There are a lot of people who are sticking a fork into Charles Lollar’s gubernatorial campaign. Some have been doing it for several months, while others are more recent converts. Assuming the latter piece by Jackie Wellfonder is true – and there’s no real reason to believe that it’s not – it’ll be interesting to know who will pay for Lollar’s pre-debate event tomorrow.
But there is something I want to bring up regarding how Charles has conducted his campaign; not in a financial sense but the target audience. There have been several occasions where I’ve heard Lollar talk about the locations he’s campaigned, and they’re not Republican strongholds. Places like Baltimore City or Prince George’s County, where the minority populations rarely hear a GOP viewpoint because they’re areas written off by the strategists. Yet we often hear that on certain issues, particularly school choice, the minority audience is very receptive to the GOP viewpoint – unfortunately for Republicans they tend to reflexively vote Democrat.
There are many who feel that Lollar has wasted his time in such areas, but I think he’s provided a good service to the party as a whole. Certainly he’s probably not in a position to secure the GOP nomination because he’s not going to reach many voters with a positive message when all the news about him seems to be bad, but it behooves us to act in such a manner to keep him on the team if he loses. I have no idea how well David Craig, Larry Hogan, or Ron George get along with Charles, but hopefully it’s well enough to both to allow him to remain unified with the eventual primary winner and keep the Lollar supporters on the Republican team in an election where all hands are needed on deck. Unfortunately, I keep hearing that if one particular candidate wins, a fair number will stay home or leave the gubernatorial ballot blank in November. Remember, it’s very likely that our nominee will be elected by plurality based on polling results.
When the smoke clears on June 24, there will be three losers and just one winner when it comes to the nomination. Everyone believes they have a path to victory, but in reality it’s probably a two-man race at this point. As always, the trick with contested primaries is to make sure the losers stay unified with the winners. If the supporters of the losing Democrats want to take their ball and go home, that’s up to them, but I want to win as many elections as possible in Maryland for the conservative team.
So Charles should be commended for his work taking the message to places where it’s not normally heard. Win or lose, I hope he keeps on doing so.