Center Maryland Columnist Josh Kurtz has written must-read analysis on the race for the Democratic nomination in the Eighth District. Fearless in its criticism, I doubt any of the candidates will be rushing to put quotes from it on their brochures.
On Trone and Matthews:
In this primary, for starters, we have the mega-rich and the merely rich.
In the former role is David Trone, the Bethesda booze baron who entered the Democratic primary just two weeks ago and immediately dropped $900,000 on TV and web ads, which have already become unavoidable.
In the latter category is Kathleen Matthews, the former broadcaster and Marriott executive who is married to MSNBC yakker Chris Matthews. Kathleen and Chris are part of the D.C. elite. . . .
[Y]ou also get the feeling that Trone and Matthews don’t know a lot about the rest of us – and the communities they are presuming to serve. Do we really want someone with a sky’s-the-limit approach to campaign spending like Trone to represent us in Congress? Do we want someone like Matthews who seems to be accepting campaign contributions from every K Street lawyer, D.C. financier, media celebrity and bold-faced name?
On the trio of state legislators:
State Sen. Jamie Raskin is an accomplished legislator, a genuine progressive, a nice guy – and a legal scholar to boot. But he has said he wants to be “a transformational” member of Congress – when all he’ll be, for the foreseeable future, is a junior member of the minority party. Raskin is running a grass-roots campaign. . . . But this isn’t quite like Bernie Sanders . . . . Raskin has plenty of big donors, too – from the extensive list of D.C. lefty intelligentsia.
Del. Kumar Barve . . . is also an accomplished lawmaker and a nice guy – and doesn’t take himself too seriously. But Barve has been perhaps a little too cautious in his political career. You can’t help feeling that somehow, his moment to ascend to Congress should have been a decade or two ago.
Del. Ana Sol Guttierez is also a committed progressive who was one of the first public figures . . . to acknowledge and craft policy that reflected the county’s demographic changes. But she has never really laid out a rationale for her congressional bid. Gutierrez would be a freshman member of Congress at the age of 75. She is not running a serious campaign.
On Jawando and Rubin:
Will Jawando and Joel Rubin are young guys who have worked for the Obama administration and on Capitol Hill. There are tens of thousands of people just like them rattling around the D.C. area. They are smart, attractive guys and dedicated public servants with political acumen . . . . But maybe they should have looked at running for a more humble office than Congress to launch their political careers.
