The Cumberland Colony

News that a congressional candidate would be hosting a discussion on opioid addiction caught my attention because of the location, Cumberland, Maryland. Cumberland is the county seat of Allegheny County where I lived the first 9 years of my life. My father’s family had lived there since the early 1800′s but most have moved on. The coal, rail and paper industries have also moved on. The 2010 census showed the median household income for the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area was $30,916 and the average household income was $39,021. It is one of the poorest in the United States, ranking 305th out of 318 metropolitan areas in per capita income.

In Cumberland today with another all-star panel and packed house to discuss solutions to the Opioid Crisis. This is the most urgent issue facing our district and our nation. pic.twitter.com/roAoJgbIa8

— David Trone (@davidjtrone) February 11, 2018

And who pray thee tell is David Trone I wondered?
He is the billionaire co-owner of Total Wine & More.
Awesome! And he lives in Cumberland?
No, not really. In fact he doesn’t even live in the 6th congressional district. He lives in the 8th congressional district.
So why doesn’t he run in the 8th?
Been there and done that and lost.
Lost to whom?
A dork named Jamie Raskin.

OMG!

No only did Trone lose; he lost big! Running second in a nine horse field would be nothing to be ashamed of except he spent $13.4 million dollars to do it. Trone out spent Raskin roughly 6 to 1. The almost constant media messaging cost him an astounding $329 per vote or about one tenth the average annual family income in this district. Not even Hillary Clinton could spend at that rate. If she had spent $13.4 million in 435 congressional districts she would have spent over $5.8 billion.
To add further context, Meg Whitman spent $178.5 million on her losing campaign for California governor — $144.2 million of it her own money, according to 2010 campaign finance reports. The campaign’s overall spending broke down to $43.25 for each vote she received in November’s general election. From her own pocket, it was $34.93 per vote.
On the economical side of the ledger, Ted Cruz would win his 2012 senate seat in Texas by spending just $3.16 per vote in the general election but Kesha Rogers set the mark for campaign expenditure efficiency in 2014 in the Texas senatorial primary. Even while being out spent by a ratio of 124 to 1 the Lyndon LaRouche Democrat was able to force Texas’ richest dentist, David Alameel into a run off in the Democratic primary by spending just $24,139. Alameel spent $3,512,912. His per vote cost was $12.93 while Ms Rogers spent $.22 per vote.
Campaign ineptitude aside, is Trone a good fit for Western Maryland? Keeping in mind the dismal economic milieu in Cumberland with it opioid addictions and the ne’er-do-well former coal miners, peruse the Wikipedia entry for Trone’s hometown, Potomac,Maryland.

In 2013, CNNMoney listed Potomac as the most affluent town in all the United States based on median household income.[1] Potomac is also the seventh most top-educated American small town according to Forbes.[2] Bloomberg Businessweek labeled Potomac as the twenty-ninth richest zip code in the United States in 2011, stating that it had the largest population of any U.S. town with a median income of more than $240,000.[3] In 2012, The Higley Elite 100 published a list of highest-income neighborhoods by mean household income, which included four neighborhoods in Potomac; one of these neighborhoods, “Carderock-The Palisades” was ranked the highest-income neighborhood in the United States, followed by “Beverly Hills-North of Sunset” in Beverly Hills, CA, and “Swinks Mill-Dominion Reserve” of McLean, VA.[4] More recently, two Potomac neighborhoods were ranked among the ten wealthiest neighborhoods in the country by CNBC in 2014.[5] In 2018, data from the American Community Survey revealed that Potomac was the 6th wealthiest city in the United States.[6] Many Potomac residents work in nearby Washington, D.C.

Obviously it’s a great place to live, so good that the incumbent Congressman  John Delaney lives there too. Parenthetically NBA greats Patrick Ewing and Alonzo Mourning also live there. In 2011 the district was gerrymandered to oust long time Republican Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett. This was done by adding part of Montgomery County. The demarcation is so arcane that the state provides a website with a zip code look up just so voters know what district to vote in. The redistricting process is being challenged in the Supreme Court. It’s impossible to overstate the outcome of the Court’s decision. It will determine whether the forgotten men and women in Western Maryland can once again be masters of their own destiny or remain a colony of the Potomac elites who can outspend any of them by hundreds of dollars per vote.

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