There are echoes of former mayors Sheila Dixon and Catherine Pugh in Marilyn Mosby’s campaign for reelection as Baltimore state’s attorney, none more relevant than the role of Black women voters in city elections.

Many observers are sizing up the contest as simply a reprise of the 2018 election. That may be the case, but only in the sense that the same three Democrats appear on the primary election dance card — Mosby, Thiru Vignarajah and Ivan Bates.

But there’s a fourth presence, the brooding, lengthened shadow of past elections and their prescient, indisputable consequences.

As every political hobbyist knows, Dixon was driven from City Hall, in part, by playing fast and loose with gift cards intended for the poor. She cashed them in for herself and relatives. Dixon’s redemptive bargain with the court was that she had to resign the mayor’s office and refrain from seeking elective office again for four years, the time-bracket she was on probation. (Dixon was allowed to keep her city pension.)

When her time in the penalty box expired, Dixon tried twice to reclaim the mayor’s office, losing once to Pugh, and again to the incumbent, Brandon Scott. Twice rejected, though in close contests, she vowed never to run…