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.

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