Tag Archives: David Blair

2018 Montgomery County Executive Race

Heavens to Nancy. We Might Have Competition in a MoCo General Election!

You can read some of my thoughts on Nancy Floreen’s mulling over entering the county executive race in an interview with WAMU.

In essence, I consider it virtually impossible that Councilmember Floreen plunges into the race if David Blair ends up winning the tightly contested Democratic primary. Floreen’s bid is being talked up by the more or less the same developer folks who back Empower Montgomery and vehemently oppose Elrich.

David Blair has a different background from Nancy Floreen. He’s a former business exec, while she has earned her political stripes serving as Mayor of Garrett Park, on the Planning Board, and on the county council. But their issue positions aren’t radically different. Essentially, a bid by Floreen would be a mulligan for the business community if Blair loses.

Even more important, Floreen would lack the essential money from the business community required for a serious campaign. Getting on the ballot is tough enough in such a short period and would be hard to do without financial support. Of course, that leaves aside the money needed for a campaign or fighting a lawsuit challenging her eligibility to be on the ballot because she filed to run as an unaffiliated voter while still registered as a Democrat.

Some argue that Floreen’s gambit is an effort to try to get a women into power after the county executive and council primary results resulted in the nomination of one woman. At the end of the day, I tend to regard that as nice verbiage that will disappear if David Blair wins the nomination. Besides, Nancy Floreen has a lot more to offer beyond “girl power” as a candidate.

Earlier today, Del. Kirill Reznik made the case that the Democratic candidates are all good, reasonable people. Boiled down, it articulated the wisdom of the old, typing practice phrase “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” It’s time for Democrats to rally around the winner.

Except it’s hard for me to get that exercised about the idea of Nancy Floreen running as an independent. If an independent like Bernie Sanders can take lots of Democratic Party money for his Senate bids and even run for the Democratic presidential nomination, why can’t a Democrat like Nancy Floreen run as an independent?

The Republican label is now so toxic that it’s virtually unthinkable of a Republican winning an election in Montgomery. Having Robin Ficker as your champion doesn’t help. That has forced all contests into the Democratic party, and only a select share of the electorate participates in the Democratic primary. Many voters end up frustrated as it renders the general election meaningless.

Parties are valuable because they provide useful cues to voters as a starting point (often an ending point) in evaluating candidates. There are divisions but no truly organized factions within the Democratic Party to structure politics for voters. Moreover, as V.O. Key noted long ago. one-partyism facilitates rapid ideological movement within a party of the sort we’ve seen in Peter Franchot’s evolution from progressive tribune to Hogan buddy.

The increasing leftward trend of the Democrats and extreme right-wing nature of the vast majority of today’s Republicans leaves a lot of unoccupied space in the center. Unsurprisingly, some pols may begin to take advantage of it and a lot of voters might well respond.

I should make clear that, while I respect Nancy Floreen, that these points are general rather than specific. She’s right that the county could sorely use more competition in the general. At the state level, the Democrats would also benefit as it would help motivate Democratic voters to turn out in the general election.

More specifically, I do not share the fears held by some in the business community regarding Marc Elrich as county executive. It’s important to look at specifics beyond ideological type. Elrich is far from someone who simply mouths progressive slogans and will mindlessly attempt to implement them.

If you listen to him speak in detail about issues, it’s clear that he’s highly knowledgeable and has many concrete, practical ideas that are far from whackadoodle to address problems that all Democrats claim they want to address. Elrich will also have to deal with a county council with a range of views. Assuming he wins the Democratic primary, I think he deserves his shot and will have my vote. I can say the same regarding David Blair.

Though I end up with the same vote as Kirill Reznik here, I applaud people looking beyond party (at least when the candidates merit it). Small-d democratic competition is healthy. Let’s embrace it.

P.S. Having assumed life would be dull after the primary, I’m stepping away from the keyboard for a few weeks. I trust Adam Pagnucco will continue to make healthy mischief in my absence.

