By Adam Pagnucco.
Parts One, Two and Three were the setup. Now let’s start looking at what actually happened. (Disclosure: I worked for David Blair’s campaign.)
Campaign Finance
The table below shows campaign finances for the three leading candidates: incumbent Marc Elrich and challengers David Blair and Hans Riemer. Peter James filed affidavits stating that he did not “receive contributions or make expenditures in the cumulative amount of $1,000 or more,” so we have no data for his campaign.
The obvious fact here is that Blair had more than three times the resources of Elrich and Riemer combined. That meant he had more of everything – staff, TV, mail, digital – and he needed all of it given that MoCo incumbents have a 90% win rate. Riemer outraised Elrich, something that should not have happened given Elrich’s incumbent status. But Elrich benefited from the county’s $12+ million in communications spending, which pumped out incumbent-friendly messages of county success on a daily basis.
Blair’s campaign finance advantage began to really matter in May, when his TV spending started (more on that below). When that was combined with ramped up mail and digital, Blair began to close the gap with the incumbent.
Endorsements
Elrich’s relationships with MoCo’s progressive endorsing organizations go back decades and it showed in this race. Among his endorsers were MCEA, the SEIU locals, MCGEO, the career and volunteer fire fighters, Progressive Maryland, the local AFL-CIO, Casa in Action and many other groups on the left. None of this was surprising.
If there was an endorsement surprise in the race, it was the Sierra Club’s decision to support Blair. Many observers expected the club to endorse Riemer or stay out entirely. But in their statement on the endorsement, the club attacked Elrich for being “unfriendly to smart growth” and having a “slow and vague climate action plan” and criticized Riemer for having “blindsided” the club over Governor Larry Hogan’s I-270 project. Blair earned enough praise to offset his support of I-270 and the club no doubt judged Blair as having a better chance to beat Elrich than Riemer. Both Elrich and Riemer were furious at this decision.
The biggest thunderbolt was thrown by the Washington Post editorial board, which endorsed Blair in June, praised Riemer and excoriated Elrich. The Post’s attacks on Elrich formed the basis of several negative TV ads and mailers which came very close to defeating him.
TV Spending
Data on political TV ads is available on the Federal Communications Commission’s website. While TV ads are seldom run by candidates for the General Assembly and county council, they can be major spending areas for statewide, congressional and county executive candidates.
This year was a big one for political TV ad-makers. In Maryland, the offices of governor, attorney general and comptroller were all on the ballot. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen and U.S. Representative David Trone were on the airwaves as was a fiercely contested Congress District 4 election between former incumbent Donna Edwards and Glenn Ivey. D.C. local races, including their mayoral race, and one congressional race in Virginia were also on TV. This produced a crowded environment in which many politicians – and interest groups – elbowed each other for attention.
The table below shows published TV spending for MoCo county executive candidates in the context of other races in May, June and July. Washington-area broadcast channels and Montgomery County cable systems are included; Baltimore channels and cable buys outside MoCo are not. Because the FCC did not report all TV spending by Affordable Maryland PAC and Progressives for Progress, their campaign finance reports were used as source data for them.
Blair was on TV earlier than Elrich and Riemer, though the latter two made substantial buys in the final month. Blair’s real competition was all the other races, especially Maryland’s governor primary and Congress District 4. Blair was not even the biggest TV spender of the cycle. That distinction was owned by the United Democracy Project, a group backed by AIPAC that spent $3.8 million on TV ads, and much more money besides that, to prevent Donna Edwards from returning to Congress.
Another factor in the county executive race was the presence of two outside groups: Affordable Maryland PAC and Progressives for Progress. The first of these groups spent more than $800,000 on TV ads attacking Elrich and was financially supported by the founder of the second group. (More on this below.) No incumbent MoCo executive has ever faced a negative onslaught with this kind of money behind it.
If all the other races were not quite so active and Blair had had the airwaves to himself, would the outcome have been different? We will never know.
Outside Groups
Two outside groups played in the executive race: Affordable Maryland PAC and Progressives for Progress. The former group was new and was initially financed by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, who was also one of the biggest contributors to Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Progressives for Progress, founded by developer Charlie Nulsen, supported Blair but was mostly focused on the county council races. However, starting in mid-July, Nulsen and his allies began contributing to Affordable Maryland PAC to sustain its anti-Elrich TV ads. In the end, Affordable Maryland PAC’s million-dollar budget was split equally between Moskovitz and the developers.
Surprisingly, even though the unions funded a Super PAC that attacked Blair in 2018, they did not do that this time. One wonders what Elrich thinks of this.
A Tight Finish
Early polls showed Elrich with a big lead, but the Post’s endorsement, Blair’s spending and attacks by Blair and Affordable Maryland PAC closed the gap. Consider the following published polls and their timing.
May 19-23: Data for Progress (independent): Elrich 33%, Blair 14%, Riemer 14%
June: Gonzales (for Progressives for Progress), Elrich 45%, Blair 20%, Riemer 15%
June 30-July 1: Data for Progress (independent): Elrich 41%, Blair 20%, Riemer 18%
Early July: Gonzales (for Progressives for Progress), Elrich 33%, Blair 27%, Riemer 15%
July 5-6: Garin-Hart-Yang (for Blair), Elrich 29%, Blair 28%, Riemer 19%
July 8-12: Data for Progress (independent): Elrich 34%, Blair 34%, Riemer 20%
Elrich had gone from a 25-point lead in June to a tie with Blair a month later. Most undecided voters were going to Blair, a few of them were going to Riemer and very few of them were headed to Elrich. It had been three decades since an incumbent MoCo executive had been in this much trouble.
As everyone reading this knows, Elrich wound up winning the race by 32 votes after a recount. Soon, we will look at the geographic and demographic breakdowns of the election.