ODD COMMENTARY: RNC Chair & Former Homeland Security Head Discuss Doug Gansler Beach Week // PLUS: Much More!

Below Maryland Juice provides a roundup of recent news items regarding our state's heated Governor's race. We include commentary on the Beach Week controversy from some interesting sources, along with additional sparring going on in Maryland's top statewide race:

JUICE #1: FORMER HEAD OF U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY DISCUSSES DOUG GANSLER BEACH WEEK STORY - In one of the stranger commentaries about the Doug Gansler Beach Week story, Michael Chertoff (former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security) used the controversy to defend the NSA's mass surveillance program. Chertoff's musings on Gansler and NSA surveillance appeared in a Washington Post op-ed yesterday (excerpt below):

MICHAEL CHERTOFF VIA WASHINGTON POST: In the past few months, much has been written about whether the National Security Agency’s authorized storage of anonymous telephone records should be curtailed on the grounds that it’s too invasive of Americans’ privacy.... So it is striking that two recent news stories illustrate a less-debated threat to privacy that we as a society are inflicting on ourselves. Last week, a passenger on an Acela train decided to tweet in real time his summary of an overheard phone conversation by Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA (and my current business partner). The same day, a photo was published of Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler at a summer party where he was surrounded by underage youths who apparently were drinking.

Of course, the delicious irony is obvious: In one case, the former NSA chief becomes a victim of eavesdropping. In the other, a politician critical of teen drinking fails to intervene when he is surrounded by it. But both stories carry a more troubling implication....

Where does this lead us? If a well-known person has an argument with a spouse or child at a restaurant, should it be broadcast? If a business personality expresses a political opinion at a private party, should that opinion (or a distortion of it) be passed on to the rest of the world?.... This is worth a national, and perhaps global, conversation at least as robust as the debate over government collection of telephone numbers....

JUICE #2: NATIONAL REPUBLICAN PARTY CHAIR REINCE PRIEBUS COMMENTS ON DOUG GANSLER BEACH WEEK STORY - It appears that the national Republican Party has decided to use the Doug Gansler Beach Week story to try and score some political points. RNC Chair Reince Priebus published the following op-ed in The Baltimore Sun this week chastising Gansler over the controversy (excerpt below):

REINCE PRIEBUS VIA BALTIMORE SUN: "Parents, you're the leading influence on your teen's decision not to drink." Those are the words of Maryland's Attorney General Doug Gansler, a Democrat and candidate for governor, in an anti-underage age drinking public service announcement he recorded a year ago.

Sadly, Attorney General Gansler doesn't listen to his own words and reportedly helped plan a party last June at which underage boys would be drinking beer and wine.... As a dad, I'm appalled by his behavior. It's irresponsible for a parent. And as a lawyer, I also know he likely violated the oath he took as attorney general by selectively enforcing the law....

JUICE #3: ANTHONY BROWN'S CAMPAIGN DENIES LEAKING ATTACKS ON DOUG GANSLER, CONSERVATIVE ACTIVISTS CRITICIZE BROWN CAMPAIGN - Given the constant flow of negative attacks on Attorney General Doug Gansler, it seems entirely plausible that rivals (or their allies) have been responsible for the recent spate of embarrassing leaks. But NBC News reported this week that Anthony Brown's campaign is denying involvement (excerpt below):

NBC NEWS:  "We know exactly who these things are fed by ... do I think this is a character assassination set up by my opponent? Maybe," Gansler said at a press conference called to respond to the beach party picture.

But Tuesday, Gansler's chief opponent in the race for governor -- Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown -- said he was not the source of the stories. When News4's Mark Segraves asked the candidate if he had anything to do with the stories, Brown said, "Our focus will not be what other campaigns are doing or candidates, it will be on the future of Maryland."

Segraves asked again if the campaign had anything to do with stories of Gansler at the teen party, or of a previous Washington Post story about a speed-camera ticket that Gansler never paid. "Did you have anything to do with it?" Segraves asked. "Nothing," Brown said, at an appearance at a counseling center for victims of domestic abuse.... 

