On Election Day, Heather Mizeur doesn’t want your vote.
In a Baltimore Sun op-ed, the progressive state delegate from Montgomery County and one-time candidate for governor urges anyone who is thinking of writing in her name on the ballot to leave their pens at home.
Mizeur — who favors marijuana legalization, opposes fracking and ran a campaign to become the state’s first openly gay governor — was defeated in the spring primary. But calls for a write-in campaign surfaced as the grudge match between primary survivors Larry Hogan and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown became increasingly nasty. In a rare political move, she acknowledged in the op-ed that she can’t win.
“Writing my name on the ballot is a purely symbolic gesture,” she writes. “I will not be the next governor of Maryland. What is worse, such actions might prevent the best option we now have from winning this race.
Mizeur, who ran promising clean campaigns and redistricting reform, hasn’t changed her position on the political process. In fact, she was all set to go in for Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown. But her ideas about positive campaigning were brushed off by Brown’s aides, Mizeur writes.
“I was told they had no interest in promoting new policies but were instead locked on a strategy to just draw contrasts with their opponent,” she writes. “That is campaign doublespeak for settling to run negative attack ads rather than to promote a positive vision.”
Instead of writing her in, Mizeur writes, supporters should wear orange to the polls. And you thought the Royals ended the Orange Out.
A Brown campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the op-ed.
I agree. Brown will not be as bad as Hogan. Dull as anything, though