OCEAN CITY — In what was essentially a mere formality, resort officials this week approved the list of candidates for the November municipal election absent one mayoral candidate.
During Monday’s meeting, the Mayor and Council the reviewed the candidates for mayor and three council seats up for re-election. City Clerk Diana Chavis said there were now two candidates for the mayor’s seat after Joseph Cryer had withdrawn his name from the ballot after being the first to file last winter. The ballot for the mayor’s seat now includes incumbent Rick Meehan and former councilman Joe Hall.
The ballot ratified by the Mayor and Council on Monday also includes five candidates for the three council seats open for election in November including Council President Lloyd Martin, Council Matt James, Ocean City Police Department Sgt. Mark Paddack and local residents Christopher Rudolf and Emily Nock.
When Chavis announced Cryer had withdrawn from the mayor’s race, some on the council questioned Cryer if that was accurate and he confirmed he had withdrawn.
Cryer never gave a specific reason for withdrawing from the mayor’s race. However, later during the public comment period, Cryer told the mayor and council what he has been working on including an international ministry.
“On March 23, myself and my partner were the first to serve hate crime papers on the Nazis,” he said. “It was an international case. It’s still pending, so I can’t get into specifics because I would never jeopardize our agents.”
Cryer referenced an infamous double homicide in Ocean City on Memorial Day weekend in 2002 and linked it to his apparent work on tracking Nazi war criminals.
“I will tell you it connects back to B.J. Sifrit and his wife Erika in 2002, so Lord willing, we’ll have our Kumbaya moment and we can all sit back and know that justice was served for the victims that came to our island,” he said. “I took that very personally. Fifteen years later, I won’t say I’m obsessed with it, but I would like to close that case.”
While he won’t be running for elected office in November, Cryer did leave the mayor and future council with some advice including a rebranding of the Ocean City municipal airport.
“The only thing I can think about that I’d like to plant a seed for the council and the mayor is the Ocean City municipal airport,” he said. “It could be a clear differentiator for Ocean City with a regional purpose.”
Cryer suggested the municipal airport could be repurposed to get out in front of some major changes looming.
“As you will see, a transcendency is coming in the next two or three years,” he said. “I know it’s going to happen. Amazon is going to be on a different planet. There is going to be an earth Amazon and a moon Amazon. I would recommend, and it could be done very cheaply, to change it to the Ocean City municipal spaceport.”
Cryer offered several reasons for rebranding the municipal airport, not the least of which is appealing to a different demographic of visitors in the future.
“The reason I say that is it’s inevitable,” he said. “I know everybody thinks I’m off the chain, but I’m sharing this with you because I love you. We are going to have terrestrial visitors from other dimensions and other planets. It’s inevitable. If we do something as simple as changing the name to Ocean City municipal spaceport, those visitors will be searching for it and we will have that honor.”
