Mahoney for Castles
But late in the campaign, Mahoney showed up with his old-time appeal and his always present slogan: Your Home is Your Castle -- Protect It. Sickles had backed the watered-down Mathias Bill in the House and his stand was well-known on the open occupancy question. He soon was saying that he wanted the strongest possible bill the Congress could pass. Finan was forced to take a stand now. He straddled the fence for a long while and finally said he approved of the Mathias Bill, but he said it very quietly.
The open-housing issue got Mahoney the attention he wanted. By the time of the election, Finan and Sickles had battered each other so badly that Mahoney emerged from the dust as the winner. The reason so many people were surprised was that no one wanted to admit Mahoney had a chance. But he did, and he did from the beginning. Open-housing was merely the clincher. Many Baltimore workers in the huge plants of Dundalk and Sparrows Point abandoned Finan when Mahoney forced him to take a stand.
Baltimore Decides
In Baltimore city itself, Mahoney only beat Sickles by 2000 votes, but in blue-collar Baltimore County Mahoney took 40,000 to Sickles 21,000, and it was all over.
Sickles had a personality obstacle to overcome. Despite his youth and appearance, he was really a wishy-washy pearance, Tydings had reportedly hedged on backing him because of this. His campaign tried to portray him as active and enthusiastic. It helped, but it could have helped more in Prince Georges--his home county--which he lost to Finan by less than 1000 votes.
Mahoney spent an incredibly low $.58 per vote. He hardly ever appeared on television and hardly ever campaigned in the Washington suburbs. But he won without the exposure Finan and Mahoney got. He received all the notoriety he needed from open-housing, then sat back and let the others tear themselves apart.
When the votes began to roll in on election night and it appeared Mahoney would win by a landslide, someone at Sickles campaign headquarters started circulating a Democrats for Spiro T. Agnew (the Republican candidate) petition. After the results of the primary had been verified, the movement grew, and Democrats began to desert the party in force. Two of Baltimore's most powerful union leaders declared their support of Pressman the Independent. (The union leaders had contributed heavily to the Sickles primary campaign fund while the rank-and-file membership voted overwhelmingly for Mahoney and will probably do so again in November.)
Sickles said in his concession speech that he could not as a Democrat support Agnew or Pressman, but he withheld endorsement of Mahoney -- at least temporarily.
Agnew's Chances Good
Mahoney's chances against Agnew are not especially good. Agnew -- the top elected official in Baltimore County -- is well-liked in this pivotal district. He has declared that he supports the Mathias open-housing bill, and the election in November could prove much more about the occupancy issue than the Democratic primary.
Still, Agnew is bucking a 3-1 Democratic registration majority, and he could get his most troublesome opposition from foes of Mahoney. Pressman -- a liberal and Baltimore's fiscal watchdog -- could take several thousand Agnew votes in the city. And if a Sickles write-in campaign gets underway (there is a lot of talk about it), Sickles could easily push enough votes away from Agnew put Mahoney in the governor's chance.
The man who will carry the barer of the Democratic Party -- or party of it anyway -- is not a racist in the sense of Jim Johnson of Arkansas or Lester Maddox of Georgia -- both primary victors this year. He has been around Maryland politics a long time and this year everything just worked out right for him.