In Maryland AG’s race, voters must choose between mainstream liberalism or the far right

In the race for Maryland Attorney General, voters seem to have a mostly straightforward choice.

They can either pick the candidate with a mainstream Democratic platform and a commitment to upholding the state’s laws, or the 9/11 conspiracy-theorizing, 2020 election results-denying candidate who opposes same-sex marriage and has said he would enforce “God’s law,” not Maryland’s.

That’s the difference between Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Brown and his opponent, Republican Michael Peroutka, a retired debt-collecting attorney and former board member of the League of the South, a white nationalist group in favor of southern secession.

Brown has spent the majority of his campaign to be the state’s chief legal officer pushing his platform while largely ignoring Peroutka’s existence. However, Brown told The Baltimore Sun in a statement that Peroutka and his political views “have no place anywhere near the office of the attorney general.”

“This election is about our values as Marylanders and the kind of communities we can build with justice and equity at the forefront,” Brown said. “Civil rights, reproductive health care, criminal justice reform, education and the foundations of our democracy are on the ballot.”

Neither Peroutka nor Maryland Republican Party Executive Director Corine Frank returned calls seeking interviews for this story. However, state GOP chairman Dirk Haire is quoted on the party’s website as saying he “could not be more proud of the crop of conservative candidates running for public office” in this cycle.

In deeply Democratic Maryland, it is unlikely Peroutka can win the election. He has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars less than Brown and shies away from media requests or interviews. While Brown has campaigned on issues like environmental protection, expanding voting rights, ensuring access to abortion and reducing gun violence, Peroutka has done the opposite. On Peroutka’s campaign website, his platform is seven sentences rooted in right-wing extremism.

For example, Peroutka, a one-term member of the Anne Arundel County Council, pledges to vigorously investigate election discrepancies and also to prosecute “public officials who have exceeded their lawful authority and have violated the God-given, constitutionally protected, liberties of Marylanders.” The U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, and there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Maryland or anywhere else in the United States.

Should Marylanders elect Brown, as they seem poised to do, it will be the first time a Black person will serve as the state’s attorney general. Brown is no stranger to high-level state politics, having served as lieutenant governor under Martin O’Malley and as a state lawmaker.

The job pays $149,500.

Maryland has not elected a Republican as attorney general since Alexander Armstrong in 1919 — Edward D.E. Rollins was the last Republican to serve in the role, appointed to the office in 1952 — but Peroutka’s presence as a candidate, in addition to gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox, signals a shift in what Republicans now consider to be viable, mainstream candidates, said Roger Hartley, dean of the University of Baltimore’s College of Public Affairs.

“It’s become a populist red Republican Party,” Hartley said. “You get leaders who appeal to that and frankly take it as far as they can as a way of angering and rallying the troops.”

Outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan represents one of the last vestiges of a more moderate Republican candidate who can appeal not only to his own party, but to Democrats and independents as well, Hartley said, while suggesting that the decision to nominate divisive candidates shows most Maryland Republicans are more in line with Trump than with Hogan.

“That moderate bench is not deep for them” Hartley said. “It may be that Maryland Republicans are where non-Maryland Republicans are [ideologically].”