Kefalas Campaign Sends Zany, Delusional Email

The U.S. Senate campaign of Chrys Kefalas sent out a zany email on Thursday to prominent Republicans trying to get support for their fledgling candidate.

The email comes from Johnathan Grimmel, who identifies himself as the “Central and Eastern Maryland Political Director” for the campaign. The email comes from the campaigns domain, but doesn’t bear any authority line or identifying marks as coming from the campaign.

The email reads:

From: John Grimmel <john@chrysformaryland.com>
Date: February 11, 2016 at 5:43:22 PM EST
Subject: Hello from the Kefalas for US Senate campaign!

Trending: President Trump Must Be Reelected

Hello from the Kefalas campaign,
My name is Johnathan Grimmel, I am the Central and Eastern Maryland Political Director for Chrys Kefalas’s campaign for U.S. Senate. I wanted to just introduce myself and give you a little bit of information about Chrys. Going forward I would love to be added to any email list alerting people about GOP events in your county. If you have any questions for me or about Chrys and why he is the only principled conservative who can win state wide, don’t hesitate to email me or give me a call.
Looking forward to talking with you and working with you to make sure we get a principled conservative in the U.S. Senate.
Johnathan Grimmel
Chrys for Maryland
(xxx) xxx-xxxx
john@chrysformaryland.com

Join the fight at www.chrysformaryland.com

A pretty pedestrian email, except for the creation of a new and creative way to spell statewide.

It’s the attachment where things just go off the rails. Read it for yourself.

Oh, where to begin.

• In the very first paragraph, Kefalas tries to crown himself with the mantle of Larry Hogan. It says “by building on the Hogan framework, with a profile and record that enable him to compete for more Democratic and independent votes, he has the best shot in decades to become Maryland’s Republican U.S. Senator.” Except Governor Hogan didn’t just airdrop into the Governor’s race and expect to be elected statewide. He spent four years working hard, assembling a team, meeting the voters, and educating himself on the issues before announcing his run for Governor. The first time that I had even heard of Kefalas was when his name was floated as a Senate candidate.
• In the second paragraph, we go on to talk about Kefalas’ experience. Undoubtedly Kefalas has done a lot of interesting things for a guy who is a bit younger than me. But, as he is wont to do, he glosses over the issue where he was a Speechwriter who worked directly for ultra-partisan, ultra left-wing Democrat Eric Holder. It’s not the first time he’s done it; in our May 21st interview with him, he refused to say the name and it only came up because I asked him about it. Maybe working for a left-winger like Holder who holds values diametrically opposed to conservative values is what makes Kefalas a different kind of Republican.
• The last part of the third paragraph, the one noting that a competitive race in Maryland helps candidates elsewhere is accurate. However the idea that Governor Hogan’s campaign and a U.S. Senate campaign are comparable shows a lack of understanding of how the Hogan campaign work; the Hogan campaign spent $6 million because of the limits of the state matching funds program that the Hogan campaign participated in. There is no such matching fund program for federal candidates. The last Republican U.S. Senate candidate to wield a sizable war chest in Maryland was Michael Steele in 2006, and even then he was still outspent by Ben Cardin and the Democrats.
• The 4th Paragraph talks about all of the big names that are allegedly supporting Kefalas. The first sentence, “Beyond receiving help from Governor Hogan’s and Governor Ehrlich’s teams”, is interesting because it implies an endorsement from the Hogan campaign apparatus that as far as I know just doesn’t exist. Also, some of the supporters names are spelled incorrectly (“John Catsimatides” is actually John Catsimatidis) and some of the donors have interesting histories. The aforementioned John Catsimatidis is a”high-level Clinton donor” who also donated to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Senator Joe Lieberman, and Charlie Rangel.
• The last paragraph is really the coup de grace of this entire piece. This sentence is priceless “If we can raise the resources, we will not have a serious primary challenge—from anyone with name ID who can similarly compete in Maryland.” Except Kefalas is proving that he doesn’t have the resources even with all of these higher powered people and bundlers who allegedly support him. In the 4th quarter of 2015 alone Delegate Kathy Szeliga outraised Kefalas by an almost 4-1 margin ($174,500 for Szeliga vs. $44,229 for Kefalas) to say nothing of the fact that Szeliga raised almost as much in three months as Kefalas did all year or that Szeliga has more cash-on-hand than Kefalas. And even then the “will not have a serious primary challenge” is laughable when Kefalas regularly finishes in third in our monthly Red Maryland Poll. In the Barry Glassman poll that was released in November, Kefalas was polling at 2% and had an name ID of a whopping 13.2%, of which only 3.6% was favorable.

For the sake of the Kefalas campaign, one can only hope that this zany email and one-pager was written by an overzealous and overenthusiastic staff member. Because if it wasn’t, it shows a campaign that is horribly delusional about its chances in the April 26th primary and is utterly divorced from reality. It seems to not take into account that fact that Delegate Kathy Szeliga is a long-time Republican leader with a lot of institutional supporters and is absolutely lapping him in fundraising. Nor does it take into account the fact that Richard Douglas has run for the U.S. Senate before and has some cache with voters and activists. In fact, nothing in this write-up makes one thing that it was written by somebody who has spent a day in professional statewide politics.

If this is the level of quality that Kefalas expects is going to win him a U.S. Senate seat he is going to be sorely disappointed on April 26th.