From Curtis Bay through Brooklyn, Cherry Hill, Westport, Mount Winans, the St. Paul Community, and Morrell Park, boarded-up and cemented residences are par for the course in the older parts of the 10th. In some places, there are almost entire blocks of houses boarded or cemented shut. There is some newer low-income housing throughout the neighborhoods south of the harbor, but much of the building stock is laid to waste, making housing a major issue for the district.

In Federal Hill and Locust Point, the pendulum of the housing problem swings in the other direction. In these highly populated neighborhoods, property values are skyrocketing, and homeowners are looking for property-tax relief.

"There's been a lot of development," says Reisinger, a Democrat, who, if he is to keep a seat on the City Council, must be able to represent the needs of both the affluent communities north of the harbor, which he has not represented before, and the poorer communities to the south that made up a large chunk of his constituency in the 6th. "It's created jobs, which is positive, but [it has also] raised property taxes. I'm proposing a resolution that would be a cut in property taxes" for the residents in these harbor neighborhoods.

Although Reisinger lives in Morrell Park, at the west end of the 10th, he has been working to establish himself throughout the new district's neighborhoods.

There is a broad demographic divide between the northern and southern regions of the 10th District. According to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA), an organization that makes demographic, Census, and other data on Baltimore city available to the public, the median income in the south-harbor neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Curtis Bay, and Hawkin is $26,000 per year; for the predominantly African-American Cherry Hill neighborhood, that number drops to $17,000. In contrast, the median income in South Baltimore/Locust Point is $39,000, and in Federal Hill it's $52,000 per year. More than 1,500 families south of the harbor are living in poverty, according to BNIA statistics, compared to only about 350 families in the north-harbor neighborhoods. Despite this, many of the candidates in the race contend that all the residents face similar problems, no matter what neighborhoods they live in. "When you go to community meetings, you always hear public safety, housing, illegal dumping, things like that," Reisinger says.

"Problems are universal--the big ones everyone's talking about are crime, grime, and trash," says Charles Metz, a Democrat backed by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the politically active neighborhood group better known as ACORN. Metz's home and campaign headquarters are in Brooklyn.

But Metz says that although the issues are perceived to be the same, there is a difference in the scale of problems between one neighborhood and another. "Crime in Curtis Bay is different than crime in Federal Hill," he points out. Where Federal Hill might have robberies and the "threat of violent crime," neighborhoods like Westport and Brooklyn are "troubled" with drug markets, prostitution, and murder.

Metz says the key to fixing problems is "jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs." He says that helping people develop a sense of pride in themselves and their work will lower crime rates in the region.

Curtis Bay resident Mark Muhammad, another Democratic candidate for the 10th, cites prostitution as one of the biggest problems facing his neighborhood. "Prostitution helps feed the drug market," he notes. "The market keeps people from moving to the neighborhood. Empty houses encourage the rat population. And it goes on and on."

Nicole Pastore-Klein, president of the Key Highway Community Association and kin to Baltimore's Pastore family (which owns the Sun of Italy line of canned Italian food products), feels she has a good chance of winning the votes of Federal Hill and Locust Point residents because of her involvement in the community--especially her work with the Key Highway group, which has been working to beautify the city's Interstate 95 entryway.

While Reisinger may be a familiar face and name to the residents of the southern part of the 10th, Pastore-Klein is well acquainted with the Federal Hill and Locust Point communities. "The incumbent is not our incumbent," she says, noting that the harbor communities were never part of Reisinger's old 6th District jurisdiction. But likewise, she says, she is not as familiar with the neighborhoods south of the harbor and says she needs to learn more about them so that she can "bring unity to diversity."

Other candidates vying for the 10th District nomination in the Sept. 9 primary include Cherry Hill Democrat Loretta Johnson and South Baltimore Republicans Joe Collins Jr. and Duane Shelton. None returned phone calls to City Paper as of press time. Green Party candidate Edna Collins Schaem has also filed to run, but she does not have an opponent for the primary.