The Queen was back, even if it was for a less than regal event.

Sitting on a comfy throne, in this case a swiveling black leather office chair, former Mayor Sheila Dixon was roasted Thursday night at the Comedy Factory at Power Plant Live! in a charity event.

It’s been nearly four years since Maryland state prosecutors raided her Westside house while she was out for her morning workout, the beginning of a raft of legal woes for the city’s first elected African American woman mayor.

She ultimately resigned office in February 2010 as part of a plea deal following her conviction in Baltimore City Circuit Court in December 2009 for stealing gift cards that totaled about $500 donated to the city to distribute to the poor.

Since then, she has served some of her 500 hours of court-mandated community service and worked as a consultant for the Maryland Minority Contractors Association.

Dressed in a saucy orange blouse, black jeans and fancy heels for the roast, Dixon looked rested and ready as she took the stage and boldly signaled for the evening to start.

“The media is here, so what?” Dixon said as the night ramped up, addressing a gaggle of the Fourth Estate, most of whom covered her corruption trial. “Talk to the hand.”

Peter Schmuck, a sportswriter for The Baltimore Sun and master of ceremonies for the event, told Dixon she was about to face the “worst 90 minutes of community service of your life.”

First up was former 12th District City Council candidate Devon Brown, who at 21 and a month away from graduating with a film degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art prides himself as an upstart on the city’s political landscape.

“I know you are a spiritual person,” Brown told Dixon. “And I want to quote scripture. ‘God blesses those who help themselves,’ and you helped yourself.”

The crowd of 100 whooped and hollered. Dixon herself threw her head back and laughed, then shook her finger at the neophyte.

As more slings, arrows and praise flew her way through the night by local comedians, radio personalities and comedic impersonators, Dixon continued to show grace under pressure, laughing and taking notes on a legal pad.

“You are the only woman in America with a court-ordered e-Bay site,” said Kirk McEwan, a local radio personality. “Six hundred dollars in gift cards? Is that what you took?  If you were a white man, you would still be the mayor.”

The crowd went wild.

Dixon would get the last word of the night in what turned out to be a stinging rebuttal as she said of the night’s critical comedians, “I hope they have other jobs.”

“After it was announced that I was going to do this,” Dixon said, “I had 100 people call me up and say ‘Are you crazy?’ What the hell? Who cares?”

She also had an offer for local comedian Maria Sanchez, who came on stage with a rugged look, wearing a white t-shirt and baggy sweatpants with “CCBC” on the left leg. Sanchez told Dixon, “You are a good lady — with bad habits.”

Dixon blasted back in her rebuttal: “Maria, I am a gift from God. And, honey, I’m going to take you to my hairdresser — with a gift card!”

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I found this video while trying to confirm the details of a story I wrote the other day about Baltimore developer Pat Turner. Turner turned out to be the highest-profile witness called by the prosecution in the trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon. Turner, the state said, gave Dixon gift cards meant for the needy, and Dixon used them for her own personal uses. Earlier this week, the prosecution described a close relationship between the mayor and Turner’s wife, Jeanine, who first met at a real estate conference in Las Vegas. Then on Thursday, during closing arguments, the prosecution described Turner as a “matter-of-fact man” who tells the truth and keeps meticulous financial records. As it turns out, Turner’s photographer wife Jeanine, is also fairly matter-of-fact.

The above video was posted as a teaser to a photography exhibit Jeanine had at SubBasement Gallery in Baltimore. Taking us through her artwork, she starts by saying flatly,

“Hi, I’m Jeanine Turner, and I’m an artist”

She goes on to describe how she became an artist, starting with a little pocket digital camera that her husband bought her, and upgrading to better and better cameras, which she used to photograph Silo Point, her husband’s luxe condo project in Locust Point:

About six years ago, my husband bought me a camera. A little digital camera, something you can stick in your  purse. And I loved it. I took pictures of everything, but mostly my drunk girlfriends. And anyway, so from that, he, the next year for Christmas he brought me another camera, and then the next year he bought me then another camera, and another one and another one, I mean, he just every year I got a better camera, and I was very excited. So then he bought this amazing building. It is a grain silo, and it is in Baltimore, and I started taking pictures of it.

The rest of it is just as good. As we await the jury’s verdict, I encourage you to enjoy this.

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The Maryland Association of Counties summer conference is a little bit subdued, as I thought it might be. However, the exhibit halls are still full and the conference rooms appear well-attended.

One of the interesting things I always check out is what the exhibitors are giving out to visitors. Garrett County, for instance, is handing out little jugs of maple syrup. Another reporter showed me one of their pickups: a green plastic picture frame from the Department of Business and Economic Development. It was displaying a head shot of Gov. Martin O’Malley.

Baltimore City had nothing but brochures when I stopped by, a move that Mayor Sheila Dixon said was helping the city keep its conference costs lean. Her office has four people here this year, down from 10 last year, she said.