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2018 Montgomery County Executive Race

County Exec Race Going to Be Extremely Tight

Yesterday, Adam Pagnucco explained that David Blair needs to win the outstanding ballots by 6.2% in order to pass Marc Elrich in the final vote tally. The absentee ballots counted yesterday suggest that this is entirely possible.

Yesterday, 3793 absentee ballots were counted. Among those voters, 3292 participated in the Democratic primary. Fewer voters tend to cast votes as one goes down the ballot, a phenomenon known as roll-off. In the Democratic primary for county executive, 3140 cast valid votes.

Blair lead Elrich by 7.1% among the absentees counted, which allowed him to pick up a net 223 votes and close the gap with Elrich to 269 votes. Substantial numbers of absentee and provisional ballots have yet to be counted.

Why the difference between election day and absentee voters? It could be a number of factors. One reason might be if Blair had a better absentee voter program than Elrich. Once an absentee ballot is requested, it’s vital for campaigns to contact a voter in order to try to obtain their vote. Another explanation might be that voters who made decisions prior to election day tended to vote differently than those who cast ballots on the day itself.

In any case, it now looks like the final count may be exceedingly close. We’ll almost certainly have to wait for provisional ballots to be counted, after Independence Day. Provisional ballots may show a different pattern than for absentee ballots, but that is a wild card and we don’t know how voters affected by the MVA screw-up tended to vote compared to the whole electorate. (It turns out the number of registered voters affected has crept up again and now reached 90,000.)

Even when the count is finalized, I could well imagine the losing campaign requesting a recount.

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Adam Pagnucco, County Executive, Marc Elrich

Does Blair Have a Chance?

By Adam Pagnucco.

With early votes and election day votes counted, Marc Elrich leads David Blair by 452 votes to win the Democratic County Executive nomination.  This would be a close margin in a House of Delegates race but it’s incredibly close for a county-wide race.  The final outcome will now be decided by absentee and provisional ballots.  Does Blair have a chance or will Elrich hold on to win?

According to Bethesda Magazine, the county’s Board of Elections received 4,900 Democratic absentee ballots as of Monday.  In addition, 3,614 provisional ballots were cast but that total includes all parties.  For the sake of discussion, let’s assume that 2,500 of those provisional ballots came from Democrats.  If there are only 5,000 Democratic absentee ballots received, that is 7,500 outstanding votes.  A higher end assumption would be that 7,500 Democratic absentee ballots come in, resulting in 10,000 outstanding votes.

Let’s do a math exercise on the final outcome of the absentee and provisional votes.  In the first scenario, let’s assume that the percentages of three categories – Blair’s percentage, Elrich’s percentage and the percentage of all the other candidates – exactly match the shares recorded during early and election day voting.  In this scenario, Elrich picks up between 30 and 40 votes more than Blair and he would win.

Now let’s do a scenario in which Blair wins.  Since Blair and Elrich are the top two and no one else is even close, it’s the margin between them that will determine the victor.  In this second scenario, we will hold the percentage of all the other candidates constant and merely adjust the totals for Blair and Elrich.  Adding 3.3 points to Blair and subtracting 3.3 points from Elrich produces a net gain for Blair of 465 votes in a 7,500 vote universe, enough to win.  That margin would go up to 620 votes in a 10,000 vote universe.  But note that this scenario requires Blair to lead Elrich by 6.2 points among these groups, a very different result than Elrich’s 0.4 point lead in early and election day votes.

We adjusted the percentage for the other candidates up and down and didn’t find much change in the margin Blair needs, which is more than six points over Elrich.  Again, this is a departure from the cumulative early vote and election day totals.

Will it happen?  Readers, you tell us!

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2018 Montgomery County Executive Race

Voting for Change

In this county executive race, I’ve been looking for someone who can shake things up a bit. This doesn’t mean that I think Montgomery County is a bad place to live or that Ike Leggett has done a bad job. On the contrary, County Executive Leggett saw us through a deep recession and protected key county services by making tough choices. I grew up and love living here.

