As you may recall, liquor salesman David Trone burst on the local political scene a year ago (after never having done a thing for the people and communities of the region) by spending $13-million to purchase a seat in Congress (MD-8). This came after years of contributions to right-wingers around the country in order to increase his personal profits from hooch sales in their jurisdictions. Trone might have won, had another glory-seeking, right-wing contributing pro-business candidate — Kathleen Matthews — not split the anti-progressive vote with him. Fortunately, Jamie Raskin benefited from the contest between Matthews and Trone.
Will we be so lucky when Trone jumps into the 2018 race for Montgomery County executive (primary date: June 2018)?
In fact, the chances are that it will be progressssive candidates who will split the vote when Trone dumps $20-30 million into an attempt to purchase the entire county. (Think it’s too early to conjecture about the reign of havoc Trone intends for us? See Seventh State blog.)
Get scared now, MoCo progressives.
June 2018 seems a long ways away. But if we are going to beat Trone, we have to start thinking right now about how. A number of regressive candidates, besides Trone, have already indicated an interest in running, including Roger Berliner (against a livable wage, against a plastic bag ban), Nancy Floreen (the Queen of Concrete), and Craig Rice (ditto the critiques of Floreen and Berliner).
There are only two likely candidates worthy of serious consideration by progressives: Marc Elrich and George Leventhal.
My working hypothesis is that Berliner, Floreen, and Rice can’t win against Trone, because he will spend them into oblivion and their Big Developer pals will desert them for the guy with the Real Big Money.
What scares me is that Elrich and Leventhal will both be strong, their supporters and campaigns will be bitter enemies, and the injuries they inflict on each other will end up enabling Trone to walk into office.
My assessment of Elrich and Leventhal will start out with the usual set of criteria: ideology (particularly: will Leventhal choose to step away from his longstanding ties with the development industry) and competence (who is more likely to be able to run an effective county government). With Trone’s specter looming over the proceedings, though, a vital third criterion will come into play: which is able to run the perfect campaign to beat Trone.
So, my dear progressive readers, we may experience déja vu all over again: just as many Bernie supporters had to swallow hard and back Hillary to stop Trump*, either Elrich or Leventhal supporters will have to drop some pride and some ideology to back the candidate who can win. We all better start contemplating this prospect now. We will need a pre-primary, where a comparison of campaign messaging, organization, and money raising acts as our guide for whom to ultimately back in June. I expect we will be able to make that assessment by a year or so from now.
*Yeah, I know the bet on Hillary didn’t work out. But, the Bernie supporters who claim with certainty now that he would have run better against Trump are taking hindsight conjecture and trying to turn it into predictive fact. And, the continued bitter sniping between “Berners” (I love that designation!) and Clinton fans is a demonstration of why forces of evil beat the left (center left and more left) so often.
See my previous posts about suburban Maryland’s own Trump equivalent:
- 02.03.16 David Trone introduces dirty tricks to MD-8 congressional campaign
- 02.06.16 Birds of a feather: Matthews & Trone don’t even vote (MD-8)
- 03.02.16 Like Bob McDonnell and Donald Trump? You’ll love David Trone!
- 03.12.16 A decade in the life of Raskin, Matthews & Trone (MD-8)
- 03.15.16 David Trone calls Jamie Raskin ‘a polarizing figure from the left’
©2017 Keith Berner