Stay tuned for more on how visitors to the summer political tradition are responding to economic pressure.

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By now many of you are surely circulating NCAA basketball tournament brackets around your offices, collecting money for betting pools, reading online bracketology articles and otherwise gearing up for March Madness and all that comes with it. And most college hoops fans out there know that 2009 is a banner year for the Big East, with three out of four of the No. 1 seeds coming from the conference. Undoubtedly, readers in the region remember when legendary shooting guard Juan Dixon led the Terps to the championship in 2002.

What you may not know is that this reporter’s favorite team, the No. 1-seeded Pittsburgh Panthers, start Juan’s little brother, Jermaine Dixon, at point guard. Jermaine and Juan are nephews of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon. I was at the Pitt-Georgetown game in Washington back in January, and there was a rumor — perhaps apocryphal — that after Jermaine’s mediocre, 1-for-7, 2-point performance, Juan came down from the stands and gave his brother a 45-minute shooting clinic that improved his game noticeably for the rest of the season. He has averaged 10.5 points per game since then.

Anyway, for weeks now, I’ve been asking Sheila Dixon post-press conference questions about Jermaine, wondering if she’s been watching his performance on the team that is sure to win this year (at least according to my brackets, anyway…Pitt Is It!!). The last time we talked, Read the rest of this entry »

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Three days after being indicted by a grand jury for 12 crimes, including perjury and theft, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon appeared at a regular City Council luncheon on Monday to go over that evening’s council agenda.

Just a few minutes after Dixon appeared late in the council’s lunch chamber, where council reps and agency heads were discussing a land-banking plan to fight the city’s blight problem, two photographers and at least three TV news teams were asked to leave and were escorted out of the room by the mayor’s Chief of Staff Demaune A. Millard and Communications Director Ian Brennan. Among them was Rich Dennison, a Daily Record staff photographer.

Ironically, all this was going on while Housing Commissioner Paul Graziano stood before the group assuring them that the proposed land bank project would be run in an “open, transparent” way.

I was among four newspaper reporters permitted to stay in the room and watch the proceedings, along with reporters from The Sun, the Associated Press and the Examiner, as well as a WBAL-TV reporter.

We watched as the photographers were first barred from the doorway, then had the door to the room shut on them and finally, I heard by phone from Rich that he had been ushered away from the hallway of the City Hall chamber completely.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday’s news that an Iraqi journalist took off both of his shoes and hurled them at President Bush after a press conference in Baghdad falls upon Baltimore ears with striking familiarity – around here, we know that shoes are a great prop for making a political statement.

Think back to 1991, for example, when now-Mayor, but then newly-elected city councilwoman Sheila Dixon waved a shoe at her white council colleagues and declared, “You’ve been running things for the past 20 years. Now the shoe is on the other foot.” Then, last year, after a State Prosecutor’s office investigation detailed shopping trips and expensive footwear that the Mayor allegedly accepted from a prominent and well-connected real estate developer, everyone in town was wondering if the “other foot” shoe was a $600 Jimmy Choo sandal.

Now in Iraq, shoe-ing someone is a sign of intense disrespect, so it’s a little different, but I dare say this is the best political incident related to feet since 1960, when a furious Russian premier Nikita Kruschev told Western delegates to the U.N. General Assembly, “We will crush you,” and pounded the podium.

In his hand? You guessed it. His own shoe.

ROBBIE WHELAN, Business Writer

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In June, Sun columnist Laura Vozella took aim at Mayor Sheila Dixon for a little shopping spree she took with her former flame, developer Ronald Lipscomb.

As the details of their affair emerged, Vozella chronicled their high-end shopping habits through documents obtained by the newspaper:

In Chicago four years ago, in the space of one day and three Michigan Avenue blocks, Dixon and Lipscomb dropped more than $7,000 at Armani, Saks Fifth Avenue, Coach and Niketown.

Dixon was the bigger spender, whipping out her own AmEx for $570 Jimmy Choo sandals from Saks. She also spent $600 at Coach and $4,410 at Giorgio Armani. Along with the Saks beauty aids, Lipscomb spent $150 at Coach, $636 at Armani and $237 at Niketown.

Yesterday, the mayor struck back. At a news conference announcing events planned for the upcoming Baltimore’s Fashion Week, Dixon told the crowd she was disappointed Vozella wasn’t present.

“What a shame,” she said. “We could have taught her a thing or two about fashion. This is the sarcastic side of Mayor Sheila Dixon.”

No word yet from Vozella on the mayor’s comments.

The mayor also got a little snippy when Jeff Hagar from WMAR-TV Channel 2 News asked if she saw any irony in her involvement with the fashion event in light of this summer’s revelations about her love for steeply-priced stilettos.

“I don’t even connect the two,” she said. “Now, you as the media, you have to do that because this is what you want to do. You want to try to destroy people’s characters…I look good, I wear great shoes and I want these young people to know that they look good as well.”

DANIELLE ULMAN, Business Writer

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