The Press: Free Shots for All

Explaining graciously that business needs “a shot in the arm,” Baltimore’s Mayor Thomas D’Alesandro Jr. last month urged the city council to repeal Baltimore’s tax on newspaper and TV advertising (TIME, Nov. 18), which Mayor Tommy had himself rammed through last fall. Last week, while the council mulled over the mayor’s proposal (which would also give a shot in the arm to Democrat D’Alesandro’s campaign for the U.S. Senate), Maryland’s general assembly beat Tommy to the gun by passing a Senate-approved bill outlawing ad taxes anywhere in the state. Republican Governor Theodore R. McKeldin assured newsmen that he would sign the bill into law, thus boosting his own campaign to succeed Tommy D’Alesandro as Baltimore’s mayor.