Last week, I asked whether Darian Unger (candidate for MD D20 delegate) is as grassroots as he appears, after I received five mailings from him in five days. Unger sent me a note pushing back. Among other things, he pointed out to me:
- He is the only candidate doing $5 per person ($15 per family) fundraisers, while refusing corporate donations
- He had planned to do eight mailers over three months, but the post office botched up that distribution by dumping all the mail pieces at once (that is a standard hazard of bulk-mail)
- He is being massively outspent by others.
Unger is correct in raising these points. Among the viable candidates (Hixson, Jawando, Moon, Shurberg, Smith, Unger) Unger’s campaign is certainly near the bottom in expenditures and near the top in terms of mobilizing small donors. (I’m going on gut sense here. Unger pointed me to the Board of Elections site to research the actual data, but I tried and can’t make any sense of what I found there. This is a symptom of why Maryland is among the worst states nationally for campaign finance transparency and good governance.)
©2014 Keith Berner
