By Adam Pagnucco.
I have been a Montgomery County Democratic voter for twenty years so I’m used to getting political mail featuring endorsements by MoCo politicians. But I usually don’t get mail with endorsements from Prince George’s County politicians. That changed yesterday when Congressman David Trone, who is running for U.S. Senate, sent me the mailer shown below.
Anthony Brown is a statewide elected official who once represented Prince George’s County as a Delegate and has benefited from Trone’s largesse over the years. But most of the other officials listed here represent Prince George’s or one of its municipalities at various levels of government. Why should I care what they think? Trone is sending a message: many of the people who know Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks best prefer Trone over her. Now to be fair, Alsobrooks has tons of support in her own county and elsewhere. She just doesn’t have the money to put it into mail.
There’s a deeper thing going on here that goes beyond Alsobrooks. Prince George’s County has seen blood feuds between “bosses” and “reformers” going back at least to the 1960s, when the political machine led by U.S. Representative Lansdale G. Sasscer was finally overthrown. Today’s variant pits the center left against progressives, some of whom dub their majority on the Prince George’s County Council “the people’s council” and relish their independence from Alsobrooks. There is also the unhappiness of Latino politicians with Alsobrooks for not appointing more of them to high positions in her government. Trone is reaping the benefits of this.
Finally, Prince George’s politics is just more rowdy than the genteel, passive-aggressive politics of MoCo. Rival politicians there happily and openly oppose the advancement of their enemies. One of my sources laughed, “They are like crabs in a bucket – if one tries to climb out, the others pull them back in.” That has to be the most Maryland political metaphor of all time.
Trone won’t get as much mileage out of this mailer as Alsobrooks is getting from her TV commercial with Governor Wes Moore, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin and other all-stars.
Angela’s army.
But one wonders whether any of these endorsements will really matter. In any case, Trone may hope that a little trolling goes a long way.