INTERESTING: Does Del. Jolene Ivey Want to Join Atty General Doug Gansler's Gubernatorial Ticket? // PLUS: More Tea Leaves

The big political news of the week has been that Lt. Governor Anthony Brown has chosen Howard County Executive Ken Ulman to serve as his running mate in the 2014 gubernatorial battle. Politicos are now chattering over the developing dynamics of the race, and commentary is coming in from some interesting figures. Below Maryland Juice dissects recent commentary on the state of the gubernatorial race from Delegate Jolene Ivey (Democrat, Prince George's). But first, Maryland Juice had a chance to chat with The Daily Record's Alexander Pyles about the implications of the Brown-Ulman ticket (excerpt below):

DAILY RECORD:  David Moon, a Democratic political consultant and blogger for MarylandJuice.com, said Gansler and Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown appear to be taking opposite paths in their quest to succeed Gov. Martin O’Malley.... Brown became the first hopeful to officially announce his candidacy this month, taking cues from lessons apparently learned during O’Malley’s first campaign for governor prior to the 2006 election.

Gansler’s strategy has been different, Moon said, because of a belief in his camp that a campaign could lose steam or peak too early.... That strategy could backfire, Moon said, as Brown and new running mate Ken Ulman are being talked about as frontrunners....

JUICE #1: TEA LEAVES IN DELEGATE JOLENE IVEY'S COMMENTS ABOUT MARYLAND GOVERNOR'S RACE  //  DOES SHE WANT TO JOIN TEAM GANSLER? - Maryland Juice was very, very intrigued by Delegate Jolene Ivey's recent appearance on Bruce DePuyt's morning news show on News Channel 8. The point of interest is that I had recently written about possible running mates for Attorney General Doug Gansler, and some of my sources mentioned Del. Ivey (see Juice #4). But I had no clue whether she would want to leave Annapolis to gamble on a statewide run. Judging by her comments below, I would say Delegate Jolene Ivey definitely seems interested in teaming up with Gansler:



MARYLAND JUICE ANALYSIS: In the video above, Del. Ivey appears to be positioning herself to run with Doug Gansler. She offers lukewarm praise for Ken Ulman ("he's nice"), dismisses Mizeur's candidacy ("can't see her winning"), questions Ruppersberger's vigor ("does he have the energy?") -- and to top it all off, Ivey suggests that Gansler would do best to choose someone from Prince George's County, who (....wait for it....) is a woman and/or an African American candidate. Could she be describing .... herself?  Interesting tea leaves. But given the glacial pace of Doug Gansler's campaign roll-out, we could be waiting a lot longer to see how this story unfolds! Oy vey.


JUICE #2: GAZETTE COLUMNIST RACIALIZES ANTHONY BROWN'S CAMPAIGN, MOCO SENATORS GARAGIOLA & KING RESPOND? // MORE TEA LEAVES - Rightwing, old-school Gazette columnist Blair Lee recently rattled cages (again), by putting the gubernatorial campaign of Anthony Brown through a purely racial lens (excerpt below):

BLAIR LEE VIA GAZETTE: So, as the contenders come to the starting gate, let’s handicap the Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls while mindful that next year’s primary is largely about race and place — about racial and regional rivalries and balance....

Lt. Gov. Brown kicked off his bid for the top spot last week. He has a solid gold resume (Harvard twice over, Iraq war vet, state legislature, etc.) and he’s African-American (ok, Jamaican-American) in a state where blacks can be up to 35 percent of the primary vote.... Apparently Brown’s strategy is to build a leftist coalition of blacks, guilty white liberals and remnants of the O’Malley machine echoing both O’Malley and Obama....

Who will pay for all this? The rich (which in Maryland means incomes over $100,000). And who will benefit? All those lower-income minorities whose votes Brown covets? And just in case minority voters miss the racial pitch, Brown’s campaign colors are, you guessed it, brown. Brown says his campaign is “more about results than race,” but it’s really more about race than results....

More interesting than Lee's latest screed is that the response to his piece came from State Senators Rob Garagiola & Nancy King of Montgomery County (excerpt below):

SENATORS GARAGIOLA & KING:  We were very disturbed by Blair Lee’s recent column [“2014 is about race and place,” May 17] about Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown launching his campaign for governor. It’s clear that rather than attending, reading or watching the speech of Brown’s announcement, Mr. Lee presented his own distorted world view as fact and resorted to what is essentially race baiting....

Throughout his speech, Anthony Brown made it clear that he is running for governor because he will fight for families that are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, he will fight for better opportunities for our children, and he will fight to help businesses succeed in every corner of Maryland so people who want good jobs can find them. These are areas where families of all races and incomes live, and Brown made it quite clear that he wants to represent all of them should he be elected governor.

Does this mean the pair of State Senators who drafted this letter will soon be joining the Brown-Ulman team?

JUICE #3: BETHESDA MAGAZINE PROFILES DEL. HEATHER MIZEUR // MORE TROUBLE FOR GANSLER? - While running mate gossip has been the big news with the Brown and Gansler campaigns, Del. Heather Mizeur has been diligently traveling the state on her quest to become Governor. Bethesda Magazine's Lou Peck recently interviewed her for her thoughts on the race (excerpt below):

BETHESDA MAGAZINE:  The odometer on Heather Mizeur’s Chevy Volt has racked up 15,000 miles since she purchased it last October. “Every evening, I’m in some different corner of the state, and Saturdays and Sundays are usually filled with three to five events in any one day,” the two-term Takoma Park delegate related in an interview this week....

While saying a “formal decision” won’t come until this summer, Mizeur is holding house parties across the state to introduce herself to voters, while working actively to raise funds for a gubernatorial run...

Mizeur touted the precedent-setting aspects of her candidacy as she expressed confidence in her ability to narrow this gap. “The energy that is behind a candidacy like mine and the interest in breaking a few historic barriers – I would be Maryland’s first woman governor and the nation’s first openly gay one – opens up an energized donor network that is interested in helping to move this campaign forward,” she said....

Gansler’s life could be further complicated if Mizeur ends up as the only credible contender in the contest besides himself and Brown....

JUICE #4: HOCO DEMOCRATS RALLYING AROUND KEN ULMAN - While the rival campaigns start ramping up, the Brown-Ulman campaign is moving quickly on setting up their team. Judging by a report in today's Maryland Reporter, it appears that high profile Howard County Democrats are rallying behind the Brown-Ulman ticket (excerpt below):

MARYLAND REPORTER: After they declared “Ken Ulman Day” in Howard County Thursday, the four Democrats on the five-member County Council unofficially declared Monday “Ken Ulman and a Secret Partner Day.” This was a joking reference to the not-so-secret announcement planned on Monday by Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown that Howard County Executive Ulman would join his ticket as candidate for lieutenant governor in the 2014 gubernatorial race.

Howard County Democrats returning home from the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Clarksville Thursday night even found a robo-call from Brown on their answering machines inviting them to the announcement on Columbia’s lakefront Monday morning. There would be coffee and doughnuts along with a “a big campaign announcement” of his running mate, promised Brown, who formally declared his run for governor at a rally three weeks ago....

While Ulman himself still wasn’t disclosing his plans, McPherson referred to him as “lieutenant governor” and suggested he put an award he received on his desk on the second floor of the State House. “We’ve been hearing a lot about Ken Ulman,” [HoCo Democratic Party Chair Michael McPherson] said. “We look forward to hearing great thing about Ken for years to come....”

MUCH MORE ON MARYLAND GOVERNOR'S RACE SOON!