Sitting around with a few friends the other day, we were marveling at the number of campaign ads filling the broadcast airwaves. With Virginia, Maryland and the District all feeding one media market, you need a leaderboard to keep track of who is running for which office where.
Indeed, there are hard choices in Maryland’s U.S. Senate primary as well as those for state attorney general, comptroller and the General Assembly. And at the local level, there primaries for county executive, county councils and school boards.
For the open Senate seat alone, there are 18 Democrats and 10 Republicans on the ballot.
When a friend, with three 18-year-old women living in her Prince George’s home, asked for my opinion of the candidates, I threw up my hands and told her, “You’re on your own with those dogfights.”
Those expensive, self-aggrandizing political ads are of no help in this topsy-turvy election season, when you can’t tell an elephant from a donkey around here.
A person might be better off reading tea leaves than polling data when it comes to handicapping the outcome of today’s close primary races.
Having punked out on a proposal or a prediction in the Free State, I stressed that the most important thing for everyone to do was to get a nonpartisan voter’s guide, study it and then go to the polls.
Exercising your right to vote today is of the utmost importance.
We get so caught up predetermining winners that we forget what’s more productive — predetermining more effective representatives who will best serve and represent the governed.
And, voting with your conscience requires you to delve deeper than the best “guesstimates” of pontificating pundits or pollsters. Or even endorsements, because you can’t know all the self-promoting egos or agendas behind them.
What we need in this country is campaign-finance reform so the political playing field could be leveled with an equal allotment of public funds for candidates.
To say that even I am fed up with pandering politicians would be an understatement. I am having a hard time suffering self-serving fools.
However, even in my deepest moments of political disillusionment, I recognize that the only thing that we plain people have at our disposal is our vote.
Do you want a ceremonial figurehead who does nothing more than cut ribbons and give ideological speeches while some powerful unknowns pull their strings? Or do you want a capable leader who has a proven track record but couldn’t make the cut for the cover of GQ or couldn’t raise millions to fund a mass-media-driven campaign?
Are voters simply interested in basic public-services delivery or in a community leader who can transform their campaign promises into executive action?
We moan that we don’t like “the system,” but a vast majority won’t even exert the minimum amount of energy required to read a voter’s guide to figure out who will offer “a change,” if it is needed, and for what.
As a result, too many vote based on someone else’s suggestion. The worst thing that can happen is for you to buy the hype that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. History has taught us better.
Remember, no vote is ever wasted on any candidate, even a long shot, who you think will do the best job for the people, win, lose or draw. Every vote makes a statement.
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