But Montgomery County is not on a sustainable path. We need to do more to encourage employment and economic growth. The current model of county government cannot continue as it relies on ever greater expenditures that we still have trouble meeting even now that the recession is behind us.

As a result, I’ve been looking for a candidate for county executive who recognizes our many manifest strengths but is unafraid to try new solutions. I’d like our new county executive, whatever their political perspective, not to feel trapped by how we’ve handled matters in the past.

We have a number of excellent candidates this year. As we head down the home stretch of what has been an unusually hard fought and negative campaign by Montgomery County standards, tempers are beginning to fray. I hope we can all take a deep breath and recognize that just about all of the candidates have the skills required to serve ably as county executive.

Rose Krasnow is a triple threat in terms of experience working on Wall Street, having lead a major city government in Rockville, and holding a senior position at the Planning Board. If you speak with her, it rapidly becomes clear that she is extremely fluent – more than most sitting politicians – in the complex issues of the budget and planning. At the same time, her campaign’s emphasis on experience has left me wondering how she’d be innovative beyond favoring growth.

I have long made clear that George Leventhal is temperamentally unsuited to be county executive. Nonetheless, I’d regard it as a sign from above that this blog should continue for another four to eight years if he won, as he and Robin Ficker provide more than enough copy. George is already wearing Superman outfits. Can we get him into cheetah shorts? Seriously though, his support from a group that wants massive new development on River Road, despite no plan for transit there, and for rezoning single-family neighborhoods for apartment buildings gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Bill Frick knows how politics works from his experience in the House of Delegates. Yet he is outside county government and has a real zest for restructuring it, as his leadership in taking on entrenched interests supporting our county’s liquor monopoly demonstrates. Like Rose, he’d like to get the county’s growth engine moving again. Unfortunately, his campaign just doesn’t seem to have taken off.

In my view, Roger Berliner has the strongest “insider” case to make. He has a number of nice accomplishments under his belt, including good work on the environment. Compared to many, he has a far more intuitive understanding of the perspective of ordinary residents on issues such as PEPCO service and the impact of federal tax changes on county residents. He has been making the case that he knows how to innovate (think evolution, not revolution) and has had good success at building coalitions on the Council. Roger has struggled because it’s an anti-establishment year and David Blair has taken much of the oxygen his campaign needs.

That leaves Marc Elrich and David Blair, who are seen as the leading two candidates despite the absence of any public polling data. Despite having served on the Council for three terms, Marc Elrich is unquestionably still an outsider who is not part of the Rockville consensus. He has never been elected council chair. While some might see this as a sign he doesn’t play well with others, it is more of a badge of honor in a year when voters are highly critical of the Council.

Marc makes many happy but others quite nervous because of his strong progressive viewpoint. But he simply is not Montgomery County’s version of Hugo Chavez. More importantly, he is not some ideologue who is all hat and no cattle. This is a candidate who has thoughtful, practical, concrete ideas on how to make meaningful change that benefits all county residents. His plan for countywide BRT remains the best, biggest idea proposed to combat transportation problems that cause development-limiting and soul-killing traffic in a long time.

In Marc’s case, his professed desire to help “all residents” is not simply a code for only the poorest, though his passion for politics stems from working to help people who are struggling.  Marc gets that the middle class face increasing burdens. Unlike some progressives, he also understands fully that the county cannot flourish without its share of successful businesses and upper class residents, so demonizing them is not the solution.

Marc hasn’t held executive positions previously but has clear ideas about how he would restructure county government from day one. One concern has been that he has a progressive candidate would cause skittish business to shy away. Except that I think business would quickly see that, while we’d have some real change, the People’s Republic is not upon us.

David Blair has burst on to the political scene thanks to the political ads that he has been able to self-fund and two editorials endorsing his candidacy from the Washington Post. I’ve met David but since he hasn’t previously had a high local profile or been active in politics, he is less of a known quantity to me.

