Obscurity revisited

Last year a man from Worcester County ran for the U.S. Senate on the Democratic ticket, gathering the fewest votes of anyone in the primary field with 1,064 votes – less than 1/2 of 1 percent. Undaunted, he pursued the age-old but rarely successful tactic of being a write-in candidate and picked up an underwhelming 48 votes statewide. Only Mary Podlesak, a fellow write-in, and her 21 votes finished behind Ed Tinus.

Yet it appears Tinus will be taking his low-budget, retail effort to the governor’s race. I was at a gathering this afternoon and was handed a slickly produced sheet announcing itself as the “Maryland Sustainability Program”:

[gview file=”http://monoblogue.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Sustainability-Program.pdf”]

Note that Tinus wasn’t the featured person at the event, but was instead just one of several local candidates at this pig roast. He’s the only one who ran as a Democrat in 2012, though. But Ed isn’t a typical liberal as he has been a fixture at TEA Party gatherings, including this one just before the 2012 election. (Sorry about the lack of photos on the post. It’s an issue I need to resolve.)

In looking up “Citizens for Self-Governance” though, I found a national organization which was formed by Mark Meckler, who helped to found the TEA Party Patriots before leaving them to create the national group.

Now there are a couple oddities I want to dispense with before moving on with this: the flyer has no authority line, nor does it state whether the Tinus/Townsend team is running in one of the party primaries or as unaffiliated. (In 2012 Tinus ran as a Democrat; moreover, the website he posts there is still set to the 2012 race.) Nor does he have a campaign committee set up yet with the state. But a platform which features these tax cuts would, by itself, place him far to the right of the Democratic field if he follows that path once again. Yes, it is quite vague but I don’t hear Anthony Brown, Doug Gansler, or Heather Mizeur trumpeting similar cuts.

But it was the final proposal which made me sit up and take notice.

Longtime readers know I’m an advocate for a second bridge crossing. But I was scratching my head trying to figure out where this would be until I did a Wikipedia search for Maryland Route 702 and found out it’s the eastbound spur off the eastern terminus of I-695 on the Bay side of Baltimore. Okay, makes sense so far – but this would be one LONG crossing which would likely have to connect to Maryland Route 20 in Kent County.

Still, I find it interesting that this is one of the key elements of the Tinus platform. Personally I would hold out for a more southerly crossing closer to Salisbury between Calvert and Dorchester counties as Chesapeake Bay reaches one of its narrower points. But it’s good to find someone else pondering the state’s real transportation needs, not some money-losing rail lines to nowhere. Ed has the longest of long shot campaigns in front of him, but if he makes this one point a topic of discussion it may be fruitful in the end.

An open and shut case

Perhaps it’s a sign that we’re outgrowing our britches, but a couple recent developments have shown that dealing with new media can make for a dangerous servant and – particularly – fearful master. (Indeed, under the person in question government may become even more forceful.)

In browsing the internet yesterday I came across this post on the Maryland site DMV Daily. written by Hassan Giordano, which alleged that Anthony Brown’s campaign denied his requests for comment on what they considered “slanted coverage” favorable to the campaign of opponent Doug Gansler. “(We) were rebuffed our attempt with the firm statement that ‘the Brown campaign doesn’t acknowledge or respond to bloggers’,” Giordano wrote.

Of course, that assertion came with the caveat “they would make an exception for the senior political writer of this publication,” for which Giordano wisely refused the bait.

So let’s compare this to the way new media is treated on the Republican side.

In compiling my dossier on candidates for future publication, I’ve come across candidate interviews for all three GOP hopefuls (as well as a possible fourth) and participated in a couple myself. While I use Jackie Wellfonder’s Raging Against the Rhetoric site as an example, the candidates have been open to other sites as well, particularly Red Maryland and their various radio shows. Certainly I’ve found the candidates willing to speak with me and answer questions; in fact Ron George woke me up this morning responding to a Facebook post (because my phone whistles with these notifications.)

I’ll grant that all candidates, regardless of party, have their list of bloggers and media people (in both traditional and new media) that they have found friendly or at least fair. Even back in the early days of this site there was the question of whether untrained journalists could be fair, and the situation continues to this day despite the fact new media is much more prominent and (almost) mainstream.

So this leads to my question of the day: if a candidate doesn’t want to answer legitimate tough questions from citizens, is he or she worthy of support? I would certainly place a black mark next to their name.