You Cannot Defend Democracy by Overturning Democracy

Baltimore Term Limits: Why Voters' Decision on Question K Must Be Respected

Originally Published in The Baltimore Sun on 6/30/2026

I grew up in the housing projects of Cherry Hill in Baltimore, and I learned very young that politicians make promises on the way in and excuses on the way out.

I watched my mother navigate a system designed not for her success but for her compliance. I watched neighbors line up for help that never came, vote for candidates who never returned and trust institutions that treated their trust as an inconvenience. Cherry Hill was not short on problems. It was short on accountability, short on leaders who felt any urgency about the lives being lived in those buildings, on those corners, in those underfunded schools, because those leaders were insulated by tenure, by incumbency, by the quiet understanding that they would be there long after the cameras left and the promises faded.

I grew up knowing, in my bones, what it costs a community when its elected officials stop fearing the people who sent them.

So, when Baltimore voters stood up in November 2022 and passed Question K by a thundering 72%, establishing term limits for the mayor, comptroller, City Council president and members of the City Council‚ I was not merely a supporter. I was a participant. I was part of the effort to place that question before the people of this city, to trust that if we gave Baltimore voters the chance to speak, they would speak clearly.

They spoke. Seventy-two percent. More decisive than a landslide.

And now, less than four years later, Councilmembers Ryan Dorsey and Mark Parker have introduced legislation to erase that decision entirely‚ claiming, without apparent irony, that more than 98,000 Baltimore voters did not understand what they were voting for.

I want you to let that sit for a moment.

The people of Cherry Hill understood. The people of Sandtown understood. The working families of East Baltimore, the seniors, the students, the shift workers who walked into that voting booth and marked that ballot, they understood. What they did not expect was that their elected representatives would look at 72% of the vote and conclude that the problem was the voters.

This is not a new tactic. Throughout American history, those who benefited from power have always found a reason to question the legitimacy of the people’s verdict when that verdict threatened their own position. They called it states’ rights. They called it protecting the process. Today they call it charter review. But it is the same reflex‚ the reflex of power protecting itself against the will of those it was sent to serve.

We are told, with great urgency, that democracy is under assault at the national level. We are told that election results must be honored and the will of the people must be defended. I believe all of that. I have believed it my entire life. But I say plainly to the leaders of this city: You cannot defend democracy in Washington while dismantling it on the third floor of City Hall. The river of accountability must flow through Baltimore as well. If we allow elected officials to reverse the outcomes of elections they find personally inconvenient, we have surrendered the very principle we claim to be defending. Democracy does not begin nationally. It begins locally. It begins here.

Consider also what this City Council did after voters approved term limits in 2022: They quietly tried to reduce the service requirement for a lifelong city pension from 12 years to just eight, the exact number of years term limits allow them to serve. Councilmembers would have earned a six-figure salary for a part-time position and qualified for a lifetime pension on the taxpayers’ backs in precisely the window of time the voters decided was enough. They tried to arrange their own security while resisting the people’s right to arrange a more accountable government. That is not public service. That is self-service dressed in the language of public service.

The people of Baltimore have spoken‚ not quietly, not narrowly, but decisively. I call upon every member of this City Council to honor that decision, because honoring the will of the people is not a courtesy. It is the most fundamental obligation of democratic leadership.

And I call upon residents to make certain that every official who moves to overturn this mandate knows that the people are still watching, still engaged and still prepared to be heard again at the ballot box.

They cannot repeal what we built together. And they cannot steal what the people have already decided.