As with Marc Elrich, I would ignore stereotypes that suggest David Blair is the boogeyman is disguise. His having been a Republican many years ago should not be disqualifying. Yes, he is a businessman running for office but he is not Trump II. Though it’s a low bar, I see no sign that he shares any of Trump’s repulsive bigoted narcissistic tendencies. People who know Blair think he is a terrific guy and would be a great county executive.

At the same time, I have some concern with plutocratic politics. I admire successful businessmen but don’t know that his success always translates into political acumen and am uneasy with the idea that the ability to spend a lot of money on a political campaign is a qualification for public office. But not all wealthy businessmen are the same. Jim Shea, a trailing gubernatorial candidate, has been deeply involved in the Baltimore community for years, and has lots of thoughtful ideas for Maryland.

David Blair brings some real assets to the table. He would have instant credibility with the business community. Unquestionably, he has executive skills. Unlike many executives, he seemingly has the ability to hear people and listen to them, as well as give marching orders. If elected, he’ll need to develop them further in order to work with a Council that doesn’t work for him. I think he’ll have the ability to run with good ideas even if they didn’t pop out of his own head.

I’m still wondering how much of a change agent David Blair would be as county executive. On the plus side, he’s an outsider who is not wedded to current perspectives and has articulated various fresh policy ideas. Nevertheless, it’s unclear to me how much change this would mean in practice. I’ve heard that he wants to retain much of the current administration. When I asked the campaign about this, they replied:

We are committed to ensuring the best and brightest lead our departments and are fortunate that many of these leaders are already in place. We will evaluate each position and our approach will be comprehensive, transparent and inclusive.

Voters can view this as a sensible process for ensuring orderly turnover and acknowledging that many good people are already in place who would know how to carry out needed reforms. Alternatively, others will see this as someone who isn’t quite ready to hit the ground running and is still learning about county government departments.

The other concern from my perspective is the need for more business versus residential development. Though there is a lot of residential development slated to go ahead, developers want more density and development for the same reason that government employees want higher salaries.

Except residential development is different from other kinds of business because it brings new residents who demand a welter of more expensive services. In particular, few residents are net contributors to the county budget while they have kids in school, as education takes up half of the county budget.

Our infrastructure is already strained. We need more business beyond residential development to bring in the revenue to pay for it. As a businessman, I think David Blair grasps that idea well and has emphasized business in his campaign. But his major outside funding and backers comes from the development industry.

Final Thoughts

Like many candidates, I’m grateful that the primary will be over tomorrow night. Not to flail a dead horse, but remember that we have a lot of good people running for office and respect the choices of our fellow citizens. Let’s also comfort and thank those who run but don’t win. Running for office isn’t easy and Montgomery is fortunate to have so many willing to put themselves out there.

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County Executive

Why I Support David Blair

By Lawrence N. Rosenblum, CPA.

As Ike Leggett’s Treasurer and long-time friend, I had great concerns two years ago about whether the next Montgomery County Executive would preserve his legacy and build on his great accomplishments. Much to my dismay, I had strong doubts that the people rumored to be running would do that.

Last summer, I met David Blair and my half-hour introductory meeting lasted almost two hours. I instantly realized that he was the Obi-Wan who would ultimately be our only hope. Since then, I’ve become convinced that not only will he protect and improve upon Ike’s successes, but he will be an outstanding County Executive in his own right.

Here’s why: he really cares about the future of Montgomery County; he has demonstrated superior executive ability by growing a small business from a one room office into a $6,000,000,000 Fortune 500 Company; he’s smart and knows how to create jobs; and he is one of the best listeners I have ever met (which is rare for a politician).

The fact that he has invested his hard-earned money into this campaign shows us that he puts his money where his mouth is. Because he knew he was not well known, and that it would take a tremendous amount to become competitive, he was reluctant to ask others to contribute to what may have been a futile effort. He took great risk and I applaud that.

