Racial tensions in Prince George’s County were highlighted Tuesday when a flier depicting County Council candidate Adam Ortiz as an outsider were reportedly distributed outside polling places during the county’s special Democratic primary election.
Ortiz’s backers say the fliers were distributed by people campaigning for Andrea Harrison who holds a narrow 137-vote lead over Ortiz in the primary to fill the council seatleft vacant by David Harrington after he was appointed to the state Senate replacing the late Sen. Gewndolyn Britt in January.
Absentee ballots still must be counted before Harrison, a former member of Harrington’s County Council staff, will officially have victory.
On the flier, Ortiz is depicted in a grainy picture that says he can’t be trusted because he’s a newcomer to the area. “That’s code language for anti-Hispanic sentiment,” said Ortiz, who moved to the area in 1997 from New York and is Edmonston’s mayor.
A week earlier, Harrison apologized to Ortiz for the fliers, saying in a letter to him they were not authorized. She did not return calls for comment.
District 5, where the special primary election took place, borders other areas that in recent years have become heavily populated by Hispanic immigrants, changing the demographics in the majority black county.
Kinya Mururu was volunteering for Ortiz’s campaign at the Bladensburg
Community Center Tuesday when she saidshe saw Harrison campaigners passing out the fliers. She said at least one of them stopped when she pointed out the negative nature of the campaign material.
As she knocked on doors campaigning in the weeks leading up the election,
Mururu said she often picked up on a subtext of, “who is this white guy.”
The fliers, she and Ortiz noted, started popping up as Ortiz’s campaign picked up momentum with endorsements from the hospital workers’ union and the county employees’ union.
“On the national level, we’re finding ways to break down barriers,” Ortiz said. “And in our own backyard, we’re finding ways to erect barriers.”
