Contrite ex-mayor eyes political comeback after scandal ousted him in Cambridge

Former Cambridge Mayor Andrew Bradshaw, who resigned in early 2022 due to a revenge porn scandal, is trying to get his old job back.

Bradshaw is one of three candidates who filed in recent days to enter the October election for mayor of the Eastern Shore city. He’ll face Cambridge Commission President Lajan Cephas and former Cambridge Commissioner La-Shon Foster. The incumbent, Stephen Rideout, chose not to seek a full four-year term.

Bradshaw, a 35-year-old local businessman, was elected mayor in 2020, but became engulfed in scandal just a year into his term. He quit after being charged by the state prosecutor’s office on 50 counts of distributing revenge porn on a social media website.

After pleading guilty in April 2022 to five counts of distributing revenge porn, Bradshaw was sentenced to three years of supervised probation and fined $5,000. He was also ordered to complete 100 hours of community service and pay $750 to the woman he posted nude photos of online without her knowledge or consent.

After Bradshaw resigned in January, 2022, Cephas was elevated to acting mayor, a role she filled for nine months. Rideout was then elected in a September 2022 special election to fill the remainder of Bradshaw’s term.

In an interview last week, Bradshaw said he decided to run for mayor again after being urged to do so by friends and former supporters, as well as by people he did not know — and because he was concerned about the direction of the city.

“Since I’ve been out of office, I’ve seen a lot of stagnation in the city — on housing availability and quality, on economic development, on job opportunities,” he said. “I felt a little bit of responsibility for this.”

Bradshaw acknowledged that the scandal that drove him from office is “definitely something that’s on the minds of the voters,” and said it isn’t a topic he’s going to shy away from.

“As embarrassing and hurtful as this was for people to see this in their community, no one carries the weight of this disappointment more heavily than I do,” he said.

And Bradshaw is offering voters a pledge: “Never again will I disappoint or hurt my community or my supporters,” he said.

Whether Bradshaw’s opponents use the scandal against him remains to be seen. Foster, who has run for mayor in the past, could not be reached for comment last week. Cephas, who is considered Bradshaw’s leading foe, did not respond to requests for comment left by phone and email at City Hall.

But in an interview last week with WHCP Radio in Cambridge, Cephas said she was planning to highlight her own record and platform on the campaign trail and not discuss her opponents.

Cephas, 43, has faced legal problems of her own. In November 2022, she was charged with second-degree assault following a domestic violence incident in her home. The charges were dismissed in January 2023.

Both Bradshaw and Cephas appear to be laying out similar priorities in the election, including the importance of economic development in Cambridge and the need to address decades of racial and economic disparities in the city. Cephas, in her recent radio interview, said this is why she decided to run for mayor rather than seeking reelection to her seat on the commission, which is the town council.

“It’s definitely a gamble and worth the gamble,” she said. “One thing I’ve noticed in Cambridge — we’re divided, over the waterfront development, over race relations, over community development. We’re divided in so many ways. So I felt like this was the time for me to be all in.”

Cephas, a former corrections officer who now sells insurance, is bidding to be the city’s second Black woman mayor. Victoria Jackson-Stanley, who was the first woman and first African-American to serve in the top job, was mayor from 2008 to 2020, when she was defeated by Bradshaw.

Cambridge, a city of about 13,000, is 47.4% Black, according to the 2020 Census, and 38.19% white. While the city along the Choptank River has many of the same natural and historic charms of other waterfront towns on the Eastern Shore, it has so far fallen far short of its ambitions to match Easton, St. Michael’s and Salisbury in economic firepower and tourist traffic.

Perhaps the biggest issue in the election is the future of a city-owned waterfront property at the northern end of Cambridge, which has been mired in bureaucratic, political and managerial gridlock for the past few years.

City officials have been feuding with the leaders of Cambridge Waterfront Development Inc. (CWDI), the entity set up by the city, Dorchester County and the state of Maryland to lead the development process for the 64-acre property. One of the issues is whether CWDI should handle the development itself or find an outside developer to set up a blueprint for the site; the development entity and the city are in mediation to try to resolve their differences.

Adding to the drama and discord is the stated desire of the Cambridge YMCA, which is currently in a century-old high school building in another part of town, to build a new facility on the development site. The controversy over that proposal has several political and sociological crosscurrents.

Bradshaw told Maryland Matters that putting the YMCA along the waterfront would do nothing to generate revenue or tourist traffic for the site, or expand economic opportunity, which is what the development is supposed to do.

“CWDI has continued reaching for low-hanging fruit, and the YMCA is low-hanging fruit,” he said.

Both Bradshaw and Cephas have said that resolving the impasses over the property and bringing quality development to downtown Cambridge are among their top priorities.

“I believe we can work through this project,” Cephas told WHCP Radio. “I believe this time we’re going to knock it out of the park.”

But these and other election issues are inevitably being seen in Cambridge through the prism of race.

“We have a lot of different silos in Cambridge,” Cephas said.

Bradshaw said he is committed to closing the racial divides in the city, and offered an olive branch to Cephas — whom he described as a good governing partner when he was mayor.

“I think the commission president and I worked very well on that [race relations] when I was in office, and I respect her tremendously,” he said. “I know she cares about this city.”

The nonpartisan municipal election in Cambridge takes place on Oct. 19. If none of the candidates for mayor clears 50% of the vote, the top two vote-getters advance to a Dec. 3 runoff. The registration deadline for voters to participate in the city election is Sept. 27.