By Adam Pagnucco.
Sheriff Max Uy, in a desperate attempt to ward off MCGEO President Gino Renne’s effort to drive him from office, has loaned his campaign $85,000. Will it be enough for him to survive?
MoCo politics is often a passive aggressive affair. Warring parties typically use whisper campaigns and proxies to do their dirty work. That’s not the way of Gino, a pugnacious Pittsburgher who relishes combat. Gino doesn’t win every fight, but he almost always makes his opponents miserable. That’s the key to his style of – shall we say – exercising influence.
MCGEO had endorsed Uy during his first election campaign in 2022, but the organization later soured on the sheriff and marked him for defeat last June. The union followed up by passing a vote of no confidence in Uy, alleging that the sheriff’s office misused state child support money, blasting Uy for allegedly violating the Maryland Public Information Act and arranging a coalition of support behind Uy’s challenger, retired Prince George’s County Chief Assistant Sheriff Will Milam. Uy suffered a terrible blow when State’s Attorney John McCarthy, perhaps his most significant backer in 2022, decided to sit out this year’s sheriff’s race.
Uy’s new campaign finance report, filed last Thursday, revealed more trouble: last year, he received just $12,475 in contributions. That was nowhere close to what he would need to hold off Gino. So Uy did the unthinkable: on December 17, he loaned himself $85,000. That accounts for the bulk of his $107,237 cash on hand. Compare that to the 2022 cycle, in which he raised $33,820. That was an open seat race in which he enjoyed the support of MCGEO, McCarthy and other players – most of whom seem to have abandoned him.
We shall see how much Milam raises as his report is not yet available at this writing. (It’s due on Wednesday.) We shall also see what future contributions look like if Milam trails Uy this month. But right now, the story is that Uy is not going down without a fight.
Hey Gino, are you ready to rumble?