The polls are looking quite bad for Ben Jealous, the Democratic candidate for governor in Maryland. His opponent, Republican Governor Larry Hogan, has consistently maintained a double-digit lead. But registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2:1, opposition to Trump runs high, and none of the polls had Ben Jealous winning the primary either, which he did by 10 points. So everyone’s been a bit wary on predictions.
I wrote about this race for The American Prospect’s fall magazine.
It’s a pretty fascinating story: Jealous is a first-time candidate, he’s running on one of the most left-wing policy platforms in the country, and the state’s Democratic party establishment has largely written him off him. While if he loses there will surely be people who say it was because he ran too far left, polls are showing that his actual positions have broad resonance with the public. (Ex: 54 percent of Marylanders say they support Medicare-For-All, 62 percent support legalizing marijuana, and 71 percent support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.)
He’s running to the left, but he’s repeatedly emphasized that he’s an “FDR Democrat” — not a socialist. Sometimes this gets pretty overwrought, as I explore in the story.
Jealous was an early supporter of Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential primary, and in many ways he more effortlessly bridges the divides the Democratic Party has been grappling with when it comes to race and progressive economics. He’s also not shy to say that Maryland has the highest median income of any state in the U.S., and can therefore afford more ambitious social programs through higher taxes on the wealthy.
But his campaign has also highlighted some of the pitfalls of suburban liberalism in this rich state. Ike Leggett, the Democratic county executive in Montgomery County—an affluent, liberal region just outside of Washington D.C—has said Jealous’s support for new taxes on millionaires, and redistributing more state funds to schools in poorer parts of the state, are main reasons he’s held off on endorsing him since that would mean his constituents take a disproportionate hit.
The story is here, would love to hear what you think.
Do you have a sense of why is Jealous doing so much worse than other African-American candidates for governor such as Abrams in Georgia or Gillum in Florida? They are running pretty progressive campaigns too, aren't they? Is it that they are more "insiders" in their states than Jealous is in Maryland?