Campaign Beat
Jody Landers Works Blue
SCENE: A meeting with mayoral candidate Jody Landers, June 13, at a home in Fells Point.
There are seven or eight interns gathered around the dining room table (all white young college students), and one of them pitches the idea of a “green suit” he’d like to wear to drum up press.
Landers laughs. He doesn’t say no.
Mark (the guy whose house we were in) picks it up: “That works when we have the Blue Man Theme,” he says. “It’s not to diminish your ideas. . . But it’s all about name recognition right now.”
Discussion turns to Landers’ property tax plan, which is detailed, and Rawlings-Blake’s claim that he has no plan. The suit is somehow pitched as a way to cut through the indifference, the lack of name recognition, lack of face recognition. The guy in the green-or-blue suit will be a media sensation.
“This will be our version of planking,” Mark says.
Afterwards, when I ask Landers about the green/blue-suit thing, he says, “I love people to be creative. These kids are donating their time. I want them to have fun while they’re learning something.”
You didn’t say no, I say.
“I tend not to be a knee-jerk person,” Landers says. “I’d rather give some things some thought.”
SCENE: West Pratt Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, today.
Jody Landers (left), his campaign treasurer Gwen Wynn (center), and Blue Man (blue; @BlueManBmore on Twitter); click for larger image. Photograph by Frank Klein.
