Bill Turque has picked up the Tronemania mantle and run with it, even to the point of running Trone-provided photos. Puff piece is a polite word for this.
David Trone, co-owner of Bethesda-based Total Wine & More, is considering a run for Congress in Maryland’s 8th District, his spokesman said Monday evening.
The entry of Trone, a multimillionaire and major Democratic donor who lives in Potomac, would seriously scramble the race for the seat being vacated by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D), who is running for the U.S. Senate.
Trone could easily self-fund a campaign against the seven contenders in the April 26 Democratic primary, who include state Sen. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Montgomery) and former news anchor and Marriott executive Kathleen Matthews. Trone is expected to make a decision within the next few days. The filing deadline is Feb. 3.
Trone, 60, who has never run for office, referred questions to Total Wine & More spokesman Ed Cooper. “He’s looking at it,” Cooper said. “He will have a decision later on this week.”
But where Turque goes over the falls in a barrel is with this part.
Should Trone decide to run, it would not be good news for Matthews, who is courting the kind of support from the business community that Trone could also claim. Trone would also probably diminish Matthews’s fundraising advantage. She had taken in more than $1 million through Sept. 30, aided by a network of corporate and political contacts developed in tandem with her husband, Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball.”
Some District 8 political insiders speculate that Trone is weighing the race because private-sector leaders are not confident that Matthews, a political novice, can beat Raskin, a popular incumbent lawmaker from Takoma Park.
Really? Which insiders? David Lublin? If so, just say it - he wrote it on his blog, after all. That’s a public thing, Bill. Supposedly there are rules at the Post about the use of anonymous quotes - this wasn’t even a quote.
And it doesn’t even make sense - as I pointed out the other day. If the goal is to get a friend of “private sector leaders” elected, having Trone make a serious run splits that vote and makes a Raskin victory more likely. And Trone allies like Peter Franchot and Bill Frick are supporting Matthews. So it’s obviously not as simple as Turque wants to make it. Which I strongly suspect would be a lot more clear if Turque had revealed even a general description of his “some say” sources. There’s some high level chess playing at work here, but Turque is playing checkers.
I don’t claim to know all the answers, but I like my theory a lot better than the half puff piece/half “some say” BS put out by Bill Turque.