Joining the fray the Eastern Shore way

It’s a scenario of “better late than never”, but Democratic gubernatorial candidate Doug Gansler will spend time on the Eastern Shore as part of his announcement tour next week.

While he officially started up yesterday across Chesapeake Bay, the Gansler tour will spend the early part of next week working its way down the Eastern Shore, beginning in Centreville at 9 a.m. Monday and proceeding through a noon stop in Easton, a 3 p.m. appearance in Cambridge, and wrapping up at 6 p.m. at Salisbury University. It will be interesting to see who greets him there, given that five local elected officials (County Executive Rick Pollitt, County Council member Sheree Sample-Hughes, and Salisbury City Council members Jake Day, Shanie Shields, and Laura Mitchell) have publicly backed Anthony Brown for governor.

The Eastern Shore tour concludes on Tuesday, October 1 with a noon stop in Ocean Pines.

Gansler is working from a large polling hole, at least according to a internal Anthony Brown poll released this week (h/t Maryland Juice.) The GarinHartYang poll found Brown had support from 43% of the 608 likely Democratic primary voters, with Gansler at 21% and Heather Mizeur lagging far behind at 5%.

But I noticed a couple vulnerable spots. Among those who feel the state is on the wrong track, the O’Malley record seems to be sticking to Anthony Brown because he and Gansler are tied among that group. Moreover, the fact that not even 3 of 5 DEMOCRATS think the state is on the right track should be of concern to Brown and his backers. It will be interesting to see if Democrats still give Martin O’Malley a 73% approval rating as they did in the Maryland Poll back in January; if not, that’s a crack in the Brown armor.

So it may be worth listening to what Gansler has to say on this leg of the tour, particularly since Anthony Brown didn’t make a point of including our part of the state on his initial announcement tour (although his surrogate would gladly take money.)