It’s time for fresh ideas and new approaches. The same old, same old won’t work anymore as we face unprecedented challenges locally. We must find ways to do more with less. We must embrace and leverage new technology and initiate innovative solutions. I’m convinced that David can and will do just that.

Since he sold his company, David has traveled the county and met with thousands of Montgomery County residents researching best practices and further understanding the issues we face. Not having vast political experience is a plus in my book because he has the knowledge, fresh ideas and discipline to lead.

It’s a shame that David’s competition has resorted to such vile, negative campaigning. Spreading ridiculous lies doesn’t hoodwink our smart voters. The backlash from these attacks is only fueling David’s supporters to work even harder to help get him elected. It takes great courage and restraint not to lower oneself and fight back. I’m so proud of David for not playing in the mud with them. I should remind those who attack David for being a Republican while he was in his 20’s raising a family and building a business (and not enmeshed in politics) that beloved progressive Bernie Sanders has only been a Democrat for one of the last 25 years and he isn’t one today.

Lastly, students of history will remember that there was only one time since the adoption of our charter form of government (1970) that a sitting County Council Member was elected to the position of County Executive. That exception turned out to be a disaster for the county. They call this position County Executive for a reason. And here’s why: legislators are usually not good executives. Executives make good County Executives.

I’m so proud of the non-traditional, positive, innovative and uplifting campaign David Blair has run. I support him 100% and you should too.

Larry Rosenblum has been Ike Leggett’s Treasurer since 2005.

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2018 Montgomery County Executive Race

Lobbyists with Blair Connection File Flimsy Claim Against Elrich and Berliner

Screenshot from online Listings of Registered Lobbyists

Lobbyists Sushant Sidh and David Carroll, Jr. have filed a complaint against Marc Elrich and Roger Berliner’s campaigns for county executive. Sidh and Carroll are principals at Capitol Strategies, an Annapolis lobbying firm that represented Catalyst Rx while David Blair was still CEO of the company.

I am posting the complaint made by Sidh and Carroll to the State Board of Elections below in full, which has already been discussed on A Miner Detail. Seventh State received a copy of the complaint via email from Sushant Sidh at 4:59pm on Friday afternoon.

As Adam has previously mentioned, we both receive requests to publicize dirt on campaigns. Seventh State did not publicize this claim alleging illegal collusion between Progressive Maryland and the Elrich and Berliner campaigns because I think it has little merit.

The complaint uses words like “reasonable to assume” and “there is reason to suspect” but provides no hard evidence for gauzy suppositions with the sole source being a reference to an article in A Miner Detail. The follow-up email on the amended complaint this morning at 10:26am does not contain any further information.

This complaint followed on one previously filed by Brian Kildee alleging coordination between David Blair and Empower Montgomery. Blair was one of the founders of Empower Montgomery. (The complaint cites a 7S post that points out that Blair’s name was removed from the website listing of the founders.) While Kildee has donated to Bill Frick, also a candidate for county executive, he has not been linked to either the campaigns of Marc Elrich or Roger Berliner.

Seventh State did not publish this complaint either, which has also now been posted below. Kildee’s complaint contains a number of attachments that I haven’t posted here. This complaint is more interesting but does not, in my view, contain conclusive proof of coordination between Blair and Empower Montgomery.

I do not know if Sidh and Carroll’s complaint was meant as retaliatory but the timing will only serve to feed such speculation. Efforts to reach Sidh and Carroll for comment immediately before publication of this piece were unsuccessful.

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Adam Pagnucco, County Executive, Marc Elrich, Term Limits

What Will Term Limits Voters Do?

By Adam Pagnucco.

