Some people have earned the right to be listened to. Review the resume of Tom Perez, and you’ll likely acknowledge that he’s in that group.
A Buffalo native, Perez is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, and was a member of the Montgomery County Council from 2002 to 2006. Gov. Martin O’Malley tapped him to be state labor secretary, and in 2009 he was nominated to serve as an assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Obama Administration. He became U.S. labor secretary in 2013, and then was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2017 to 2021. He also served as a special adviser to President Joe Biden.
Few Marylanders have his broad perspective on civil rights, labor and politics, from the local level to Washington.
So when he agreed to participate in the Maryland Now podcast, hosts Dori Henry, Josh Kurtz, and David Nitkin were eager to hit “record” on our studio platform and hear what Perez had to say as we head into a consequential midterm election and look ahead to 2028.
In this episode:
- Why Perez believes Democrats are favored to retake the House and are newly competitive in states like Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, and Texas — and the historical data point he says predicts midterm outcomes better than anything else
- His warning about what he hopes Democrats don’t do if they retake Congress, and what he thinks the real priorities should be instead
- A candid conversation about the risk to free and fair elections in November
- Perez’s reflections on his time in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division — from working under Reagan-era officials who respected institutional norms, to what he calls the “obliteration” of those same norms today
- The role of his firm, Meyer Brown, representing Harvard in its funding dispute with the administration, and why he says the case matters far beyond one university
- A sobering look at what a return to normalcy might cost the U.S. with its allies abroad, and why he thinks trust, once broken twice, is much harder to rebuild
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Maryland Now is brought to you by Blended Public Affairs and produced by Carper Cre8tive.
