By Adam Pagnucco.
Last week, Maryland Matters printed comments by County Executive Marc Elrich questioning the integrity of Annapolis lawmakers. He made those comments as he was asking the General Assembly to pass a number of progressive tax increases to deal with the state’s budget gap. Elrich’s remarks provoked pushback from Senate President Bill Ferguson, one of the most powerful elected officials in the state, and generated an angry response from many MoCo players in Annapolis. This comes in the face of MoCo’s many needs from the state and Elrich’s own advocacy for new state-granted taxing authority.
So what would a normal politician do? To start with, no normal politician would insult state legislators from whom he is seeking policy changes in the first place. But in the event of a gaffe, a normal politician would quietly attempt to make amends and disavow the remarks drawing ire.
Marc Elrich is not a normal politician.
Among the many reactions to my post of yesterday was this tweet by an Elrich supporter.
Based.
Elrich: tax the wealthy and corporations
Legislators: 😭
Elrich: maybe you are funded by wealthy and corporations?
Legislators: HOW DARE YOU IMPUGN MY INTEGRITY 🧐
Elrich: u mad? 🤠
So far, who cares? Lots of people say lots of things on Twitter.
But then Elrich retweeted it.
I guarantee that every one of MoCo’s state legislators is going to hear about this.
As I wrote yesterday, one of Elrich’s key personality traits is that he doesn’t care about winning, he just cares about being right. Another one of his traits is that he does not admit mistakes. And here he is, doubling down on what many state legislators – including some representing his own county – regard as a supremely offensive insult. Take it from me: you can compliment a politician a hundred times, but if you insult them just once, that’s what they will always remember.
This is our county executive. No apology. No surrender.
Even if it costs Montgomery County in the end.
Update: A representative of the county executive denies that the executive personally conducted or authorized this tweet. The executive’s people are trying to determine how this tweet was posted. The tweet has been deleted.