MoCo Democrats are not monolithic.  There are several segments of them.  There are the 40,000 or so Super Democrats, the ones who vote in every mid-term primary.  Then there are the sixty percent of MoCo Dems who are women.  There are the voters who live in the Democratic Crescent – the area from Takoma Park over to Bethesda and Cabin John – who disproportionately turn out to vote.  And of course there are people over age 60, who account for a majority of regular voters.  Candidates are aware of all of these groups and target their communications to them.  But there’s one group – potentially a big one – which few people are talking about.

Term limits voters.

In the 2016 general election, 70% of voters approved term limits.  We know that a majority of the Democrats who voted in that election supported term limits because of simple mathematics.  In that election, 62% of the voters were Democrats.  If all 38% of the voters who were Republicans, third party members or independents voted yes, then the other 32% must have come from the Dems.  Divide 32% by 62% and you get 52% of Dems voting for term limits.  If a few of the non-Dems voted no, the Dem percentage goes up.

The other thing we know about term limits voters is where they live.  Every part of the county voted for term limits except Takoma Park.  In most Downcounty areas, term limits support ranged from 60% to 70%.  Upcounty areas were more supportive with term limits getting 80% or more of the vote in Clarksburg, Damascus, Derwood, Laytonsville, North Potomac and Poolesville.  Upcounty areas have greater concentrations of Republicans than elsewhere.  We ran a correlation coefficient between Republican voter percentage and term limits vote percentage at the precinct level and it worked out to 0.6 – meaning that partisan status was associated with most, but not all, of term limits variability.  In other words, other things were at work too.

That’s about all we know about term limits voters from public data.  There’s a whole lot we don’t know, including:

How many people who voted for term limits in that general election are going to be voting in this mid-term primary?

We have said it before and we will say it again: MoCo Dem primary voters are not the same people as MoCo general election voters.  Just because a majority of presidential general election Dems voted for term limits does not mean that a majority of this year’s mid-term primary Dems will have voted for them.  In fact, we bet it will be a lot less purely because the 40,000 or so Super Dems will be somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of this year’s electorate and we are skeptical that they disproportionately voted for term limits.  That said, the number of term limits voters this year won’t be zero – they are definitely out there.  Even if you split the difference and assume that a quarter of this year’s Dem primary voters supported term limits, that’s a big enough chunk to swing an election.

Why did people vote for term limits?

This is another question to which there is no answer outside of polling.  We tend to agree with former Council Member Steve Silverman, who told Bethesda Magazine, “It was a combination of interests that created the perfect storm that led to the passage of term limits.”  In other words, there were many factors that drove those votes: anger with the nine percent property tax hike, concerns over land use, unhappiness with traffic and cost of living or maybe a simple desire for change, however nebulous that might be.  While we believe that the Dem primary electorate is indeed different from the general electorate of two years ago, we don’t believe those concerns have gone away.

Who will they support this time?

That’s an easier question.  Whatever the reason, it’s hard to interpret the vote for term limits as anything other than a call for change of some kind.  The current Democratic field for Executive contains three term-limited Council Members and three people who are not term-limited Council Members.  That’s a little simplistic – Marc Elrich is running as a progressive change candidate despite his 31-year history of elected office.  But since Takoma Park is Elrich’s home base and that is the only area in the county which voted against term limits, we are hesitant to believe that many term limits supporters are Elrich voters.  Rather, we believe they will lean to the three outsiders – Delegate Bill Frick (D-16), former Rockville Mayor Rose Krasnow and businessman David Blair.  And of those three, Blair has by far the most resources with which to communicate with them.

Speaking of Blair, we found his recent exchange with Washington Post reporter Jennifer Barrios fascinating.

When asked about his political base, David Blair considers the question then poses one of his own.

“My political base,” he says after a pause. “So does that mean who’s going to come out and support me?”…

“The people that tend to gravitate to me are the ones that believe Montgomery County is a great place to live but we’re slipping,” Blair said. “And there’s a level of frustration, and it could be related to transportation, schools, social services and this — why can’t a county with this level of wealth pay for the services that we need? — and a recognition that a healthy community needs a vibrant, growing business community.”

