Maryland State Wire

Maryland Democrat gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous' recent faltering and ultimately failed attempt to answer a basic question about issues in one county could be the grimace-heard-round-the-state, a Baltimore County Republican Party official said.

"Ben Jealous won't have any 'forgotten counties' because he apparently didn't know them to begin with," Don Murphy, District 1 committeeman speaking on behalf of the Maryland GOP's Baltimore County Republican Central Committee, told the Maryland State Wire. "He may have listened to the voters of the lower shore, but he apparently didn't hear them."

Jealous' initial response to an open and basic question about "what's happening" in one Maryland County was a lengthy grimace that did not appear in the final interview with WMDT 40 ABC reporter Ryan Eldredge published last week and updated Monday.

The grimace is preserved in a brief video of that part of the interview posted Monday on the YouTube channel DemGovsClips.

"Campaigning everywhere will be important for Jealous, who has made a name for himself in Baltimore and D.C., but can only talk in generalities about our area and even acknowledged that he lacks hands-on experience on the Eastern Shore," Eldredge said in the posted interview.

Eldredge then is shown asking Jealous, "What is your understanding of what's happening in Somerset County? Anything yet?"

Jealous' initial response, the lengthy grimace, doesn't appear at 2:18 of the final published interview, which does include the Democrat's eventual answer. 

"I believe that you have to listen before you lead," Jealous said. "I started off 500 days ago listening to people all over the shore as part of a 24 county tour of our state. And it's because I listened that I was able to win the support of activists throughout the shore and win every county."

Former NAACP President and CEO Jealous, the son of an interracial Maryland couple who raised him in California because they couldn't legally marry in their home state, declared his candidacy for the Democrat gubernatorial nomination in May of last year. He emerged victorious from June's nine-candidate Democrat primary, including Prince George's County Executive Rushern Baker, to oppose the state's popular incumbent Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in November.

Hogan ran uncontested during June's Republican primary.

Jealous' campaign so far has been built on progressive promises of free college, legalized marijuana and a $15 state minimum wage. "Ben Jealous Is Trying to Succeed Where Bernie Sanders Couldn't," a June headline in Mother Jones magazine said.

Murphy declined questions about the entire field of Maryland gubernatorial candidates and what issues and policies he is most concerned about in this race, but said that Jealous' grimace in response to a basic question about Somerset County points to the type of governor Jealous would be. General election voters are going to notice, Murphy said. 

"Jealous speaks in the kind of platitudes you would expect from an activist candidate," Murphy said. "Big on fluffy rhetoric, small on the details. His big-spending, liberal leanings were embraced by a plurality of primary voters, but they will not sit well with the majority of general election voters who always get stuck with the bill."