Far be it from Sheila Dixon to let the scandal that toppled her tenure in office keep her down.

Following her resignation as mayor of Baltimore following a misdemeanor conviction in 2010, Dixon is running for mayor of the city once again in the 2024 election, challenging incumbent Brandon Scott. It’ll be her third attempt at reclaiming the office since her 2009 conviction for embezzlement.

Dixon, 69, penned a letter in the Baltimore Sun earlier this month, offering up humble mea culpas for the transgressions that forced her to resign from office while reminding everyone of the improvements in the city that she catalyzed during her time as mayor.

Her attempt to recapture both grace and her old gig begs the question: Should the voting public forgive Dixon, or any other politician who ran afoul of the law while in office?

The answer, I think, is a bit complicated.

Above all else, the crime in question matters: Dixon was on trial for felony theft and misdemeanor embezzlement, with accusations of accepting favors, gifts and generally keeping her hand in the cookie jar. She was ultimately convicted for keeping for herself about $500 in gift cards earmarked as donations for needy families.

That’s a 20-plus-year political career brought to a screeching halt (at least temporarily) for the price of a PlayStation 5 bundle pack. Because Dixon wasn’t charged with a felony, however, she was able to dodge prison time and manage to keep her pension.

Dixon is not exactly a rarity in American politics: Officeholders have historically run afoul of the law, only to ask the public to trust them again. Obviously, Donald Trump is the highest-profile – and most ridiculous – contemporary example: Dude is battling four(!!) state and federal indictments and has said and done more ridiculous s--- than I can fit in this column.

Yet, polls suggest that, if Trump manages to stay out of the pokey, President Joe Biden has a fight on his hands in 2024.

Objectively, Dixon is nowhere near as ethically noxious as Trump. For many voters, however, it doesn’t matter how much she embezzled: An ill-gotten candy bar on the taxpayer dime would be enough to keep her from office forever.

On the other hand, Black folks tend to appreciate a good redemption story – we empathize with reformed lawbreakers who paid their so-called debt to society.

Dixon’s story is analogous to that of the late Marion Barry, the former Washington D.C. mayor who had a sizable amount of cachet as a civil rights activist before flushing much of it by way of a 1990 FBI sting operation video showing him smoking crack cocaine and being “intimate” with a woman who wasn’t his wife.

Barry served six months in a federal prison, was immediately re-elected to the city council in D.C., following his release and later reclaimed the mayoral office. In addition to making for a memorable Chris Rock routine, Barry’s re-election demonstrated that Black folks are loyal to the politicians we believe are loyal to them – especially in contrast to exploitative white politicians.

I saw this play out with Kwame Kilpatrick, former mayor of my hometown of Detroit. He came into office in 2002 as the “Hip-Hop Mayor” with charisma on reserve and the political capital to make moves that genuinely benefited the city. However, Kilpatrick used the financially strapped city as his own check cashing depot, running up a long laundry list of political malfeasance – including a sketchy connection to a dead sex worker.

Even as Kilpatrick was headed to prison for a 28-year sentence (which, oddly enough, Trump pardoned him from, more than two decades early), he had no shortage of supporters who fiercely opposed his lengthy sentence and even suggested he should return to office when freed.

Whether you think this brand of loyalty is misguided depends on your personal moral compass and how willing you are to forgive someone who has broken your trust; in this regard, corrupt politicians are akin to cheating spouses.

But, even in a country that values partisan loyalty over morality, Dixon would do well to remember that, if she is elected once again, she doesn’t have the White male privilege of Trump and would be likely fresh out of chances to do right by her constituency.

It may not be fair, but what is in American politics?

Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at wafflecolored.com.