You might not realize there are two candidates in the race. One is Dan Bongino, who of course has we have endorsed. But there’s a second candidate, Harold Painter. And The Gazette editorial board picks him:
Painter, a certified public accountant from Gaithersburg, insists that the 6th District have a representative who lives there. (While the district includes parts of Potomac, Delaney actually lives in Van Hollen’s district.)
Having grown up in Western Maryland, where he still has family, Painter says he’s best suited to represent blue-collar families and their needs. Many of his positions put him — refreshingly — at odds with conventional GOP orthodoxy. For example, he advocates raising income taxes on the rich and cutting them for the working class. But he also demonstrates a disturbing inability to grasp the complexities of important issues, such as a self-professed ignorance of President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Painter, although weak on the issues, is a better option for Montgomery than Bongino, so Painter gets The Gazette’s endorsement.
So to recap, The Gazette endorses the candidate who they admit is at odds with key issues that are important to Republican voters and cannot grasp the issues that are important to being a member of Congress.
The insanity of The Gazette endorsement is even more profound when you realize that Harold Painter is just some guy that no Republican activist I have met seems to know. He has no website. No Twitter presence. No Facebook presence. No record of activism in the Republican Party. The one donation he has made in Maryland Politics was to a Democrat, former Charles County Commissioner and current Maryland Higher Education Commission Member Edith Patterson, who is running for Delegate this election as a Democrat.
The Gazette can’t possibly be serious with their endorsement, can they? This just has to be a rib, or some sort of beef with Dan Bongino right?
@GazPolitics I enjoyed your humorous attempt @ covering the #MD06 race in your”endorsements”section.When are you going to seriously endorse? — Dan Bongino (@dbongino) April 23, 2014
Regardless of the seriousness of their endorsement, The Gazette editorial board seriously underminded their credibility with their endorsement in this race. While they are free to endorse whomever they choose, even a guy like Harold Painter who is not going to win the primary. But endorsing the candidate that they freely admit is out of touch with his own party and his unqualified for the job is insulting to the voters of the 6th District as well as to Dan Bongino, who has actually been doing work in trying to give the people of the 6th District a real choice at the ballot box in November.