But in a pair of recent blog posts, the conservative writers at Red Maryland laid the blame for the recent negative turn in the Governor's race at the feet of the Brown campaign. Moreover, the Red Maryland bloggers seem to think Reince Priebus' entry into the Doug Gansler story might be short-sighted as they think Maryland Republicans will be the next ones to receive this sort of treatment (excerpts below):

RED MARYLAND: What the Democrats are doing to Doug Gansler right now is something that few of us have ever seen before in Maryland intraparty Democratic politics.... And it has been extremely vicious between the Brown camp and the Gansler camp. And it has been sustained, from the original story about Gansler's State Police Drivers, to the speeding ticket that became an issue earlier this week, and now on to the Beach House Party story that broke late last night. The sustained assault on Doug Gansler and his character really is a new low for Anthony Brown, Martin O'Malley, and Maryland's Democratic establishment....

And my fellow Republicans, don't revel in the misfortunes of Gansler, Brown, and the open warfare occurring in the Democratic primary. On June 25th, after the primary and regardless of who wins, they will set their sights on us. Just wait for it....

In a second, more recent blog post, the Red Maryland bloggers also seem to imply that negative tactics are the norm for Brown's campaign manager Justin Schall (excerpt below):

RED MARYLAND: Anthony Brown’s campaign manager, Justin Schall, has quite a history, and it isn’t pretty. Maryland political insiders know Schall hopped over to Brown after running John Delany’s successful campaign to win Maryland’s gerrymandered sixth district. However, Schall’s track record is pretty shady.

In 2006, Schall managed the losing campaign of Cindy Chavez, who was running for mayor of San Jose, CA.  Here’s what the website MetroActive reported that election night.

We love election night parties. The exuberance, the fatalism, the cheese cubes. We even enjoyed getting tossed out of the Holiday Inn's Mediterranean Room banquet hall by a man who claimed to be Cindy Chavez's campaign manager, Justin Schall. "This is a private party," he explained with postal rage. (Was it something we wrote?)....

Hostility to a certain media that fails to write nice things about a campaign that won’t talk to said media.... 

Schall was one of the mental giants behind a local San Jose sleaze site called San Jose Revealed.   Funded by a labor union, Schall and his partners, which included the husband of his former boss, Cindy Chavez, dished out all manner of personal attacks and invaded the privacy of its targets.... one frequent victim of San Jose Revealed’s particularly vicious attacks asked Chavez for help in removing a map to his residence that had been posted to the site... After the map was published by Revealed, the home’s owner, falsely accused of making money through pornography, became the victim of a hate crime that involved property destruction and swastika graffiti....

JUICE #4: IN LIGHT OF GANSLER CONTROVERSY, SOUTH BETHANY ISSUES WARNING TO HOMEOWNERS - In our last bit of response to the Beach Week story, we provide a short item from the town of South Bethany. Delaware Online reports that the town has decided to turn the controversy into a teachable moment (excerpt below):

DELAWARE ONLINE: The government of a Delaware beach town is warning homeowners that they can face penalties if underage drinking or other offenses occur inside their homes.

South Bethany was the site of a party for graduating high schoolseniors that Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler briefly visited last summer....

The town government says in a statement many such incidents “are the result of poor or absent supervision by parents....” Homeowners can face fines or the loss of their rental licenses over disturbances on their property....

JUICE #5: DOUG GANSLER LAUNCHES ATTACK ON ANTHONY BROWN'S DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RECORD, DELEGATE CHERYL GLENN RESPONDS - On Tuesday, Doug Gansler's campaign decided to fight back against Anthony Brown by dredging up a 2003 domestic violence bill that they accuse Brown of helping sink. Delegate Cheryl Glenn responded with the following statement:

DELEGATE CHERYL GLENN: Reducing domestic violence is something we should all agree on.  As a survivor of domestic violence myself, it is deeply troubling that the Attorney General’s campaign would use this issue to score cheap political points, especially when Lt. Governor Brown, like far too many in Maryland, has been personally affected by domestic violence.  Anthony has fought for - and won - critical legislation to reduce the scourge of domestic violence, and Doug Gansler knows it.  Political attacks on this issue are entirely inappropriate. 

