On a Sunday afternoon in late April, Mayor Brandon Scott calls in via Zoom from his new Lauraville home. He briefly drops his screen filter to show off the vinyl, speakers and deck he uses to DJ in his spare time. But he’s mum on the name he uses to spin discs.

“There's a running bet with me and all the kids in the city. If they can find out what my DJ name is, I'll give them $200 on the spot. It's cheating,” he says with a laugh. “Because I know no one's gonna tell it. No one's gonna say it, it's good.”

A lot has changed personally for the 40-year-old Democratic incumbent during his first mayoral term. He’s engaged, a homeowner, a stepfather and now father to a newborn.

His background screen is an image of the once-proud Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed after being hit by a cargo ship in March, killing six construction workers. It’s a reminder of how the mayor’s administration has been bookended by tragedy — he started during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When you're in a leadership position, you know that those kinds of situations are going to come,” he said. “But you never want it to be something that's tragic, you never want it to be something that I've had to deal with whether it's COVID, or losing three firefighters or losing a police officer. You really have to step up and step up for those people”

Scott is now facing a competitive race against former Mayor Sheila Dixon.

Scott is leading in the most recent poll from Goucher College and the Baltimore Banner — which put 40% of Democratic voters supporting Scott. That polling doesn’t reflect a recent drop-out by mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah, who pulled out on the eve of early voting and endorsed Dixon.

Dixon calls Scott an inefficient city leader, one that cannot provide essential city service, like permit processing or weekly recycling — which resumed in March 2024, for the first time since the start of the COVID.

Scott says he’s been modernizing city services, making once analog systems digital. And not taking shortcuts.

“We had systems when I came into office that the only person that knows how to work that system works for the city of Baltimore because the company itself is out of business. That's how long and broken our city government was,” Scott explained.

“We purchased new permitting software and we're doing and quite frankly, that should have been done at least a decade, if not longer, longer ago,” he gives as one example.

Scott speaks frequently of outdated city systems, insinuating that they came to be that way because people like his predecessors, including Dixon, wouldn’t modernize them.

But working slow and steady may not be to Scott’s advantage.

“Baltimoreans expect their mayors, simply because of [William Donald] Schaefer, not to be so deliberative and to be more direct and demanding. They want a mayor who says ‘do it now,’” said Matthew Crenson, a political scientist and Johns Hopkins University professor emeritus.

Crenson noted that Scott tends to work by doing studies and commissions. Programs like the Group Violence Reduction Strategy have rolled out slower than originally projected: that program, which connects young people at risk of becoming involved in gang violence to wraparound services instead, began in the Western police district in 2022 and just last month rolled out into a fourth district. The city has nine police districts.

Mayor Scott doesn’t call that progress slow. He calls it “sustainable.”

Homicides dropped 20% in 2023. Scott credits his GVRS program as a major factor in that.

Scott originally promised a yearly 15% decrease but early in his administration homicides spiked, as they did nationwide. Daniel Webster researches gun violence at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and said that was a promise that was likely unrealistic for Scott, or any other candidate, to be able to make good on.

“It is far more common that you see breakthroughs and then more dramatic declines, then you see this gradual decline,” said Webster.

Scott’s opponents, most notably Vignarajah, have discredited the city’s homicide reduction as part of a national trend. The homicide rate declined about 10% nationwide in 2023, according to a report from the Council on Criminal Justice which analyzed FBI crime data. Baltimore saw one of the largest homicide decreases in the country, alongside nearby cities like Philadelphia and Atlanta which saw decreases of near 20% too.

Baltimore still has one of the highest homicide rates in the country and that rate remains higher than it was pre-pandemic. The rate in 2024 is still trending down 33% from this time last year.

“The population didn't change that much going from 2022 to 2023, or even the last two or three years. And if you think about the population that is leaving, I would say that is a population that's probably not at highest risk of being a victim or a perpetrator of gun violence. So I'm fairly, I can pretty easily dismiss that the reductions that Baltimore's seeing has anything to do with people leaving the city,” said Webster.

Baltimore’s next mayor will be challenged to keep that decline going.

But Scott doesn’t have the support in the next election from the City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates or Sheriff Sam Cogen.

“That could be a problem,” said Crenson shortly after Bates endorsed Dixon. Bates cited a perceived lack of support from Mayor Scott on Bates’ citation docket. That docket is meant to put people committing some quality of life crimes into community service programs.

Scott claimed Bates’ accusations were “political fodder” and later the two put out a statement saying there had been a “misunderstanding”. Bates still supports Dixon for Mayor in 2024 and in early May, the two participated in a “public safety walk” together in Federal Hill.

Scott says he remains committed to seeing through the federal consent decree with the Baltimore Police Department.

“The old way was illegal, the old way was wrong, the old way was racist, we can do it in a constitutional community based and centered way. And that's the way we'll do it,” he said.

In his second-term Scott will continue to focus on the youth. The mayor rolled out a $120 million overhaul for Parks and Recreation infrastructure, including new creation centers, updates to pools, and other parks. $41 million of that comes from the American Rescue Plan Act.

In fact, out of all the tragedies, one keeps him up at night: he ran late after a press conference and didn’t get to meet with a young man who wound up shot later that night.

“If I hadn't stayed there that long to answer questions… would he have seen me, and not went where he went and he might be alive?” Scott wondered.

Early voting ends May 9th and the Maryland primary is May 14th.

Correction: An earlier version of this story characterized Mayor Scott as having a teenage stepson.