In race for Md attorney general, Michael Peroutka looks to ‘God’s law’

Michael Peroutka was energized as he discussed his favorite topic.

The Republican candidate for Maryland’s attorney general was speaking to an audience of about 150 people — mostly enthusiastic supporters — at a forum on the U.S. Constitution at Towson University earlier this month.

“Would you say this with me, please,” he asked the crowd as he reached the key point of his presentation.

“There is a God,” Peroutka proclaimed.

There is a God, the audience replied

“Our rights come from Him.”

Our rights come from Him.

“The purpose of civil government

The purpose of civil government

is to protect God-given rights.”

is to protect God-given rights.

Then, with more vigor, he had the audience repeat it again.

The short statements are the central tenets of Peroutka’s view of American law and government and the pillars of the Institute on the Constitution, a nonprofit educational organization he founded in 2004.

And they are the core ideas that have shaped the 70-year-old retired attorney’s campaign to be Maryland’s chief legal officer.

Peroutka has made clear that if he is elected, his view of Christianity will determine his decisions. And he has said that as attorney general he will not support laws enacted by the legislature if he believes they are in conflict with his understanding of God’s law.

Inside the hall, Peroutka was well-received. But about 75 protesters — mostly students — stood outside in the cold rain and held signs and chanted, calling him a white supremacist and telling him his views weren’t welcome.

The well-worn path to getting elected in America, of course, is by appealing to the fervent base during the primary and then running to the middle in the general election, hoping to reel in voters who are uncomfortable with the fringes.

Peroutka appears uninterested in following that playbook.

With Election Day less than a month away, the mild-mannered former Anne Arundel County Council member has not backed down from any of his positions on abortion, same-sex marriage, religion or public education that he championed in the primary. Nor has he hinted that compromise is part of his political vocabulary.

Instead, Peroutka, who faces long odds in his contest with Congressman Anthony G. Brown (D) to fill the position created when Brian E. Frosh (D) announced his retirement as Maryland’s attorney general, has doubled down on his assertions that all abortions should be made illegal, that same-sex marriage is not legitimate, that he doesn’t know if Joe Biden won the 2020 election and that public schools are part of a long-standing socialist effort “to indoctrinate students away from the values of their parents … and away from a Christian world view.”

He elaborated on many of these positions at the forum, repeatedly returning to the idea that laws created by men and women are not legitimate unless they are in accordance with God’s law.

The Towson event, hosted by the campus chapter of the conservative student activist group Turning Point USA, was billed as a discussion of the Constitution along with Gordana Schifanelli, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor. But for Peroutka, it effectively doubled as a campaign event in a race that, because of his stances, very few people other than his supporters believe he can win.

Peroutka has also said that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) and other state and local leaders acted illegally when they instituted mask mandates and stay-at-home orders to curtail the spread of covid-19. His top promise as a candidate is that he will prosecute state and local leaders “who have exceeded their lawful authority and have violated the God-given, constitutionally protected, liberties of Marylanders.”

And Peroutka has said he wouldn’t disavow his association with the League of the South, which has been categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At a League of the South conference in 2012, he sang “Dixie,” calling it “the national anthem.”

Peroutka said at the forum he had originally joined the organization because he saw it as standing up against an overreaching central government but left when one of its leaders spoke out against interracial marriage.

“I don’t have any ties to a white supremacist group and I’m not a white supremacist and I’m not a racist,” Peroutka said in response to a student’s question. “I resigned from the group when that happened because I didn’t want to be associated with that at all.”

Peroutka’s stalwart supporters are proud of their candidate’s unwavering position on issues and fill up his Facebook page with encouragement and words of thanks. But his policies and beliefs seem out of alignment with the majority of Maryland voters, said Todd Eberly, a political scientist at St. Mary’s College. The state voted overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, and both of its U.S. senators and seven of its eight representatives are Democrats.

“I think he absolutely believes what he’s saying,” Eberly said. “And in many respects, I think that’s part of what’s holding his candidacy back. In a state like Maryland, you try to run to the middle and broaden your appeal as much as possible. But there are some candidates for whom it would be impossible to move to the middle. Their record precludes it.”

Eberly, who doesn’t think Peroutka can win, compares his campaign to that of Doug Mastriano, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania who has made Christianity the focus of his campaign, courts only his base and has alienated many voters within his own party in the process.

A recent Goucher College poll has Brown leading Peroutka 53 percent to 31 percent, with 15 percent undecided and 1 percent choosing someone else.

The money has also run in Brown’s direction. At the end of August, the Peroutka campaign reported having spent $35,046 on the campaign to date with $36,169 on hand. The Brown campaign, which faced a difficult primary contest against retired Judge Katie O’Malley, had spent $530,546 with $80,094 on hand.

