Smith announcement: county or campaign news?
A week into the official start of the 2010 campaign season and already we’ve had our first surprise announcement: that Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith isn’t running for an office for which he never officially said he was a candidate.
Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that some criticism in the blogosphere and in political circles has surfaced on where Smith’s announcement originated, rather than the fact that he will not run for state comptroller.
The question centers around how the announcement was made as part of a county press release — and not a campaign release. Smith first e-mailed the announcement to the media on Monday afternoon from his county communications office. That same announcement was also put up on the county Web site.
There’s no mention of his decision on his campaign Web site nor his Facebook page. An e-mail from the campaign did go out around 4 p.m. on Monday. That release was identical to the county announcement and referred calls to Don Mohler, Smith’s county government spokesman.
State law generally frowns on the mixing of running a government office with the business of running for a political office — something that didn’t escape the notice of reporters or bloggers this week in Smith’s case.
On Tuesday morning, Mohler said there was an internal debate about whether the announcement should come out of the campaign or not.
Mohler said he argued in favor of sending it from the county communications office because it was a message to county voters that Smith had no intention of leaving office before the end of his term next December.
This is not the first time questions have arisen from Smith’s use of his communications office. Last year, as Smith was serving as president of the Maryland Association of Counties, reporters in far-flung areas of the state suddenly found themselves getting press releases about ribbon cuttings in Baltimore County that Smith was attending. That left some scratching their heads and interpreting the messages as a signal that Smith was ramping up for a statewide political campaign.
Should the announcement have come from the campaign instead of the county government? What’s your take?