Jamie Raskin has creativity lacking in Annapolis

Wednesday, Apr. 19, 2006
by Seth Grimes
Letter to the Editor

Jamie Raskin is the thinking person’s good guy, Maryland’s answer to Paul Wellstone: professorial, progressive, impassioned, dedicated and very likeable.

Jamie is not a self-inflated office-seeker with no life outside politics. A constitutional-law professor, he is not just another academic, lost in theory with no real-world accomplishments to his name. Jamie has fought in the political arena, both nationally and in Annapolis, on issues including affordable housing, criminal justice, and same-sex marriage.

He has both the experience we need and creativity that is often lacking in Annapolis. He will bring fresh ideas and new energy to the state Senate to lead on important issues and not just go along.

Jamie inspires people; people believe he is speaking for them. It helps that he can turn a phrase, make a compelling argument. He’s taking his campaign to people, not running a State House strategy. His public attitude is ‘‘win or lose, we’re going to have fun.” People want to get on that bus: it’s the place to be, and now’s the time.

Incumbent Ida Ruben seems effective at bringing home money to the district. She’s old school, into power politics where connections and allegiances and money matter most. ‘‘Here’s funding for your project. Now where do I stand for the ribbon cutting?”

That may work for the local pols who solicited the checks but what about the rest of us? Ida seems distant from people who aren’t players.

Ida has supported important local initiatives, ones that make for better lives, when asked. But ability to move bills, to work the system and carve slices from the budget pie, is not everything. (To be fair, it’s also not nothing. Some of the other candidates around here, whether perennials or fledglings, don’t deliver like Ida does, but they’re in other races.) Simply put, there’s much more to leadership than political moves, and after 3 1/2 years of Ehrlich in Annapolis and more years of worse on the national stage, my goodness we crave more.

You get the feeling that Ida is running again out of inertia, that there’s no room to grow, that if she is re-elected, we’ll have four more years of business as usual. For her business as usual includes support for the death penalty and the war on Iraq. Ida’s insider, business-as-usual politics will not inspire much of District 20 and they haven’t inspired me.

Jamie Raskin is running an inclusive, people-focused race that is rooted in progressive accomplishments with the promise of much more. And that’s why, at this early stage, he has already won my vote.