Candidates always crave attention, but as the September primary nears, the cravings grow more desperate and the antics to gain free media become more intense. Today, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Josh Rales starts a 10-day bus tour across Maryland. Tonight he?s scheduled to throw out the first pitch at the Bowie Baysox minor league game. His wife Debbie will sing the national anthem.
Alan Lichtman, another Senate candidate, already hit the road in his bright yellow propane-powered school bus, education and environment, and is offering reporters free lunch in Annapolis Monday, freelancers welcome.
Ex-congressman Kweisi Mfume originally had planned a bus tour, but his campaign abandoned that ploy.
“We didn?t want to make it look like everybody is doing it,” said spokesman Mark Clack.
Partition Iraq, Bomb N. Korea
Unusual policy stances are also attention-grabbers.
The Democrats are falling over themselves in proposing how fast U.S. troops ought to get out of Iraq, but Senate candidate Dennis Rasmussen has a different idea from what he sees as the cut-and-run left: partition Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite federations, under a loose umbrella government.
“Nothing else will stop the sectarian bloodshed,” Rasmussen said.
Democrat challenger Blaine Taylor ? carless, fundless and with little to show but e-mailed position papers in his 14th run for public office ? pledges to bomb North Korea to end the nuclear threat there (hope the Chinese don?t notice), end all foreign aid to Israel, and close the door on all those pesky immigrants.
“We must halt immigration in 2007, so that the current English-speaking population can continue to reign supreme, and not be overwhelmed by a flood of foreign flotsam and jetsam,” Taylor said ? by e-mail, of course.
How green is my gov.?
Environment is another battleground Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley?s campaign staked out this week against Gov. Robert Ehrlich.
Ehrlich got a D+ his first two years in office from the League of Conservation of Voters.
Last week, the league endorsed 12 incumbent state senators and 60 incumbent delegates, all Democrats.
Ehrlich should not get his hopes up. A gentleman?s C, perhaps?
Dueling letters
The two Democrats battling to wrestle the comptroller?s seat away from William Donald Schaefer exchanged a war of words with dueling letters started by Anne Arundel County Executive Janet Owens.
Del. Peter Franchot calls himself “the only Democrat” in the race, but Owens called the claim both “misleading” and “utterly ridiculous.” She rattled off the programs that attest to her Democratic credentials, even saying O?Malley interviewed her as a potential running mate.
Never one to pass up a chance at verbal sparring, Franchot shot back with a letter calling her “pro-sprawl, pro-slots and pro-Bob Ehrlich.”
Franchot says next week?s campaign finance reports will show he?s raised $900,000, a figure Owens will find hard to match.
However, internal polls from other campaigns show Owens ahead of Schaefer in the 3rd congressional district and not far behind in Baltimore County.
Len Lazarick is the chief of the Baltimore Examiner?s Statehouse Bureau. E-mail him at [email protected]
