{"id":6583,"date":"2016-04-21T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6583"},"modified":"2016-04-20T22:03:32","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T02:03:32","slug":"how-kathleen-matthews-could-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=6583","title":{"rendered":"How Kathleen Matthews Could Win"},"content":{"rendered":"

A guest blog by Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

Congressional District 8 has three strong Democratic candidates with a chance to win.\u00a0 One of them is former WJLA anchor and Marriott executive Kathleen Matthews.<\/p>\n

Strengths<\/strong><\/p>\n

Matthews is an attractive, polished female candidate \u2013 an advantage in any Democratic primary dominated by women.\u00a0 She has been a great fundraiser, excels on television and has run an intelligent campaign based on her strengths.\u00a0 She has been endorsed by the Washington Post, as was John Delaney in 2012.\u00a0 Emily\u2019s List has basically taken over her mail program, enabling her to shift more money to her home medium of TV.\u00a0 And she has not made any significant mistakes during the campaign.<\/p>\n

Weaknesses<\/strong><\/p>\n

Matthews started out with no history in local politics, even though she was once well-known as a local journalist.\u00a0 That caused skepticism from local Democratic Party activists, most of whom quickly lined up behind Senator Jamie Raskin.\u00a0 Her history of running Marriott\u2019s PAC, which donated to Republicans as well as Democrats<\/a>, is an issue for some.\u00a0 Comptroller Peter Franchot, Delegate Bill Frick and former County Executive Doug Duncan are among her few local endorsements.\u00a0 She has raised far more money out of state than in state<\/a>.\u00a0 And her campaign, while professional, has emphasized more standard national Democratic issues than local issues<\/a>.\u00a0 Still, Matthews\u2019s strengths outweigh her weaknesses and she has a very good chance to win.<\/p>\n

What Our Sources Say<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source: \u201cMatthews started slow – she was so poorly informed and unfamiliar with the people and issues in the district that she bordered on offensive in early appearance and meetings with activists and other potential supporters – but she has become much more comfortable and has performed reasonably well in later candidate forums and debates. The conventional wisdom – and I suspect it is correct – is that Trone takes a bigger chunk of support from Matthews than from Raskin, because Raskin is presumably strongest among the most intensively engaged Democratic base voters, while Trone and Matthews are competing for voters who are less ideological and are less likely to know much about his legislative record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: \u201cAmong insiders, there’s a sense that Kathleen is running a very generic campaign.\u00a0 Campaign-in-a-box kinda thing.\u00a0 But insiders are usually wrong, and she obviously has gender on her side (and isn’t afraid to use it).\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: \u201cWith all due respect to Kathleen who seems like a perfectly nice and intelligent woman, female voters in this District are far too smart to be pandered to the way she has this election cycle. To talk about her time at Marriott in the context of creating jobs and being a business person is like saying her husband – who was Tip O’Neill’s press secretary – served as Speaker of the House.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: \u201cStrong candidate and strong campaign.\u00a0 If it weren\u2019t for a completely unprecedented amount of self-funding by another outsider candidate, she would have the race sealed.\u201d<\/p>\n

How She Could Win<\/strong><\/p>\n

Matthews and her chief ally, Emily\u2019s List, are running an all-female, all-the-time kind of campaign.\u00a0 And they are smart to do so since women account for roughly 60% of Montgomery County\u2019s Democratic voters, no matter how you cut the electorate<\/a>.\u00a0 If Matthews gets a majority of women, she could start with 35 points.\u00a0 If she adds just five more points from men, she has 40, and that\u2019s probably good enough to win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A guest blog by Adam Pagnucco. Congressional District 8 has three strong Democratic candidates with a chance to win.\u00a0 One of them is former WJLA anchor and Marriott executive Kathleen Matthews. Strengths Matthews is an attractive, polished female candidate \u2013 an advantage in any Democratic primary dominated by women.\u00a0 She has been a great fundraiser, … Continue reading How Kathleen Matthews Could Win<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[151,1772],"tags":[1301,1545,1308],"class_list":["post-6583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-kathleen-matthews","tag-mdcd8","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-kathleen-matthews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-1Ib","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6590,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6583\/revisions\/6590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}