All posts by Adam Pagnucco

Adam Pagnucco, Facebook, George Leventhal, washington post

Is This the Most Expensive Facebook Ad in MoCo Politics?

By Adam Pagnucco.

County Executive candidate David Blair wants you to know that the Washington Post has endorsed him.  Wait, that doesn’t do it justice.  He really, REALLY wants you to know that.  Why do we say so?  Because he may have purchased the most expensive Facebook ad in the history of MoCo politics to publicize it.

Most Facebook ads from state and local candidates cost less than a hundred bucks and run for a few days.  The more you pay, the bigger the audience, but there is considerable variability in exposure and targeting.  Still, a $50 ad on something good is a cheap way to get your name out there.  If every exposure costs two cents (a VERY rough guesstimate with a lot of spread), that fifty bucks could get you on 2,500 feeds and draw a few dozen interactions.

The exact stats on ad cost and engagements are available only to the advertisers.  But Facebook has a political ad tracker that reports stats in ballpark ranges.  Here’s a report of an ad that Council Member George Leventhal is running on his hilarious Avengers-themed campaign video.  He spent up to $100 on the ad and it showed up on 5,000-10,000 feeds.  (The actual people count will be less because some will have seen it more than once.)  This is a very typical ad in MoCo politics.

Now here is the ad Blair is running on his Post endorsement.  The report indicates that he spent between $10,000 and $50,000 and it showed up on more than a million feeds.

By the standards of MoCo politics, that’s unheard of.  Even David Trone rarely spends more than $1,000 on his Facebook ads.  We know of one ad – on men’s mental health – on which Trone spent between $1,000 and $5,000, receiving between 10,000 and 50,000 impressions.

So if you live in MoCo and have a Facebook account, we bet you know that David Blair has been endorsed by the Washington Post.  And if you didn’t, well… you need to log in!

Disclosure: Your author supports Roger Berliner and spends way too much time on Facebook.

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Marc Korman, transportation

Marc Korman’s Transportation Mailer

By Adam Pagnucco.

Transportation is an eternal issue in MoCo politics and most candidates mail on it.  But this has been Delegate Marc Korman’s top priority since his first campaign and he has worked hard on this issue in the General Assembly, notably playing a key role in passing dedicated Metro funding.  The only quarrel we have with this mailer is that Korman may not be taking enough credit for his work!  Still, your author is a big Korman fan and we look forward to his second term.

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Roger Berliner

Berliner Drops Trump Image from TV Ad

By Adam Pagnucco.

Council Member Roger Berliner, who is running for Executive, has issued a statement saying that he is dropping the image of Donald Trump from his TV ad.  The ad both criticized businessman David Blair, who is also running for Executive, and made a case in favor of Berliner.  We print Berliner’s statement below.

*****

June 6, 2018

BERLINER CAMPAIGN DROPS TRUMP IMAGE TO SHARPEN FOCUS ON BLAIR’S LACK OF EXPERIENCE

The Berliner for County Executive Campaign will begin running a new version of its TV ad tomorrow on local cable stations designed to focus more attention on candidate David Blair’s lack of government experience and use of his personal fortune to buy the election.

The original ad showed a photo of Blair blending into a photo of President Trump.  The overlay of Blair and Trump was designed to highlight the dangers of electing inexperienced business executives whose campaigns rely on lavish spending by a wealthy candidate.

Berliner said, “The comparison to Trump when it comes to zero experience and trying to buy the election is completely valid.  We made this change because the reaction to the Trump image was so intense that it began to distract from our main charge that David Blair is unqualified to be County Executive.  This new version will keep the focus on Blair and make our message even more powerful.”

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Adam Pagnucco, early voting

What Percentage of Voters Will Vote Early?

By Adam Pagnucco.

Long ago, the overwhelming percentage of voting occurred on Election Day.  Absentee and provisional ballots played roles mainly in tight races.  So campaign activities were performed on tight, escalating schedules and reached a climax on the one day when voters headed to the booth.  But in the era of early voting, it’s not so simple anymore.

Early voting in Maryland was established by a state constitutional amendment passed in 2008.  It was first used in the 2010 elections.  Usage of the option started slowly, with only 10% of voters voting early in the 2010 primary.  But in the 2014 general and 2016 primary, 18% of voters voted early and the percentage spiked to 31% in the 2016 general.  Democrats tend to vote early at higher rates than Republicans and unaffiliated voters.

Early voting has been less heavily used in MoCo than in the rest of the state but MoCo closed the gap in 2016.  In that year, MoCo’s early voting percentages were very close to state averages.

There are huge variations in early voting between counties.  Talbot County, on the Eastern Shore, is the early voting champ.  Forty-five percent of Talbot’s voters voted early in the 2016 general election.  Kent, Prince George’s and Queen Anne’s Counties also stand out.  On the other side, early voting is least frequent in Western Maryland’s Allegany and Washington Counties.

What percentage of voters will vote early this time?  Our hunch is that the huge spike in the 2016 general election was anomalous and related to strong feelings about the presidential candidates.  If we throw those results out, the long term trend is still up.  Our best guess is that between a fifth and a quarter of Democrats at the state level and in MoCo will vote early in the upcoming primary.  We shall see if we are right!

