Democratic, GOP contests for Maryland governor tight as primary nears

Tom Perez paced the banquet room in a suburban seafood restaurant like the trial lawyer he once was, building the case Maryland has been “punching below our weight” on the issues that matter to Democrats.

“Our democracy is on fire right now,” Perez, 60, said as about two dozen Democrats dined on crab cakes and listened as he campaigned to be the next governor. “The one thing we can’t do in this moment is cower in the corner. We have to stand up and fight.”

Perez covered topics with a mastery of detail, at turns dissecting the racial inequity in the state’s three-strikes law, worker protections against silica dust or the agricultural wisdom of growing hemp on the Eastern Shore.

He paused to politely order an IPA, then plowed back into the need for better job training in high schools and the cruel disproportionality of covid-19 deaths among the uninsured. By the time his beer arrived, Perez reached his main point: “We can fix all of these things.”

His sales pitch for governor — a position he’s eyed for years — straddles paradoxes: battle-tested yet idealistic, a candidate with national connections and local roots. He led the Democratic National Committee after Hillary Clinton’s bruising 2016 defeat and was President Barack Obama’s chief civil rights enforcer at the Department of Justice before becoming a Cabinet secretary in charge of the Labor Department. He advocated for immigrant rights, served on the Montgomery County Council and helped steer Maryland through the Great Recession as state labor secretary.

Still, Perez has not been on a Maryland ballot in 20 years — and never statewide. He’s struggled with name recognition in a crowded primary campaign that voters have largely ignored, in a blue state that twice elected a Republican governor in the last eight years.

And despite his deep DNC Rolodex, the party’s heavy hitters have not campaigned in Maryland to press the case for his primary victory — with the notable exception of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is from Baltimore and has ties to the state.

Perez’s campaign bets that his workmanlike approach to “get stuff done” and decades of experience pulling the levers of government distinguishes him in the field of nine Democrats.

“I’m confident that when you make an informed choice,” he told the District 33 Democratic Club, “you’ll choose me.”

‘A dreamer and a doer’

Perez grew up in Buffalo, the youngest of five in a Catholic family led by political refugees who fled dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

His mother worked at home wrangling the kids. His father was an Army physician. It was, by Perez’s telling, a “Leave-it-to-Beaver” type of neighborhood in a largely White, Rust Belt city where a job at the Bethlehem Steel plant meant a spot in the middle class. His family was “the only diversity” in town, he said.

In 1974, when Perez was 12, his father died of a heart attack. The trauma shaped him. It also fostered what he calls a “surrogate father” relationship with his best friend’s dad, a Teamster who introduced Perez to the power of labor unions, which today have lined up in force behind his bid.

As a high-schooler, Perez cut the lawn of a neighbor who was a Brown University alum and encouraged him to apply. Perez got in, and he worked on garbage trucks in the summer while securing an Ivy League education that now includes a joint degree from Harvard Law School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government.

After clerking for a federal judge in Colorado, he moved to Maryland in 1988 when his wife, lawyer Anne Marie Staudenmaier, got a job at Legal Aid in Frederick. Perez launched his first stint at the Justice Department as a deputy assistant attorney for civil rights. The couple eventually settled in the liberal D.C. suburb of Takoma Park 27 years ago and raised three children.

Perez keeps long-standing loyalties. He still roots for the Buffalo Bills. Every July he takes a trip with his tightknit group of law school buddies. He’s run three Boston marathons, rises early to exercise and avoids caffeine, aside from his afternoon can of Pepsi. He brought it with him to a recent interview at an outdoor restaurant in his adopted hometown.

Off the top of his head, he ticked off in essay form the state’s interlocking problems of crime, wage disparity, mistrust of government and insufficient public transit, affordable child care and education. (He separately discussed climate change and inflation.)

He guffawed at the idea the governorship could be a steppingstone to another political office for himself.

“My sincere hope after we succeed for eight years in Maryland is to able to be, hopefully, a good grandfather by that point,” he said.

Until then, he sees a unique moment to lead the state.

“We have an unbelievable opportunity right now to multitask because we’re never going to have this kind of money from the federal government again in my lifetime,” he said. “I also firmly believe that given the number of really serious challenges, we need a leader who’s both a dreamer and a doer.”

As he talked, passersby stopped to chat: the restaurant host who went to high school with his daughter, a former co-worker at the Democratic National Committee with her toddler in tow, a neighbor he first met working for U.S. senator Edward M. Kennedy in his 30s.

Perez’s campaign noticed voters often view his lengthy résumé one-dimensionally: as the labor guy, or the DNC guy that some of the Bernie Sanders’s wing still looks at askance. And he’s selling competence in a low-interest race while some competitors are selling inspirational slogans.

“What we’re trying to do now is make sure that people see the connective tissue of everything that I’ve done,” Perez said. “And that connective tissue is I have always taken on tough fights.”

‘Most pro-labor governor in the country’

Fights don’t always make friends.

At the end of 2016, Perez had been on the short list to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate, campaigning across the country as a bilingual surrogate skilled at connecting with working-class voters. He was considering a run to be Maryland’s governor, challenging popular incumbent Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in the 2018 contest (which Hogan won by nearly 12 percentage points).

Instead, Perez ran to be chair of the DNC — he notes at Obama’s request — as a progressive with ties to the establishment, a campaign aimed at healing the fractures and luring back Bernie Sanders voters.

Widely considered a thankless job, Perez drew criticism for diminishing power of the party’s superdelegates in the presidential nominating process, resulting in a vote of no-confidence in him from the Congressional Black Caucus. He wrangled the largest presidential primary field in history in 2020, setting debate rules that kept some candidates with little support or funding off the stage, prompting criticism. He also was tweaked by state party chairs over how the DNC handled Iowa Democratic Party’s inability to count the results in 2020 caucuses.

But Perez says in the way that matters, he was successful: when he took over, Republicans held the White House and both chambers of Congress, but when he left, Democrats were in control across the board.

Perez has taken up local officials’ offers to tour legislative districts, winning over some that he just met, such as Del. Robbyn T. Lewis (D-Baltimore City).

“In that half-day interaction, it became so obvious to me that Tom Perez is the right candidate,” said Lewis, who had invited all candidates to join her on such a trip and praised several others.

“It’s no disrespect to any of the other candidates,” she said. “We need a governor who knows how to govern.”

The sharpest criticism of Perez has come from Republicans.

When Obama nominated him for U.S. labor secretary, the late conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh likened him to socialist dictator Hugo Chávez. Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called him a “crusading ideologue.”

Perez has embraced the ideas of leaving no one behind and of being a crusader.

As Maryland’s labor secretary, he used his position to advocate for workers, pushing for the state’s “living wage law” that required government contractors to pay people enough to live on 40 hours a week — often higher than the state’s minimum wage. New regulations protected people from being misclassified as independent contractors, which had deprived them of benefits like unemployment insurance.

As the nation’s top civil rights enforcer from 2009 until 2013, Perez led the Department of Justice division that struck down voter ID laws, sued Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio over violating civil rights of Hispanics and launched a record number of investigations into police departments across the country.

While U.S. labor secretary, Perez pushed through a new overtime rule that nearly doubled the threshold of workers required to be paid overtime, extending extra pay to an estimated 4 million workers and drawing praise from labor unions. (A federal judge blocked the rule before it took effect under the Trump administration.)

Perez also mediated a strike of 40,000 Verizon workers, one many reasons Communications Workers of America President Christopher Shelton praised Perez during a recent gathering.

“If Tom Perez wins, he will be the most pro-labor governor in the country,” Shelton said.

— Erin Cox