As Garrett led to Rasin, Rasin led to Mahan. Sonny Mahan’s first leadership position was the head of a juvenile gang that terrorized West Baltimore during the time of the Civil War. He became Isaac Rasin’s enforcer and primary aide de camp, helping Rasin fend off multiple assaults on his power base, generally from Republicans who were becoming increasingly powerful throughout the state. Mahon became a special agent for the US Treasury Department, which allowed Rasin and his cronies full control not only of judges, election officials and clerks, but virtually all commercial traffic coming into and out of Baltimore. The succession of mayors who owed their political careers to Rasin and Mahan were hardly in a position to argue. Rasin and Mahan were able to weather investigations and convictions of their corrupt allies in the Maryland judiciary by securing pardons from the governor and protecting their election officials by passing legislation giving them control of the ballot boxes. Rasin and Mahan’s last act together involved an attempt to retake control of the General Assembly and stamp out Republican power by disenfranchising black voters with literacy tests at the polls. (The successful legislation ironically backfired as Republicans went on a coaching spree, teaching black men to read the ballots, and increasingly empowered African-American men realized what was at stake.)
Although Rasin lived until 1907, his power waned in the 1890’s as the statehouse went Republican and Cleveland was turned out of the Presidency. Mahan shrewdly turned his back on his mentor and opportunistically backed a reform Democratic mayor, Arthur Hayes, who ran on promises to accelerate the building of a sewage system and reduce the regular epidemics of infectious diseases. When Hayes won the election without the support of many of the old Rasin supporters, Mahan became the new kingmaker in Baltimore, taking control of the Baltimore Democratic Party. His lieutenants from the start were Frank Kelly, an illiterate West Side bar owner who became Mahan’s enforcer at the polls, and Robert “Pavin Bob” Padgett, who made his fortune controlling the paving contracts in Baltimore and ran Mahan’s patronage operations. Padgett also became the Sheriff of Baltimore, adding to the cabals’ ability to enforce their will on the citizenry.
It was under Mahan and the next mayor, James Preston, that Baltimore’s rigid and deeply racist segregation policies became a reality. Preston led the creation of restrictive covenants on housing and forcibly removed African-American from the area still known as Preston Gardens.