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Doug Gansler Says "Whether You Have a Boy or Girl" Makes a Difference for Teen Drinking // Del. Mizeur Condemns Remark

The Baltimore Sun's Erin Cox today published more commentary from Maryland gubernatorial candidate Doug Gansler regarding his Beach Week teen drinking controversy. In her article, Cox flags some inadvisable remarks from Attorney General Gansler stating that whether you have a "boy or a girl" makes a difference for teen drinking (excerpt below):

BALTIMORE SUN:  At a Silver Spring diner last week, as Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler sat with reporters and considered a photo of himself standing amid a teenage party, one of the diner’s owners approached the table....

He took the opportunity to draw the woman into the discussion, asking whether she had children, and whether she would have intervened.... “You know, I might actually make that phone call.” Gansler shrugged, and before he resumed arguing that he had no moral responsibility for other people’s children, remarked: “It also has to do with whether you have a boy or a girl.”

HEATHER MIZEUR WEIGHS IN & GANSLER CAMPAIGN RESPONDS: The Washington Post's John Wagner published a rebuke from rival gubernatorial candidate Delegate Heather Mizeur, as well as a response from the Gansler campaign (excerpt below):

WASHINGTON POST: In newly reported comments Monday, Maryland gubernatorial candidate Douglas F. Gansler said parents might view underage drinking differently depending on the gender of their child, a sentiment that drew a sharp rebuke from one of his rivals....

Del. Heather Mizeur (D-Montgomery), who is also seeking the Democratic nomination in June, said she was “deeply troubled” by Gansler’s comments..... Gansler campaign spokesman Bob Wheelock later said “some people are trying to twist Doug’s words. Doug believes that as parents, we need to commit ourselves to preventing underage drinking for all of our children, boys and girls,” Wheelock said. “Period....”

Below you can read the full press release from Heather Mizeur slamming Doug Gansler's latest Beach Week commentary and asking him to clarify his remarks:

PRESS RELEASE 

Mizeur on Gansler’s ‘Boy or a Girl’ Comment

SILVER SPRING, Maryland — Today, a Baltimore Sun article reported disturbing new comments from Attorney General Doug Gansler regarding a party that included underage drinking. The Sun reported that, after discussing the issue with another parent who said she might have called police to shut the party down if her daughter had been involved, ‘Gansler shrugged, and before he resumed arguing that he had no moral responsibility for other people's children, remarked: 'It also has to do with whether you have a boy or a girl.’"

Delegate Heather Mizeur (D-Montgomery) released the following statement:

"The safety of each and every child is paramount. I am deeply troubled that Attorney General Gansler appears to be saying that the safety of some children is more important than that of others, or that young girls need guidance and protection from their parents and other trusted adults that boys do not. Adults have a responsibility to look out for kids regardless of gender. The dangers of underage and binge drinking have been well-documented, and for the Attorney General to suggest that it's only a problem for young women, as he appears to be doing, is tragically wrong and indicates that he doesn't understand the larger issues at stake here. I hope Doug will clarify his remarks with respect to this issue, as this is not the example any responsible adult ought to be setting for young people."

###

VIDEO FOOTAGE: Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler's Appearance at Beach Week Party With Underage Drinking

Thanks to a report on Baltimore's Fox News this morning, Maryland Juice was able to locate a video of Attorney General Doug Gansler's appearance at a controversial "beach week" party with underage drinking:

Another Doug Gansler Beach Week Photo Emerges as Underage Drinking Debate Goes National // Twerking, Tweets & Analysis

UPDATE:  Will this ever end??  In a blistering TV segment today, WJLA reports that two women who attended the beach week party are now disputing Gansler's claims. They are claiming that: beer and hard alcohol were being visibly consumed, the house reeked of beer, Gansler was taking photos, and he was there for more than a minute:


