In 2016, Zeke Cohen was just another candidate in a crowded field trying to snag a City Council seat in Southeast Baltimore. The 1st District, with its bustling upper-middle-class neighborhoods, was fertile ground for producing Baltimore’s next “rising political star,” observers noted then.

How prescient that turned out to be.

On Thursday, Cohen will be sworn in as the City Council president, ascending another rung on his career’s political ladder.

To many, Cohen is approachable. His friends still call him Zeke. When he dines out, people stop and chat, like Ekiben chef Steve Chu during a recent meal at Marta. But he is also deeply ambitious, according to people who know him well. He’s a skilled fundraiser and deft at picking his moment.

For now, that means being “laser focused” on oversight, Cohen said.

“I think if we can’t deliver great city services for the very high tax dollars that people pay in this city, we are proving a theory that places like Baltimore cannot be well run,” Cohen said. “And I think that Baltimore is exceptionally well-positioned in this moment to project a vision to the rest of the country of what it means for a Rust Belt, majority Black, working class city to not only rise, but to have a renaissance.”

Baltimore has made significant progress reducing gun violence, but there is a collective sense across town that Charm City isn’t run very efficiently. Waste, at times, goes uncollected, roads are poorly paved or repeatedly ripped up, traffic and parking enforcement can seem nonexistent. Subterranean Baltimore has had a propensity to erupt in flame. Disappointment with the public school system, whose budget is partly controlled by the city but whose board is separate, has long simmered.

That dissatisfaction is coupled with what is the highest property tax rate of any jurisdiction in Maryland. As the population has continued to dwindle, city leaders see these next four years as a pivotal moment.

Because of the sheer amount of power the mayor has in Baltimore, public hearings are about the extent of council’s oversight capabilities. The City Council cannot fire agency leadership, but they can make a stink, holding public hearings and grilling officials about what is going wrong. Those hearings, Cohen’s colleagues said, have utility.

Take the death of Ronald Silver earlier this year. A sanitation worker working on a particularly hot day, Silver ultimately died of heat-related illness. Subsequent hearings, organized in part by Cohen, and a report from the city inspector general found the Department of Public Works did not train its employees to see the signs of heat sickness and that the department had a culture of bullying.

“I think if we had played a more specific oversight role and had more regular hearings with committees that would allow testimony from workers, we would have caught what happened at DPW before Mr. Silver died,” Councilwoman Odette Ramos said.

Mayor Brandon Scott’s office acknowledged the conditions and ordered its own investigation which found similar results. Scott, who was sworn into office for his second term on Tuesday, has said improving services is a key goal of his administration.

For the most part, Cohen and Scott are aligned. As progressives, they share a common political coalition — both have the backings of labor unions, for example — and their goals are similar.

But eventually the two are likely to butt heads. Like the fable about the scorpion and the frog, it’s the nature of the jobs. Cracks in the relationship have already emerged. A protest vote Cohen cast against Scott’s budget in 2023 earned him icy treatment from the administration.

Baltimore’s mayors have not been able to sustain tenure, with Scott the first mayor in 20 years elected to a second term. City Council president has been a stepping stone in city politics — four of the last five mayors previously held the job, including Scott, who has not ruled out a third term.

“Every council president wants to be mayor. Let’s just call a spade a spade,” Marvin James, Scott’s chief of staff, said. “But he [Cohen] has a true desire, he wants Baltimore to be a better place. As long as that’s your center, we’re going to be willing to work with you.”

Cohen declined to say whether he has eyes on being the next mayor and instead said he’s focused on doing a good job as council president.

However, Cohen has made allies where Scott hasn’t, which could prove useful down the road. Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, a tough-on-crime moderate Democrat who has clashed with the mayor, endorsed Scott’s opponent in the primary. Bates also endorsed Cohen, and the pair are friendly.

Bates in an interview said he thinks Cohen will be “a little bit more moderate” on public safety issues. That move, along with the emphasis on oversight, could create tension between Scott and Cohen.

There’s going to be a learning curve and popularity does not guarantee one will do a good job. Nick Mosby was a well-liked politician when he was elected council president in 2020. Four years, some scandal and a few self-inflicted wounds later, Mosby could be leaving politics for good.

As a councilman, Cohen had a staff of two. As council president, he will have a staff of nearly 30. Constituent services, which Cohen excels at, will no longer be confined to his fiefdom of Southeast Baltimore. He will preside over the Board of Estimates, the city board that makes decisions on spending, and will have outsized power in shaping the city budget.

It will be isolating. Leadership often is, said Bates, who has found he has fewer friends since getting elected than he did previously.

“If you’re going to be a change agent, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be lonely, you’ll get pushback, and you can have people dislike you,” Bates said. “One of my biggest heartbreaks have been sitting here reading things that my friends have either written on social media about me or said about me in a newspaper. You’ll have to get used to those things at the end of the day.”

Managing the egos and relationships of fellow council members is also part of the job. Ryan Dorsey and Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer do not get on well — Schleifer donated the maximum amount to Dorsey’s primary opponent. Ramos has burned many bridges in City Hall. Danielle McCray’s brother, Cory, is a state senator and one of Scott’s closest friends. Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton endorsed Mosby. There are four newcomers.

In order to challenge any of Scott’s preferred pieces of legislation, Cohen would have to form his own voting bloc, which may prove tough at first. Cohen secured just one endorsement from the current council — Dorsey — in the primary, whereas Scott served on the council with many of the current members, secured several endorsements and is mostly on good terms with everyone else. Mostly.

Cohen, of course, knows all of this. Part of his approach to running the city’s legislative body is to set people up in committee assignments he believes they will excel in.

Danielle McCray will get the prized assignment of budget chair, which could prove pivotal as the city will likely have less money because of a multiyear state budget crunch and an expectation a second Trump administration could deprioritize funding for Democratic-controlled cities and states. Schleifer will be vice chair. Mark Conway will stay on as public safety chair; newcomer Zac Blanchard will be vice. John Bullock will chair the education committee, which figures to play a bigger role than it has in recent years.

Perhaps Cohen’s most clear example of setting up people to have a win is his decision to name Dorsey the chairman of the Land Use and Transportation Committee. A dedicated YIMBY, Dorsey declined multiple interview requests but said after a bill-signing ceremony earlier this week that the committee will operate far differently under him than it has.

To temper Dorsey, Cohen made Middleton, who is influential but sparingly uses her power, the vice chair with the idea that the two would have to agree on policy before it reaches the whole council.

These moves can be interpreted two ways: As setting council members up for success and as positioning pieces in a four-year-long chess game where, if Cohen wins, the prize could be the mayoralty.

If he does as well as he hopes, his star may just keep rising.