Thiru Vignarajah drops out of Baltimore mayoral race, endorses Sheila Dixon
BALTIMORE — With less than 24 hours remaining before early voting begins, Baltimore mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah withdrew his candidacy Wednesday and endorsed rival Sheila Dixon, potentially shifting votes on the eve of the election.
His late exit from the Democratic race is the first time Vignarajah, a repeat candidate for both mayor and state’s attorney, has ended a campaign before Election Day. His name remains on the ballot for the May 14 primary, as the deadline to formally withdraw from the race was in February.
Vignarajah, along with Dixon and businessman Bob Wallace, has been vying to oust first-term Democratic Mayor Brandon Scott. A recent poll showed Scott and Dixon locked in a tight race with Vignarajah trailing. The poll, conducted for The Baltimore Sun, University of Baltimore and FOX45, showed Scott with support from 38% of likely primary voters, while Dixon had 35% — a difference within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points. Ten percent of voters in the early April poll said they would support Vignarajah.
Polling shows Vignarajah’s withdrawal from the race stands to boost several other candidates, but in particular Dixon. The Sun’s poll showed Dixon was the preferred second choice among voters who favored Vignarajah. Forty-eight percent said Dixon was their backup candidate. About 19% of Vignarajah supporters, however, named Scott as their second choice.
Steve Raabe, president of OpinionWorks, the Annapolis-based firm that conducted the Sun poll, said arguably half of Vignarajah’s voters could potentially jump to Dixon.
“That’s not much,” he said. “But in a close race, that’s potentially key. Some would go to Scott, and a handful would go to Wallace.”
“It’s not as if Vignarajah getting out of the race gives it to Dixon,” Raabe added, “but it certainly tightens the race.”
The former prosecutor’s withdrawal comes too late for some city voters, however, who have cast mail-in ballots. Voters who requested such ballots began receiving them nearly four weeks ago. Of the more than 50,000 ballots mailed to voters, more than 17,200 had been returned as of Tuesday night, the vast majority from Democrats, according to the Maryland State Board of Elections.
Vignarajah was a late addition to the field, entering the race in January. He said at the time that he wanted to assess the financial position of his fellow candidates before making his decision to run.
Vignarajah has been a consistent presence on the ballots of city voters since 2018. That year, he mounted his first campaign for Baltimore state’s attorney, losing the Democratic nomination to Marilyn Mosby. He was defeated in a second bid for the nomination for state’s attorney in 2022, this time by now-State’s Attorney Ivan Bates. Vignarajah also lost a 2020 primary bid for mayor, coming in fourth behind Scott and Dixon.
As he has during previous races, Vignarajah raised significant money during his 2024 effort, this time with the help of public campaign financing. As of last week, he had received more than $600,000 in public matching funds, earned by raising small-dollar donations from hundreds of city residents.
Vignarajah’s recent spending belied a premature exit from the race. He spent $180,000 on television ads between April 16 and April 18, according to his most recent campaign finance report. Federal Communications Commission records show he bought time Tuesday to run television ads for the next week.
The city’s public financing law, which is being used for the first time this year, requires candidates receiving public funds to return all unspent money in their campaign accounts.
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