Before the primary, I made some predictions as to the outcome of the Annapolis City primary and general election. Until this morning, I was sticking with them. There were some bold predictions, but when asked, I still thought I was on target. This morning, The Capital revealed that County Executive Steve Schuh and Pasadena Delegate Nic Kipke (likely with the assistance of Lawrence Scott) are behind the recent negative campaign mailers that have been showing up in mailboxes.
Negative campaigning is nothing new. Typically it is the Democrats in Annapolis that use that tactic. And often times it works. But this time, I am not so sure.
When the mailers began to show up, people were up in arms. They were attack pieces agains Gavin Buckley, Marc Rodriguez, Elly Tierney, and Kurt Riegel. When Mayor Pantelides was confronted about them at Wednesday’s Mayoral Forum, he claimed he had no knowledge of the mailers and defended his own less-negative mailer. The crowd did not buy it.
For three years, Pantelides has talked about how close his relationship is with County Executive Schuh. So, how is it that Schuh and Kipke just randomly decided to fund $8000 worth of negative mailers without the Mayor’s knowledge.
While the intent may have been to discredit Buckley and other Democrats running for office; I think this one backfired and has all but assured a Democratic sweep of the Council and Mayor’s Office.
Originally, my predictions were:
- Tierney -1
- Riegel-2
- Pindell-Charles-3
- Finlayson-4
- Rodriguez-5
- Henson-6
- Frankel-7
- Mussog-8
- Buckley-M
I felt that the Mayor’s race, and those in Wards 2, 7, and 8 were particularly close. Now it looks like it might be a blowout for the Democrats. People are mad. We are still unsure if Putin was trying to rig the past US election, but it seems pretty evident that Schuh and Kipke are trying to influence this one.
