The Post Won’t Tell Voters David Blair Is a Former Republican

In the Washington Post’s coverage of a local Maryland race, an interesting word has gone missing, and not by accident. The word is “Republican.” And it refers to the former party of David Blair.

Blair is the multimillionaire candidate the Post is trying to install as executive of Montgomery County, an influential jurisdiction just north of DC. But in Blair’s way stands the lefty incumbent, Marc Elrich, who the Post is hellbent on unseating (as I wrote about last month for FAIR).

To pull off the upset, the Post needs Blair to capture Tuesday’s Democratic primary, the key race in the deep blue county. Only there’s a problem: Democrats can be fickle about voting for a former Republican.

But the Post has found a creative workaround: hide Blair’s former party from voters. Indeed, it appears the Post hasn’t mentioned Blair’s Republican past a single time throughout the entirety of the campaign.

‘Let me just try to rack my brain’

Blair wasn’t quite so lucky four years ago. In his first (unsuccessful) bid for county executive, the Post referred to Blair’s Republican past in at least two stories. Although a few caveats are in order:

The Post’s mentions were mostly in passing. And elsewhere the paper tip-toed around disclosing Blair’s former party even when it was called for – most notably in a story about a TV ad that explicitly stated “Blair is a former Republican.”

Also, the Post appears to have never directly questioned Blair about this sensitive topic, even after another news outlet did so in dramatic fashion, eliciting cringeworthy responses from Blair.

In November 2017, as Blair launched his first campaign, Bethesda Magazine published a story that included this devastating passage:

Asked if he’s always been a registered Democrat, Blair responded, “I believe so. I believe that’s a true statement.”

However, Maryland Board of Elections voter information indicates Blair was a registered Republican before he switched his registration to the Democratic Party in 2003.

Asked about that, Blair responded, “I don’t remember that. That could be accurate… That could be.”

“Let me just try to rack my brain,” Blair said, when asked about why he switched parties. “I’m trying to remember who was president back then… it probably wasn’t until around that time, maybe the late ’90s, when I started becoming aware of what was happening nationally and locally…”

Blair is 54. That means he was around 35 when he became a Democrat in 2003. His claimed ignorance is even less credible considering his father ran for US Senate in 1988 – as a Republican.

‘Billionaire’

Four years ago, Blair shattered county spending records when he spent $5.4 million of his personal fortune on his campaign. This time around, Blair appears to be on pace to match that dizzying spending. (Elrich, on the other hand, is utilizing the county’s public campaign finance system and has raised about $1 million; as has Councilmember Hans Riemer, another candidate in the race.)

In addition to Blair’s incessant ads and mailers, Elrich is also being attacked by developers and real estate types, who have poured over a million dollars into the race, including nearly $600,000 into a political action committee (hilariously named Progressives for Progress — “don’t be fooled by that name,” writes Maryland Matters. They’re just “a bunch of developers.”) 

As if the money situation wasn’t lopsided enough, last month a San Francisco billionaire reached across the country to intervene in the county executive race. The Post, in a slanted June 29 story, tried to pass this off as a local matter.

The paper did so by playing up the lefty credentials of two local consultants who sidled up next to the billionaire to run his super PAC attacking Elrich (amusingly named the Affordable Maryland PAC). Meanwhile the Post – itself a billionaire-owned newspaper – only mentions the billionaire’s name once in its story, and not until the 20th paragraph, and without the descriptor “billionaire” anywhere in sight. (The billionaire is Dustin Moskovitz, a Facebook co-founder.)

Much like “Republican,” “billionaire” is a word sure to grate on the ears of Democratic voters – which may be why the Post is so keen to avoid using it.

In its headline, the Post misleadingly refers to Moskovitz’s group as a “Montgomery County super PAC,” as if it was some sort of homegrown, grassroots effort. The Post’s headline stands in contrast to Maryland Matters’ straightforward one: “Billionaire Drops $500K to Oust Elrich.”

What pandemic?

In addition to “billionaire” and “Republican,” the Post has struggled with other words at times. Notably absent from the Post’s June 25 endorsing editorial, which hailed Blair and smeared Elrich, are the words “coronavirus” and “pandemic.”

These words are problematic for the Post because using them all but requires the paper to note Elrich’s stellar pandemic leadership. So once again the Post got creative: In its endorsing editorial the paper didn’t mention these words at all – as if the pandemic magically skipped over Montgomery.

This omission is all the more glaring considering that, once the pandemic crosses into next-door Prince George’s County or Washington, DC, the Post suddenly views it as the top criteria upon which an executive should be judged.

In endorsing DC’s mayor for reelection, the Post called her “uniquely qualified to continue to lead the city” based on her “capable and steady leadership” amid “an unprecedented pandemic that has upended every aspect of life in the city.”

And in endorsing Prince George’s executive for reelection, the Post called her an “excellent steward,” citing her “competent, unflappable, determined” leadership amid a pandemic she confronted “[b]arely a year into her term.” 

But Elrich, whose pandemic leadership has been at least as impressive as the other two executives, receives no such superlatives. Instead he’s attacked with words like “mismanaged,” “subverted,” and “pandered.” And that’s just from the opening paragraph of the Post’s Blair-endorsing editorial.

These Post attacks, in turn, have been super-charged by Blair and his deep-pocketed supporters, who’ve spent millions on TV ads, Facebook posts and mailers that do little more than parrot the region’s paper of record. Collectively, these efforts appear to have paid off, as the race has tightened considerably, with the latest poll showing Elrich and Blair now in a dead heat.

As voters head to the polls Tuesday, many will do so misinformed about both the incumbent and his chief challenger – an outcome the Post has worked hard to bring about.

Top photo credit: David Blair’s Facebook page