By Adam Pagnucco.
I was happy to work for David Blair, a good guy who treated me well and would have worked extremely hard for the residents of the county if he had won. But there were times when I wished I had been writing about the race rather than working in it. One of those times was when one of our opponents committed the biggest flip flop of the election – and perhaps any MoCo election – and the press missed it.
On February 9, Hans Riemer announced his intention to end Montgomery County’s liquor monopoly. This was the biggest reversal of the primary since Riemer once worked to save the monopoly from abolition.
Why do I say that? In 2015, Delegate Bill Frick introduced a state bill that would have allowed county voters to decide whether to end the monopoly. For decades, the monopoly’s service failures, delivery problems and poor selection had driven off consumers and hamstrung restaurants and package stores. One restaurateur famously called it an “evil empire.” I volunteered to help Frick by assembling a coalition of consumers and businesses to support his efforts. We thought the time was right for change.
But we had two major opponents. One was Gino Renne, president of the county employee union which represents the monopoly’s workforce. As he learned of our efforts, he began meeting with politicians, making thousands of dollars in contributions to them, and he even went after Frick personally. Gino’s position was understandable. All union leaders are obligated to protect their members and Gino excels at his job.
Our other major opponent was none other than Hans Riemer, who had a competing proposal to preserve the monopoly but allow it to arrange purchases of special orders from outside wholesalers. There were two problems with Riemer’s plan. First, it allowed the monopoly to design and administer the special order program, keeping its grasp firmly on the county’s liquor business. Second, the state’s largest private wholesalers said publicly that they would not participate in the system, thereby dooming Riemer’s concept to irrelevance. Nevertheless, Riemer soldiered on, joining Gino on Kojo Nnamdi’s show to denounce Frick’s bill and defend the continued existence of the monopoly. Riemer even told Kojo:
My view now at this point is that those who just want to abolish the whole liquor function are the final impediment to change… It has serious consequences when you get rid of that whole function in the county. There’s a huge fiscal impact on the county, there’s all kinds of challenges, got a lot of workers who would lose their jobs.
Does that sound like someone who wants to end the liquor monopoly?
Bill Frick and I put together a coalition of thousands of residents and businesses to support his legislation to let voters decide whether to keep the monopoly. In the end, Frick withdrew his bill for lack of majority support in our House delegation and Riemer’s bill was defeated on a 20-2-1 vote. Since then, Riemer occasionally criticized the monopoly but did not propose abolishing it until he ran for executive more than six years later.
All of the above said, I can’t blame Riemer for coming around. I expect politicians to shift on issues. My real problem is with the press. When Bethesda Beat wrote about the issue in March, they neglected to mention Riemer’s record of opposing Frick’s legislation even though they covered the issue relentlessly in 2015 and 2016. Seventh State’s David Lublin rightly called Riemer out but the rest of the press whiffed. A huge majority of the public simply had no idea that Riemer was for the monopoly before he was against it.
Political flip flopping is nothing new. But by failing to do their research, understand the issue and question Riemer on his change in position, the local press aided and abetted him. In the next election, they must do better.