Five candidates face off in OC Dem. gubernatorial candidate forum

OCEAN CITY, Md. – Democrats hoping to get Maryland’s top spot in government faced off in Ocean City Wednesday night. The Maryland State Bar Association’s Democratic forum comes as the gubernatorial race heats up. Maryland’s pick for governor will likely bring a major change in leadership, no matter who wins. Incumbent Governor Larry Hogan is set to leave office after serving a full, eight-year term.

The following candidates are listed in alphabetical order.

Rushern Baker

Rushern Baker is a former Maryland State Delegate and Prince George’s County Executive.

He says one of his top priorities is getting Maryland’s economy back on track. “How do we make sure, given COVID-19 and what we’ve been through for the last two years and what we’re going through right now, that we have an economy that can address the issues that we face?” he said. “Everyone’s going to talk about education. That is something that I worked on not only is county executive, but also a state legislator. But, I also know you need resources to do that.”

Baker says investing in the economy is the first step towards bolstering education and health care. “COVID-19 shows the disparities in health care throughout our great state,” he said. “We also have to look at how we expand our job opportunities so folks don’t have to leave the Lower Eastern Shore to find a job, or have a better quality of life.”

Another key issue for Baker, is ensuring that Maryland’s Eastern Shore is not left out of conversations in Annapolis. “We sometimes forget – those of us from the Washington region or the Baltimore region – some of the issues and dire problems that we see on the Eastern Shore,” he said. “We don’t have any time to wait. This is not a training realm for somebody to run the state, or to learn the government. You have to understand how to interact – how the state government interacts – with the local government.”

Jon Baron

Jon Baron has served under and worked with the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations. That work centered around reform in education, wages, and health care. Baron also founded a non-profit, and headed a philanthropic initiative identifying ways to improve social programs. He calls himself a stand out from the other candidates, with a “fundamental, different approach.”

“We all share similar goals – the Democratic goals. We all want to improve education, increase wages, reduce poverty. But, the other candidates’ approach to achieving those goals miss a fundamental point, which is that many government programs, no matter how well intentioned, don’t actually work,” he said.

Baron says education and helping economically disadvantaged Marylanders are top issues he hopes to address, if elected. “More than a quarter of middle school students in our state can’t read at a basic level. Those numbers are no different than 20 years ago. More than half a million Marylanders live below the poverty line. Our state has made no progress in reducing the poverty rate in 30 years.”

Expanding tutoring options for struggling first and second graders is one of Baron’s solutions. As governor, he says he would recruit local retirees and college graduates to help with the tutoring. Baron says he would also create job training programs focused on fast-growing, local industries.

Doug Gansler

Doug Gansler served as Montgomery County State’s Attorney, and Maryland’s Attorney General from 2007 to 2015. He also established Maryland’s Human Trafficking Task Force, and is a practicing attorney.

Gansler says this year’s gubernatorial race will be especially important for Democrats. “I’m the candidate that can be Kelly Schulz in the fall. I think that’s important for Democrats, because we’ve lost three of the last five elections, and we’d have someone who can actually win the general election,” he said.

Tackling Maryland’s growing crime rates is one of Gansler’s key issues. “People don’t feel safe. We want to make sure we have a governor who’s working with our State’s Attorneys, and the local elected officials to eradicate crime. It’s something that really hasn’t been a focus,” he said. “We need to make our schools safe. We need to get guns off the street. So, we need to make sure we drive crime down, and bring justice up.”

Gansler also hopes to establish domestic violence dockets and drug courts in each of Maryland’s 24 counties. “We want to… make sure that we’re taking the good people, that have drug addictions for example, and not put them in jail, and give them a pathway out, while putting violent offenders in jail,” he said. 

As a self-proclaimed environmentalist, Gansler also is setting his sights on continuing to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, establishing offshore wind facilities, and increasing solar power capabilities in the state. “We’re going to make a power plant here on the Eastern shore to convert the 2,000,000,000 pounds of chicken manure that goes into the Bay every year into clean power source. That way we can support our agricultural community, and we can support our watermen,” he said.

John King

John King has worked dedicated his career to education. He served as former President Barrack Obama’s U.S. Secretary of Education. Today, he leads an educational civil rights organization, and is a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

With that experience, King says bolstering Maryland’s education system will be a big ticket item, if elected. That includes creating a statewide tutoring corps, made up of retirees and college graduates. “We’ve also proposed a significant investment in school counselors and mental health services, to address social-emotional needs,” he said. 

King is also focusing on supportive reproductive rights for women, public safety, and climate change. “That involves policing, but it also involves investing in mental health services, addiction treatment, violence prevention programs, ,summer jobs for teens, and addressing economic development needs,” he said. “We’re the one campaign that is talked about universal affordable childcare. We’re the one campaign that is talked about a real plan to take on climate change, and make sure that we move towards a renewable energy economy.”

King adds that he wants to make sure that the Eastern Shore does not get left out of conversations in Annapolis. “One of the critiques of Annapolis, and I think it’s fair, is that often times the Eastern Shore is forgotten,” he said. “I’m going to work with Democrats and Republicans, to make sure we’re attending to the needs of the Eastern Shore. That’s the job of the governor; to represent the whole of the state.”

Jerome Segal

Jerome Segal has worked as an author, philosopher, conflict resolution strategist, and research scholar. Over the years, Segal worked for Minneapolis Congressman Don Fraser, and on the House Budget Committee Task Force on Distributive Impacts of Budget and Economic Policies. He also served on the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Central Policy Bureau. In 2018, Segal challenged Senator Ben Cardin in the Maryland Democratic Primary. Segal is the founder of The Jewish Peace Lobby, and is the Director of the Peace Consultancy. He writes regularly for Palestinian newspaper Al Quds.

While he participated in the Democratic forum, Segal is running as a Bread and Roses Socialist. He did not participate in media interview opportunities prior to the forum.

In his opening statement, Segal addressed Gov. Hogan’s executive order, requiring those who do businesses with the state to pledge to boycott West Bank Israeli settlements. “I would rip it up, not just because of social liberty issues… but actually because of the substantive issues. I worked on Israeli-Palestinian conflict for 40 years,” he said. “I would require that anything made in the West Bank settlements to be labeled, so that consumers could decide. I would consider having the stake in our Maryland government and Israel’s government state-to-state relationship, until Israel either stops building settlements, or accepts the parameters for negotiated settlement, either from Clinton, Obama, or even George Bush.”

Maryland’s gubernatorial election is on Tuesday, November 8th, 2022.