ORIGINAL POST: Yesterday Maryland Juice discussed the crazy new story from The Baltimore Sun breaking news that gubernatorial candidate Doug Gansler was photographed at a wild party with rampant underage drinking and allegations of up to $50,000 of property damage. Below we provide multiple updates and analyses of the controversy, including a new photo from the beach week party, a response from Gansler, several national media stories, and some more serious pro/con analysis toward the end of the post. It should be noted that this story has gone viral, and in the course of a single 24-hour-period, it is now on Maryland Juice's list of our all-time top five read posts. Annoyingly, the Gansler story bumped our report on Delegate Sam Arora's marriage equality flip-flop out of our "top five" list.


JUICE #1: ABC NEWS RELEASES ANOTHER DOUG GANSLER BEACH WEEK PHOTO // ATTORNEY GENERAL WATCHING A TWERKING SHOW? - Yesterday, ABC News ran a national story on Doug Gansler's spring break party controversy. But towards the end of their TV segment, they published yet another photo of the Attorney General at the underage beach week party. I don't know about you, but in this second party pic, it looks like Gansler is watching the table-top twerking show (I guess it would be hard not to be distracted by the sight of this going on):

Maryland Juice is going to admit how lame he sometimes is on pop-culture, as I had not heard of the term "twerking" until Miley Cyrus pushed the word into the national consciousness with her own dance performance last summer (photo from The Guardian):

Now here's the instant replay if you missed it the first time (Note: we added the yellow circles to the ABC news screencap):

Gansler Beach Week Photo 1.0

JUICE #2: GANSLER ADDRESSES BEACH WEEK DRINKING CONTROVERSY AT PRESS CONFERENCE // MEDIA DISSECTS HIS RESPONSES - Shortly after the release of The Baltimore Sun's expose on Gansler's beach week cameo, his campaign announced a press conference to address the controversy.

The Washington Post carried video coverage of the well-attended event, as well as some post-press conference commentary. In the video segment below, one reporter pretty aggressively confronted Gansler with a copy of the original beach week photo.

But in his comments, Gansler suggested he maybe should've acted differently, maintained he didn't know what was in the red Solo cups ("Kool Aid" perhaps?), denied knowing how to take photos with his phone at the time, and more:

Maryland Juice watched yesterday as the story went viral, and media figures from around the nation started weighing in. But some of the more interesting commentary has come from journalists within the Beltway region. The Washington Post's team of reporters have had much to say about this story, and today their blogger Clinton Yates wrote:

CLINTON YATES (VIA WASHINGTON POST): I don't have a huge problem with Doug Gansler, but what he did yesterday was intellectually bogus. Yesterday, after a photo was published that showed him at a Delaware house party, he held a presser. He pointed out that it's not really his job to police what goes on at Beach Week, because it's in Delaware. Personally, I don't take a major stance against his decision. Professionally, however, it was not a smart move to enter that place.

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake called Gansler's press conference "one of the more jaw-dropping and torturous political press conferences in recent memory." He then pulled a few Tweets from journalists covering Gansler's responses to the controversy. I screencapped a few of Blake's selections below:

And below you can see a back and forth about Gansler's press conference between The Washington Post's local politics editor Amy Gardner and the paper's political blogger Chris Cilizza of The Fix:

Indeed, Chris Cillizza followed-up on Amy Gardner's suggestion by re-posting his list of "The Fix’s best/worst political scandal press conferences" and suggested Gansler's inclusion on a list that includes Elliott Spitzer, Bill Clinton, Jim McGreevey, Anthony Weiner, and Mark Sanford. Oy vey!


JUICE #3: ONLINE MEDIA FIGURES DEFEND DOUG GANSLER'S PARENTING DECISIONS - While the raucous nature of Doug Gansler's beach week photos captured the attention of the national news media, a few voices have defended the Attorney General's parenting decisions. Gawker.com called Doug Gansler "Maryland's Coolest Dad," while a more serious piece on Slate.com talked about responsible parenting regarding teenage drinking (excerpt below):

SLATE.COM: If his explanation is accurate, the plain fact is that Gansler and the other parents who helped organize their kids’ trip to the Eastern Shore were being entirely sensible. A group of parents rented a house for their sons the week after high school graduation—Beach Week, in Maryland schools parlance—and laid out an extremely well-thought-out set of rules for the boys....