And history is not in Peroutka’s favor. No Republican has been elected attorney general in Maryland since 1919 and no Republican has served in the role since 1954.

Peroutka initially agreed to be interviewed by The Washington Post for this story but did not respond to questions that were sent to him or to follow-up requests for an interview.

Though Peroutka hasn’t backed down from any of his controversial positions, there are limits on what he could do as attorney general to put any of those views into practice, said Doug Gansler, a Democrat who served two terms as Maryland’s attorney general beginning in 2007.

“Were he to serve as attorney general, and I don’t think that’s a real possibility, he would quickly learn what the responsibilities of the attorney general actually entail, and that is protecting consumers from consumer fraud and defending the state in actions being brought against it,” Gansler said. “There’s a limited, proactive agenda for an attorney general.”

He dismissed as “total bluster” the idea that Peroutka could bring charges against Hogan and state officials for instituting measures during the pandemic to contain its spread.

“Publicly elected officials and public officials in general have sovereign immunity, so he would not be able to prosecute them on a personal level because he doesn’t like their policies,” Gansler said. “And that’s before you even get to the fact that his arguments are constitutionally infirm and don’t hold water.”

Brown, Peroutka’s opponent in the race, has blasted Peroutka’s positions on the issues and his refusal to acknowledge Biden won the 2020 election. “Our democracy, reproductive health care, LGBTQ+ rights, and the values shared by Marylanders of every background are on the ballot this November,” Brown said in a statement on Monday. “Time after time, my opponent has shown that he is out of step with Marylanders and continues to peddle lies about the 2020 election at every turn, undermining our democracy and the votes of millions of Americans.”

In his bid for attorney general, Brown has said he will expand voting rights, crack down on ghost guns and gun violence, work to decriminalize marijuana and push for expansion of women’s reproductive rights including access to abortion.

On abortion, which has emerged as a key issue for voters since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, Peroutka has adamantly opposed a woman’s right to choose even in cases of rape or incest. Peroutka said that as attorney general he would not defend the Maryland statute that allows a woman to choose to have an abortion and said the statute is a “nullity.”

“My obligation would be to protect life,” he said in an interview with the Maryland State Bar Association in March.

“Not to defend the statute passed by the legislature of Maryland?” asked Natalie McSherry, the association’s president at the time.

“I think the higher calling would be to protect innocent life,” Peroutka responded. “You have no right to do what God says is wrong. Rights come from God … that’s not my personal belief, that’s a foundational principle of American law and government.”

Peroutka has been endorsed by Schifanelli and by Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox.

“Like me, Michael has stood against lockdowns, mandates, and violations of parental and medical rights,” Cox wrote in his endorsement on Peroutka’s website. “He has defended life and the right to self-defense. As Attorney General he will ensure voter integrity and border security.”

But most of the state’s top Republican figures have either withheld their support or spoken out against Peroutka, whose political experience is limited to one term on the Anne Arundel County Council and a run for president in 2004 on the Constitution Party ticket. He received about 0.1 percent of the vote in that contest.

Md. Republicans call for unity as Cox, Peroutka bids inflame rift

When comments that Peroutka made in 2006 resurfaced this summer, echoing the debunked conspiracy theory that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were a result of preset demolition charges, Hogan issued a strong rebuke.

“We know who was responsible for 9/11,” Hogan tweeted. “Blaming our country for Al Qaeda’s atrocities is an insult to the memory of the thousands of innocent Americans and brave first responders who died that day. These disgusting lies don’t belong in our party.”

A number of leading Maryland Republicans contacted for this story declined to comment on Peroutka’s candidacy. Republicans who served with him on the Anne Arundel County Council did not reply to interview requests. But David R. Brinkley, secretary of budget and management in the Hogan administration and a longtime Republican state legislator, didn’t mince words when asked about Peroutka’s quest for the attorney general position.

“He’s not running a campaign, he’s running a crusade,” Brinkley said in an interview. “Meanwhile six million Marylanders have to figure out who’s going to be their top attorney. And that top attorney has to represent myriad positions, not just one end of the spectrum.”

So far Peroutka has made relatively few campaign appearances other than at private fundraisers and small meet-and-greets. He did hold a Peroutka Campaign prayer service in mid-September, during which supporters offered prayers for each of Maryland’s counties.

In a video of the event posted on the campaign’s Facebook page, many of those who spoke talked about evil and dark forces across the state, particularly Baltimore, and prayed for Peroutka’s victory so he could combat them.

A woman prayed for Kent County, saying that coastal towns “are gay communities” in need of deliverance “from their sin and wickedness.”

Between the prayers, Peroutka played guitar and sang hymns with a small ensemble. He concluded by performing a rarely sung verse of the Star Spangled Banner including the lines, “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto — “In God is our trust.”