Those people sound like term limits voters and they have the makings of a political base.  Marc Elrich knows exactly who his base is: progressives, development opponents and people who live in and around Takoma Park.  Elrich’s messaging smartly concentrates on those voter segments.  His troops’ ability to get out those votes is a major reason why he might be the next Executive.

Term limits voters won’t be a majority of the Democratic mid-term primary electorate.  But they might be large enough in numbers to rival the size of Elrich’s base.  If Blair can organize them – and if there are enough of them – we might be staying up late on election night.

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County Executive, Roger Berliner

Berliner: Anybody But Blair

By Adam Pagnucco.

This is the fourth straight mailer sent by Council Member Roger Berliner, who is running for Executive, against David Blair.  Berliner’s grounds for criticizing Blair are that he is a former Republican, has no experience in government service and is self-funding most of his campaign, all of which are true.  In this particular mailer, Berliner says, “My other Democratic opponents have a history of involvement in local issues and have earned the right to be considered.  I hope you choose me, but they each have experience as Democrats worth evaluating.  I respectfully urge you to not consider David Blair.”

Berliner has officially joined the Anybody But Blair camp.  We reprint the mailer below.

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Adam Pagnucco, County Executive, Progressive Maryland

Evaluating the Allegations Against Blair

By Adam Pagnucco.

Businessman David Blair is the only candidate in the County Executive race to be targeted by both negative mail and two negative TV ads.  The combined expenditures for these mailers and TV ads now total over a half million dollars, making Blair the only Executive candidate to take fire on that financial scale.

How do we evaluate these attacks?

First, your author has a background in evaluating evidence of corporate conduct.  For sixteen years, I was a strategic researcher in the labor movement.  One of my jobs was to investigate companies who were targets of union organizing campaigns.  I performed dozens of these investigations and it was painstaking, tedious work.  The basic descriptives of the company – its business lines, affiliates, history, executives, finances, work locations, project experience, client lists, political contributions and so on – were a necessary predicate for researching its safety, labor, environmental, legal and media records.  Some of the dossiers I compiled were over a hundred pages and required months of travel to assemble.  I had three primary tasks: gather the information, determine its utility and craft it into communication pieces that were truthful, relevant and avoided the risk of defamation litigation.  Over the years, I uncovered extraordinarily bad behavior on the part of employers including but not limited to sexual harassment, racial discrimination, threatening deportation to block union organizing campaigns, environmental destruction, bid rigging, intentionally exposing employees to lethal working conditions to save money and a LOT more.  That research background gives me a standard of comparison for some of the allegations against Blair and it is partially through that prism that I write today’s post.

Here are the main allegations against Blair.

He is a former Republican with a spotty voting record.

This is true and Blair has admitted to it.  Blair is one of two former Republicans running for office in MoCo this year.  The other is Council District 1 candidate Meredith Wellington, who was a Republican member of the Planning Board as recently as 2007, four years after Blair became a Democrat.  Those who would pass judgment on Blair for this should hold Wellington to the same standard assuming that either is to be judged at all.

He is a self-funder who has not held political office.

This is also true.  Blair is one of MANY self-funding Democrats who have run for office, including Senators Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal, Herb Kohl and Jon Corzine and House members John Delaney, Jane Harman and Jared Polis.  Then there is party-hopping, self-funding former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who now spends millions to promote gun control and plans to spend $80 million to elect Democratic House candidates, acts for which he is praised by the left.  And liberal self-funder Ned Lamont, who famously challenged Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman from the left in 2006, was just endorsed by the Democratic Party for Governor.  All of these politicians self-financed millions in their races so if Blair is to be criticized, so must all the rest.  In any event, only one self-funder above the $200,000 level has won office from MoCo in the last twelve years.  Our county’s history demonstrates that money can never substitute for a real agenda that connects with voters.

One of his former companies settled a class action over disability insurance.