There is of course a 100 percent chance that teenagers at Beach Week are going to drink and be idiots. As a parent, there are three ways to handle this situation: You can, understandably, forbid your children from attending at all. On the other side of the scale, you can just send your children off to Ocean City and hope their common sense will keep them out of trouble. Or you can make the tactical decision to oversee the festivities and keep things from getting out of hand: keep kids off the road, keep them out of each other’s pants, and keep them from doing shots. Would that all parents of teens were so “permissive”!....

Now of course there are things that are sort of damaging about the story. There’s the bum optics of Gansler and his fellow parents’ being rich enough to pony up for a very nice beach house for their fancy private-school kids.... And then there’s the photo itself, which is of course mortifying....

But it’s a nontroversy. Penalize Gansler because you don’t like his policies, or because he rubs you the wrong way, or because he apparently loves telling state troopers driving him around to run red lights. Don’t penalize him for being a sensible parent.

The Baltimore Sun also ran a column from Kristine Henry asking, "what would you have done?" (excerpt below):

KRISTINE HENRY (VIA BALTIMORE SUN): I still can't decide if I'm outraged or nonplussed.... I don’t really want to say that I’m not sure what I would have done in that situation because that basically means admitting that if my kids were at a party where I had reason to suspect there was underage drinking, I might look the other way. And that would make me a horrible mom, right?...

Do you become That Parent, the one who’s super strict and known as a killjoy and who embarrasses his 19-year-old by pulling him out of a party because some people are drinking beer?.... So, now that I’ve admitted I’m not sure if I’m a drag or an enabler, tell me: What do you think Gansler should have done? And is it what you would have done, too, or does he need to be better than us?

If you're curious about the parenting decisions made by Gansler, The Washington Post published a list of "rules" for the Beach Week party established by the group of parents who rented the house for their kids (Note: hard liquor was prohibited, but no rules about beer & wine):

For what it's worth, many news outlets have been juxtaposing Gansler's beach week defense with a public service announcement (PSA) he taped a few weeks before the party, cautioning parents on teenage drinking. But one upshot to the controversy is that Gansler's PSA on teenage drinking now has over 37,000 views! UPDATE: The PSA has now been made private and is not viewable on YouTube.


JUICE #4: BEACH HOUSE OWNER ALLEGES $50,000 OF DAMAGE BUT GANSLER SAYS IT WAS BURGLARS // MARYLAND JUICE DISSECTS THE POLICE REPORT - One under-discussed aspect to the story is that the Beach Week party in question may not have been just fun and games. The original Baltimore Sun report alleges that the owner of the house was left with $50,000 of damage that nobody has taken responsibility for (excerpt below):

BALTIMORE SUN: Two days after the party, however, the house was in bad shape. Julie Barnes, who has for years cleaned the home after renters, said she arrived on June 15 to find the wooden floors rippled from moisture damage, dents that appeared to be made from high heels on the bar and pool table, and floors sticky from what smelled like beer. According to minutes of a South Bethany Town Council meeting where the vandalism was discussed, the house sustained about $50,000 worth of damage.

Police who investigated did not place blame on the Landon group and classified the damage as likely the result of a burglary that occurred sometime between Friday evening and Saturday when Barnes arrived to clean. The Landon group turned in their keys Friday afternoon, parents said....

Gansler said the parents assume that someone broke in and trashed the house after the boys checked out. "Apparently, the night before, the parents who were chaperoning it kicked kids out" because it was getting too crowded, Gansler said. "The thought was [the damage] was so malicious that they were trying to get revenge or back at the parents who were chaperoning for kicking them out...."

