Raskin's Task - How to Beat the Pants Off of an Incumbent State Senator

From MoCo Politics Blog
mocopolitics.blogspot.com
Thursday, July 6, 2006

Which might suggest that Raskin has some name recognition problems.

Until you realize that Raskin isn't running for the United States Senate but for the State Senate, and in what is geographically the smallest district in MoCo. And yet people are talking about him, not just in Silver Spring, not just in Maryland, but all over the country. A friend called me last week from San Francisco to ask me who Jamie Raskin was (he had caught on belatedly to the story about Raskin's testimony in Annapolis where he challenged one Republican's emphasis on the bible over something as minor as the rule of law). Talk about buzz.

And the buzz around town seems to be that Raskin is going to win. In fact, I have not met a single person yet who thinks Ida Ruben will win, except perhaps Ida Ruben. Which is, quite frankly, amazing, because in MoCo we don't get rid of incumbents. We keep them forever and ever, and sometimes even prop up their caskets at their desks after they've died. I mean, look at Mike Subin, County Councilman extraordinaire. This is a man who threw a former County Executive into a wall, and threatened in a council meeting to forcibly remove an important part of another council member's member. He's somewhere between the Hulk, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Joe McCarthy, and yet MoCo voters re-elect him every four years, and it looks like they'll do it again this year.

The only way new blood gets into the process here is if someone retires. But our Delegates and Senators love their jobs so much that they hold on to them tooth and nail until they physically can't anymore. Look at Mike Gordon. Or Len Teitlebaum.

So if Raskin wins, if he takes Ruben down, he'll be painting a road map. He, and similar challengers in the delegate races like Saqib Ali in Germantown and the many candidates who will likely defeat Gareth Murray in Silver Spring, will have proven that it can be done. If they win (which is still not a certain thing) they will have given us hope for a breath of fresh air. All we'll need to do is find some more candidates who can raise over a hundred thousand dollars, work day and night to create buzz and get their name out in the community, bring on a campaign staff with almost limitless creativity (dog biscuits! who thought up dog biscuits!?!), and avoid sleeping for eight months. Personally, I like to see things shaken up. But, then, I've always been a bit of a troublemaker.