SILVER SPRING, Md. – Tuesday’s primary for Maryland governor comes as Democrats are nervous, uncertain about the future, and may be willing to bet on a flashy, unproven commodity.
That could be a real problem for Tom Perez.
As he did in early 2017, when he won a contest among party insiders to become Democratic National Committee chairman at the start of the Trump era, Perez is setting himself up as the safest location choice.
But polls in the Democratic race for governor show a dead end between Perez and Wes Moore, a bestselling author, television host and nonprofit executive who endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. Peter Franchot, the state comptroller and a fixture in Maryland politics since the 1980s, is hot on his heels.
The race, like the Republican primary for Maryland governor, will test voters’ hunger for competence and experience at a time when both parties’ bases are angry with their political establishment.
Republicans will choose between Kelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary to the outgoing Larry Hogan administration, on a limited term, and Dan Cox, a first-term state representative approved by former President Donald J. Trump who wrote on Twitter during the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol that Vice President Mike Pence was a traitor.
Mr. Cox is also one of several Republicans who have received help this year from Democrats pursuing the dangerous strategy of trying to elevate the GOP’s far-right primary candidates in the hopes that they are too extreme to win a general election. The Democratic Governors Association spent $1.16 million on ads to lift its candidacy — more than all Republicans spent on TV and radio ads combined, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company.
While the Republican primary is a battle between Mr. Hogan’s center-right political operation and Mr. Trump’s far-right supporters, the Democratic primary has evolved as a stylistic battle with few ideological differences: Mr. Perez’s clumsy paternal competence, that of Mr Moore charismatic dynamism and Mr Franchot’s decades of experience in state politics.
Democrats are eager to win back the governorship of a deep-blue state that has been led by a Republican, Mr. Hogan, since 2015. to withstand even a strong Republican display in November thanks to the state’s gerrymandered districts.
Neither party’s primaries have accumulated the nine-figure sums spent on television and radio advertising in other states’ races. Perez and a super PAC backing him have collectively spent $3.5 million — more than any other candidate in the governor’s race.
Mr. Perez has highlighted his years with the Justice Department and as Secretary of Labor under former President Barack Obama. In his TV ads — one of which uses Mr. Obama’s voice to promote Mr. Perez — he describes himself as the candidate from the “getting things donewing of the party, although he uses a sharper noun than ‘things’.
In an interview on Thursday at an early voting site in Silver Spring, a suburb of the Beltway, Perez said Democrats would be taking a big risk in the general election if they nominate Mr. Moore.
“I’ve been confirmed twice by the Senate,” Mr. Perez said. ‘I have applied for office twice. I was vetted for vice president in 2016. I won’t spend the general election campaign explaining something I’ve done in the past or haven’t done in the past.”
Mr. Perez referred to the fact that elements of Mr. Moore’s inspiring personal story have been challenged.
Mr. Moore, a Rhodes scholar and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, has put his biography at the center of his campaign. He wrote a bestseller promoted by Mrs. Winfrey, who later… gave him a show on her cable channel.
And he sometimes corrected interviewers who made flattering mistakes about his resume, including one who said he inducted into a Maryland Hall of Fame for soccer (a setting that does not exist) and at least two others Who described him as a Bronze Star recipient (he is not).
Brian Jones, an assistant to Mr. Moore, said the candidate had never misrepresented his track record. He declined requests to make Mr. Moore available for an interview.
“Wes Moore has absolutely nothing to exaggerate, he has absolutely nothing to regret, and anyone who suggests otherwise should be ashamed of themselves,” said Mr Jones.
Moore’s most recent job was chief executive of the… Robin Hood Foundationan anti-poverty organization in New York where he was paid almost $1 million a year.
There, questions were asked in 2018 about the amount of overtime that Mr. Moore’s executive assistant was accruing. The assistant, Maria Flynn, wrote a memo, reviewed by The New York Times, stating that Mr. Moore had “obliged” her to perform a series of personal tasks for him, including booking Amtrak tickets for the Mr. Moore’s nanny and planning, negotiating and drafting contracts for his many paid speaking engagements.
Ms Flynn was fired a week after submitting her memo.