ANALYSIS OF THE POLICE REPORT: Based on a copy of the "burglary" police report published by The Baltimore Sun, Maryland Juice thinks the idea that there was a burglary does not pass the straight face test. First, the police report indicates there was no forced entry into the beach house and theorizes that whoever caused the damage entered the house with a keypad code or because the house was left unlocked. Second, the only stolen item listed on the police report is a $50 "duck decoy." That is not exactly the type of item selected by burglars who are looking to fence stolen merchandise. They usually go for things you can easily sell on eBay or Craiglist (eg: bikes, computers, flat screen TV's, and iPods). A cheap duck decoy sounds like the kind of thing a wasted teenager would take, rather than a professional thief. Lastly, the police report indicates the house sustained damaged glass shower doors. Did the "burglars" decide to have a rock and roll moment before fleeing the scene of the crime? I flagged these unusual notations on the police report below:

Who should be responsible for the damage under this set of facts: the homeowner or the parents that rented a beach house to a bunch of teens, while witnessing a week of raging parties?


JUICE #5: THE JOKES BEGIN // TWO AMUSING TAKES ON THE DOUG GANSLER CONTROVERSY - I have to admit that I've begun feeling a little bad for Gansler. To be clear, much of what he's being accused of is not exactly a capital crime. But even still, I can't help but crack a grin at some of the media hilarity emanating from this story. Jay Leno weighed in on the controversy last night, and yesterday The Washington City Paper responded snarkily to the Gansler photo story with a series of joking memes placing Gansler in several famous but fictional wild parties. Here's their meme with Gansler in a scene from the film Superbad:

The Atlantic also got in on the joking with an article today headlined, "How to Spot Underage Drinking: A Guide for Doug Gansler" (excerpt below):

ATLANTIC: Here, from a fresh college grad to parents out there, are the obvious signs of a party Gansler missed that could have saved him from criticism.

• Red solo cups: As Toby Keith so delicately sang, the red solo cup is a staple of cheap American beer at houseparties. "There could be Kool-Aid in the red cups," Gansler posited to reporters, "but there's probably beer in the red cups." Probably is probably an understatement.

• Grinding/twerking: Butt-on-lap grinding doesn't necessarily have to include alcohol; for kids these days, it could be at a pre-teen bar-mitzvah. But when that twerking is on top of a table? That's a good sign people have left sobriety behind. 

• Beer pong table: Speaking of that table, it's in a perfect spot and the perfect length for a game of beer pong. Any centrally located tables should set off some drinking alarms. 

• Male shirtlessness: As soon as the first drink goes down, bros love to take their shirts off. There are four shirtless guys in this photo — that's more than enough to start asking questions. 

• American flag shorts: Even advertisers hoping to increase sign-ups for Obamacare knew that American flag shorts were a staple of young drinking bros. 

• Hands in the air: Raised arms, the staple of awkward, drunk teens trying to dance, are in full glory in both photos.

JUICE #6: GANSLER SEEKS TO MOVE PAST BEACH WEEK STORY IN AN EMAIL BLAST TODAY - For what it's worth, Gansler is attempting to move past this latest controversy with a sort of mea culpa in an email blast today:

Friends,

I am not known to mince words. For better or worse, I am not a smooth talking politician who scripts every word.

But when I make a mistake I own up to it.

The fact is that as a parent of a 19-year old, I face the same issues as many of you. How do we get it right? How do we draw the balance between helping our college teenagers make good choices and when to pull them back? You try to always make the best decisions. In this case, maybe I should have done something differently.

It has been heartening to hear from so many of you who have had similar personal experiences with these issues.

Despite the distractions Jolene and I have been focused on getting things done for the people of Maryland.

You may have missed it among the other stories this week but The Baltimore Sun also reported that a developer is backing off a plan that would have destroyed part of the University of Maryland golf course.

On Tuesday, we gathered with concerned community leaders and elected officials asking the University to save this valuable green space and focus on rebuilding and improving Route 1 leading into College Park.  Our voices were heard. Now we will work together to make Route 1 an attractive and efficient gateway to the University of Maryland.

Like we did in Prince George's County, Jolene and I will deliver for the people of Maryland.

Thanks for your support,

Doug

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