Greetings dear supporters, prospective supporters, and even those not supporting me! I gave a detailed synopsis of my debate performance in the Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate Primary in Baltimore this weekend and I feel it’s not unreasonable for me to declare victory.
While it could also be reasonable to declare myself a strong second-place finisher or even tied with Prince Goerge’s Country Executive Alsobrooks, consider this:
Alsobrooks came with staff and supporters ready to cheer her. So did another of my fellow second-tier candidates, who frequently had the loudest support from a few very vocal supporters, including the loudest of that group who was filming the debate and who has thus far produced the only mostly comprehensible recording of the entire debate; you can hear her loudly cheering her candidate (the Baltimore City State Democratic Central Committee, embarrassingly and inexcusably, has still thus far only posted two clips, both of which have long periods where the sound is completely out, including during my opening statement in the first one; the last debate failed to produce a competent recording either, but I am lucky my voice carries well).
But also having a clear impact with audience connection? Your truly, who arrived bringing zero staff and zero supporters. In fact, I often generated as much applause as the other two with my answers, though clearly not always with the more enthusiastic staff dedicated and determined to who support for their candidate, for whom their vote is already decided and for whom they specifically came to support and make their support heard regardless of their candidates’ actual performance.
See where I am getting it?
There were two candidates who had a following they brough to the event, both biased and prepared to be vocal, one of whom was Country Executive Alsobrooks, who had raised millions of dollars in funding by this point and along with the absent Rep. David Trone, one of the two frontrunners in this Maryland Democratic U.S. Senate Primary. And here I was arriving on my own with presumably no one in the tank for me in a heavily biased audience, winning as much applause in some cases and applause throughout an event. This is like a very low seed in the NCAA tournament upsetting a #2 or #1 seed upsetting or barely losing to it, or a low-ranked national squad tying a major home powerhouse in soccer World Cup group stage play. The story isn’t that a frontrunner with millions raised held her own against an unknown, but the other way around; it’s about the upset, the underdog; it’s about me.
And it isn’t all about cheers: as in the last debate, I was the only non-frontrunner quoted in any major news outlets (both The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun in the first debate and The Baltimore Sun in the second, and twice at that, as much as Alsobrooks!) and was the only non-frontrunner who always gave substantive answers to each question and demonstrated a wide rage of depth and breadth on the issues.
You can see and hear for yourself when I speak in this video of the full debate (at 16:20, 23:37, 30:16, 45.:11, 51.:55, 58.44, 1:05:32, 1:23:34—things get a little crazy during my conclusion because of a Gaza protester, who I wished I could have engaged and probably could have won at least partly over with what I had to say).
So whether you consider me a respectable or close second, tied, or even a victor (I think I can be persuasive on any of these but especially being the victor: Alsobrooks should have shone far ahead of any of the second-tier candidates on this stage, and while her performance was hardly bad or had any major issues, she did not and this is an embarrassment for a frontrunner in such a situation, especially one down in all recent polls to not only Trone but even more so to Hogan (Trone down by a lot, too, just a little less so within the margin of error, in the latest poll). After all, an known tying in a major contest against a top anything in anything is, by default, a victory for the unknown.
So let’s change me from being an unknown: let’s make me the third candidate in this race! Donate and spread the word!!