Robin Hood has been investigating Mrs Flynn’s allegations. According to an internal report reviewed by The Times, Mr Moore told Robin Hood that he had asked Ms Flynn not to pay overtime for personal work she did for him outside the hours she worked for the organization and instead ” personally compensated her with an unspecified quarterly bonus.
The investigation ultimately concluded that Ms Flynn’s termination was justified because she had filed excessive overtime with Robin Hood and improperly “migrated files to her personal email account.”
A divorce contract she signed stipulated that Robin Hood would pay her $23,925 — three months’ wages and benefits — if she agreed not to sue the group or speak badly of her experience there for Mr. Moore.
Ms Flynn said she was unable to discuss her tenure with Mr Moore because she had signed a nondisclosure agreement upon her resignation.
“I didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer,” she said. “I was unable to fight.”
A spokesman for Robin Hood, Kevin F. Thompson, declined to discuss Ms. Flynn’s specific claims or the internal documents.
“We take all allegations of employee misconduct seriously and we have never had any reason to take disciplinary action against Wes Moore,” he said.
Mr Jones, Mr Moore’s assistant, said the claims in Ms Flynn’s memo were false and had surfaced through “thin opposition investigation” by Mr Moore’s political opponents.
The third leading candidate in the Democratic primary, Mr. Franchot, in an interview Friday, said his long career in Maryland politics would be valuable in allaying voters’ concerns about inflation and high gas prices.
“People are looking for a steady hand at the helm, someone who has experience and clear knowledge of the economy of the state,” said Mr Franchot, who was first elected auditor in 2006 and spent two decades before that. General Assembly Sat. “I am the person who has been on the podium for the past 16 years”.”
Republican voters face a different kind of decision: whether loyalty to Trump and lies about the 2020 election carry more political weight than Hogan, a two-term governor who set himself up as a check against excesses of Democratic supermajorities.
Ms. Schulz, a former state deputy who spent nearly seven years in Mr. Hogan’s cabinet, has taken the governor’s mantra and bets on their political alliance. She would most likely be a formidable candidate in the general election. mr. Hogan remains one of the country’s most popular governors, and while the state has… more than twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans, it has elected only one Democrat, Martin O’Malley, as governor since the turn of the millennium.
“She understands the nuance of what you have to do to win as a Republican in Maryland,” said Mileah Kromer, a pollster at Goucher College in Towson, Md.
Ms. Schulz predicted that Mr. Cox would lose the general election by 30 percentage points to one of the Democrats running.
“I don’t think anyone in the state of Maryland really believes that Dan Cox can beat a Democrat in November,” she said in an interview, calling Mr. Cox a “conspiracy gone wrong.” theorist-type person.”
Mr Cox’s campaign manager, his daughter Patience Faith Cox, did not respond to requests for comment.
The Democratic Governors Association agrees with Ms. Schulz’s assessment. It essentially fueled Mr. Cox’s entire ad campaign. Mr. Cox has spent just $21,000 on television and radio ads, but polls show he is associated with or directs Ms. Schulz.
Mr. Cox has been a prolific amp of pro-Trump conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. In December 2020, he wrote on Facebook that Mr. Trump should use the federal government to “seize federal voting machines in states where fraud is extraordinary.” reigns supreme”.
He chartered three buses from his home in Frederick County to the January 6, 2021 rally to protest the election results. That day, after the mob burst into the Capitol to chants of “Hang Mike Pence,” Mr. Cox tweeted, “Pence is a traitor.”
Prior to Tuesday’s primary, Mr. cox… impending lawsuits sought to invalidate the ballots submitted, warning without evidence that “there have been mules in Maryland” illegally cramming the ballot boxes, a reference to a Trump-promoted film making false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The counting of the absent ballots is expected to take days after Tuesday’s vote. Maryland law prohibits the processing and counting of ballots returned in mailboxes or by mail until Thursday, and aides to several candidates have warned that the winners of each primary won’t be known until late in the week.
Representative Ric Metzgar, a Republican who supports Mr. Cox, said Mr. Hogan had alienated the party base by breaking with Mr. Trump and that Ms. Schulz had failed to present herself as anything but an extension of Mr. Mr Hogan’s government.
“Not many Republicans support him right now, he’s so far removed from Trump,” said Mr. Metzgar. “You can’t ride coattails if there aren’t coattails to hold onto.”