BALTIMORE — The last time Bob Wallace ran for mayor, in 2020, Baltimore faced twin crises of a raging pandemic and a fiscal cliff.

Undaunted by the city’s solid-blue voting patterns, Wallace, until then a lifelong Republican, ran as an independent. Wallace, 67, is running this time as a Democrat. And with less than a month until the May 14 primary, he hopes voters will give him a chance to usher in a “new way and a new day.”

The Cherry Hill-born businessman announced his campaign in October, pledging if elected to take a tough-on-crime approach to reducing quality of life crimes, and to overhaul the school system, starting with firing Superintendent Sonja Santelises. A recent poll for The Baltimore Sun, University of Baltimore, and FOX45 showed Wallace and prosecutor Thiru Vignarajah trailing behind Mayor Brandon Scott and former mayor Sheila Dixon. An equal number of respondents believe the city is moving in the right direction versus the wrong one, which correlated with their support for Dixon or Scott.

Despite his long odds, Wallace is hoping to appeal to voters unhappy with declining but persistent gun violence under Scott’s tenure and those unconvinced Dixon has redeemed herself since an embezzlement conviction forced her from office. He also cited concerns about city schools’ academic performance as a factor for jumping into the race.

“I’ve been disappointed in the performance of the leadership, the political leadership of the city,” Wallace said in a March interview at his Hampden campaign headquarters. “If you talk to anyone in the city … everyone recognizes that we’re going in the wrong direction as a city.”

He hopes his ideas will quash skepticism from voters who may eye his changing voter affiliation with suspicion: “If you had cancer, and I had a cure for cancer, would you care what party I’m from? If I have a solution that will make your life easier, that will increase your quality of life, do you care?”

Those ideas include a pledge to dismantle within his first 90 days the city’s flagship violence intervention Safe Streets program, and to reorient the city into “villages” with central hubs that would offer residents community-specific services. As “the education mayor,” he would also reestablish a “code of conduct” within city schools to promote good behavior, and order police to shut down “open-air drug markets” and enforce anti-loitering laws.

“Young men standing around the corners are preventing the elderly, other people, from going to the stores and from living their lives,” Wallace said. “I believe that the law-abiding people of this city have just as much rights as the perpetrators of crimes.”

He pointed toward Safe Streets’ “tarnished” reputation after FBI agents raided a Belair-Edison site in October as proof the city needs to take a different approach. Prosecutors later dropped an illegal ammunition charge against a Safe Streets worker in January.

“If I’m going to apply a system of interceding [in street-level disputes], I better damn well make sure it’s accountable,” he said. “I can’t just continue to throw money at it and not hold people accountable.”

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