There was indeed a settlement and there is a website documenting the lawsuit.  The complaint alleges a variety of violations related to disability insurance sold by one of Blair’s companies that was endorsed by former actor Christopher Reeve.  But Blair himself did not settle the case: he sold the company in 2012 and the suit was settled five years later.  That means one or more of the successor entities and/or co-defendants made the decision to settle, and if Blair thought the suit was without merit, he did not get to decide whether to fight it at trial.  Finally, a settlement does not equate to a trial verdict in determining the truth of a complaint – indeed, the whole point of a settlement is to avoid trial and a finding of fact either way.  The Blair campaign commented on the suit here.

“Blair’s company jacked prescription drug prices.”

This is a key claim in Progressive Maryland’s TV ad and it is based on one 2012 opinion article in the Daily Kos.  Now let’s reflect on the nature of the Daily Kos.  It’s a liberal opinion blog that allows content submissions from thousands of people without the editorial standards of traditional journalistic organizations like the New York Times or the Washington Post.  The site’s terms of use state:

We are an Internet Service Provider, e.g., We are Not Responsible For and Do Not Necessarily Hold the Opinions Expressed by Our Content Contributors.

It should go without saying that with hundreds of thousands of registered users, and tens of thousands of diarist/bloggers, there is great diversity in thoughts and opinions. So just because you read it on the site doesn’t mean “the site” said it or thinks it. That would make for a very schizophrenic site.

The Daily Kos itself does not represent its content as fact-based.  Accordingly, without further investigation, an opinion article of this kind does not automatically deserve the presumption of truth.

A still shot from Progressive Maryland’s ad.

As a corporate researcher and a political writer, your author is acquainted with the standards of defamation when applied to public figures.  Briefly put, a public figure (like a celebrity or politician) can only win a defamation judgment against a defendant if the defendant knowingly made a false statement or made a statement with “reckless disregard for the truth.”

This came up all the time in my work for the labor movement as fortifying our communications against defamation suits was a very high priority.  For everything we said about a targeted employer, I had reams of paperwork (usually court records) to back it up.  I am confident that my union’s attorneys would have blocked me from using something like the Daily Kos article unless I had interviewed the author and acquired documents to back up his or her statements.  And even then, our attorneys probably would have still blocked it as unverified by a traditional media organization, government entity or court.

Finally, the way in which Progressive Maryland’s ad characterizes the settlement and the Daily Kos post is very problematic.  The ad said, “Blair’s company jacked prescription drug prices and another company sold virtually worthless disability claims.”  It would be truthful to say that Blair’s companies were accused of these things.  But allegations from settled claims that were not decided in court and an opinion blog post should not be characterized as objective facts.  It’s these kinds of loose standards that make people so skeptical of political ads.

David Blair is equivalent to Donald Trump.

This one has been made in both negative TV ads and by Blair critics too numerous to count.

Another still shot from Progressive Maryland’s ad.

Equating Blair to Trump fundamentally misjudges the nature of Trump.  If Trump’s sole failings were his wealth and inexperience, he would be no different from all the many other self-funders who run for office.  The real reason why Trump is the Anti-Christ of progressive politics is that he is a vicious racist, misogynist and xenophobe whose narcissism is matched only by his greed and stupidity.  He is literally separating children from their parents and jamming them into detention centers.  And that’s just a start!  Saying that Blair is the same as Trump is over the top.

Trump is holding immigrant children in cages like this one.  David Blair is not Donald Trump.

Our judgment on Blair is that he has his liabilities, especially being a former Republican and desiring high office without prior elected experience.  It’s understandable that voters might choose to oppose him on those grounds alone.  But critiques of his business record pale in comparison to the dozens of investigations your author conducted in the labor movement.  And his critics’ claims that he is equivalent to Trump are out of bounds.  Furthermore, we give him credit for highlighting economic competitiveness as one of his core themes as it aligns with our many concerns on that issue.

Whatever its outcome, we eagerly await the end of this increasingly brutal campaign.

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