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MCDCC

MCDCC Slams Phony Dem Club

By Adam Pagnucco.

The Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee (MCDCC) has issued a press release denouncing a group that claims to be a “Democratic club” but has not been chartered by the party. The group has attacked Delegate Aruna Miller (D-15), who is running for Congress.  We reprint the release below.

*****

For Immediate Release

6/6/2018

Contact: Dave Kunes, Chair

Chair@MCDCC.org

The MCDCC has received several complaints about the origins of the officers and disputed claims of the unchartered organization calling itself, “Asian American Democratic Club.” While the Democratic Central Committee does not censor the comments of local Democratic voters or organizations, in this case we must publicly make clear, the group, “Asian American Democratic Club” has never applied for an official charter with the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee.

Central Committee Chair Dave Kunes said, “We have already seen the damage fake news and fake groups can do to our elections. The ‘Asian American Democratic Club’ is representing itself as a chartered Democratic organization and publishing highly questionable claims about Democratic primary candidates. Earlier this year, the founding treasurer of this group was exposed as using an identity stolen from a Texas student from Baylor University. Based on these issues, the Montgomery County Democratic Party disavows this group. We are also filing a complaint with Facebook to stop outside influencers who masquerade as legitimate Democratic organizations in order to inappropriately influence our elections.”

“This unsanctioned group should not be confused with our chartered organization the Coalition of Asian Pacific American Democrats (CAPAD). CAPAD has a longstanding reputation of legitimate and outstanding work supporting the communities of Democratic Asian American and  Pacific Islander communities in Montgomery County. The job of the Montgomery County Democratic Party is to protect our legitimate and chartered organizations, who put in the work to engage Democratic voters.”

Dave Kunes

Chair

Montgomery County Democratic Party

www.mcdcc.org

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Adam Pagnucco, Economy

This Type of Employment is Growing Rapidly in MoCo

By Adam Pagnucco.

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) confirms something we have reported before: wage and salary employment has been stagnant in MoCo for a decade.  But BEA data indicates something else is happening too: proprietor (self-employed) employment has been growing rapidly here and it pays less than wage and salary jobs.  That may not be a great sign for the county’s economy.

Unlike the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which we have cited in the past, BEA tracks two kinds of employment: wage and salary and proprietors.  (Check here for a summary of methodological differences between the two agencies.)  Proprietors are self-employed and operate through sole proprietorships (integrated with their personal income on their income tax returns), partnerships and tax-exempt cooperatives.  According to the Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners program, less than one in five of MoCo’s businesses have paid employees.  The county has a lot of self-employed people and little is said about them.

Here is the change in wage and salary employment between 2006 and 2016 for the seventeen Washington area jurisdictions tracked by BEA.

This data tells a similar story to BLS data we have previously presented: MoCo has trailed most of the region in job creation over the last decade.  Only Alexandria City and tiny Clarke County, VA have fared worse.

However, proprietor job data tells a much different story.  MoCo’s rate of proprietor job creation (36% over the last decade) is almost identical to the region as a whole.

Proprietor jobs aren’t inherently bad and it’s good that MoCo has SOME kind of employment growth.  But proprietors have much less security than full-time wage and salary workers.  Proprietors have sole responsibility for their health and retirement benefits and many of them have little cushion when contracts and/or clients dry up.  They also make less.  In 2016, the average wage and salary plus employer contribution to pensions, insurance and government social insurance totaled $89,337 per wage and salary employee in MoCo.  By contrast, the average earnings per proprietor totaled $66,498.

This isn’t happening just in MoCo; it’s a regional phenomenon.  But MoCo is an outlier.  The chart below compares wage and salary job creation and proprietor job creation by D.C. area jurisdiction between 2006 and 2016.  In the region as a whole, 1.2 proprietor jobs have been created for every wage and salary job over the last decade.  MoCo led the entire region in proprietor job creation with 53,672 jobs – a 36% growth rate.  But MoCo was one of the worst performers in creating wage and salary jobs as one of just three jurisdictions with an absolute job loss.  The result is a significant shift in MoCo away from wage and salary employment towards lower-paying contingent employment by a magnitude not seen in most of the rest of the region.

Unemployment rates don’t capture this kind of labor market shift.  If a self-employed person working on contracts is not seeking a full-time job even if they would like one, that person will not be counted as unemployed.

Proprietor growth can be a good thing if it reflects job-creating entrepreneurship.  That might be the case in places like Loudoun, D.C., Arlington, Fairfax and Prince William, all of which saw simultaneous increases in both proprietor and wage and salary employment.  It’s possible in those jurisdictions that new proprietorships created wage and salary jobs.  But MoCo is different from the above five places.  Here, surging proprietorships coincided with stagnant wage and salary employment.  Since proprietor jobs pay less on average, that may not be a good thing.

Let’s put this together with our previous work on the county’s economy.  MoCo business formation has slowed to a halt.  Private sector employers in the county have (at least through 2016) not restored their job counts above pre-recession levels.  These factors have contributed to big budget shortfalls, a nine percent property tax hike and county usage of one-time transfers to balance the budget.  Those MoCo taxpayers who have chosen to move out have higher incomes than those who are moving in.  And in MoCo, lower paying self-employment is outgrowing higher paying wage and salary employment.

Voters, take heed.

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