By Adam Pagnucco.
At yesterday’s county executive media briefing, MoCo360 reporter Ginny Bixby asked County Executive Marc Elrich about the race-based vendor rates being charged at MoComCon, a comic convention at the Germantown public library that is being promoted by the county. The Washington Times first reported the story on January 11 and I followed up on January 16. Here is the exchange between Bixby and Elrich which starts at 51:32 of the video.
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Bixby: Hi Marc, I have a question kind of in a totally different realm. Some of the local Republicans have been giving the county government some flak after a Washington Times story came out about the MoCo comic con, and I’m probably getting – I know it’s like something cutesier than that – the MoCoComCon, allegedly having different rates for minority vendors. And some of these critics are alleging that this violates county law. But it’s a little tricky even for me reading into it because I know that this is an event hosted by the Friends of the Library, which is private, but it’s also hosted at the library. Could you give a little bit more insight into, is this a violation, what does this mean?
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Pagnucco here. Time out. Let’s stop and rephrase that question. It’s not just Republicans who are questioning this. I was the one who made the argument that the differential pricing violated county law. And I am a lifelong Democrat who has worked for multiple Democratic elected officials and candidates. My bio appears here.
Now let’s get to Elrich’s response.
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This look on the county executive’s face says it all.
Elrich: Ginny, you have to send me what they put out. I haven’t seen anything. This is the first I’ve heard about this. They’re saying that who gets charged different rates?
Bixby: Minority businesses.
Elrich: If they’re doing it, I can’t see how that’s not illegal. So we’re pretty clear that we don’t have different rates for different races…? That is so old school, we are well past that day. If it’s happening, I need to see what it is. And if it even looks like that, I’ll make sure this gets adjusted. But there’s no way… I can’t believe that. Send me the information. And next week I’ll let you, you can ask me and I’ll tell you where I went with it.
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Listen to the tone of Elrich’s comments and his revulsion for the concept of race-based pricing is clear. (Wait until he finds out that his spokeswoman defended it!) However, he does not have a week to react – the convention is two days from today. If his administration finds that this practice is illegal – or at least objectionable – they have to act now.
One last thing. I was moved to write about this story by the Montgomery County Republican Party’s Facebook ad on this issue shown below. The party was running this ad on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.
The party of Donald Trump ran that ad on Dr. King’s birthday. You can’t make it up.
Elrich should follow his instincts and put a stop to this nonsense right now.