congratulations from comedian Bill Cosby.

Still, he doesn't expect to limit himself to academia. There is the
Duncan campaign to work on and his desire to remain involved in the
public arena.

"I learned a great deal as mayor; certainly I tried to implement a
number of my own ideas," said Schmoke. "I think you try to build on
your life lessons and use them to effect other experiences."