Well, if you are Kelly Schulz, you do the next best thing. You create your OWN organization. Except you call it a “Coalition.” In that “coalition” you include certain members other organizations, give them titles, get some money, make some ads and signs, and off you go.
One example is her recently created “Waterman for Kelly Coalition.” This “coalition” was started with the help of Rob Newberry, Chairman of the Delmarva Fisheries Association, and eight other local chairmen of various other separate associations for watermen, naturalists,etc. This is billed as a “grass roots” group to help get Kelly through the primaries and to the Governor’s office in the general election.
But why does she do this instead of getting the endorsement from each of the associations individually? Why does she need this.
First, she is losing badly in many areas, and she knows it. Since Dan Cox got an important endorsement from President Trump and has been out spreading his message of following the Constitution, protecting parental rights, and limiting government overreach into the private lives of Maryland citizens, he and his running mate, Gordana Schifanelli, have been polling as muchas thirty points ahead of Ms. Schulz.
It’s no surprise since Kelly has avoided almost every public appearance and debate where Delegate Cox is participating. Using her personal distaste for Cox because he is an actual Conservative, saying she doesn’t want to be on the same stage with him, Schulz reveals that this campaign is all about how she looks in public, and not her ideas.
In fact, it’s hard to find her ideas. Unless, of course, you find video of her sitting with Governor Larry Hogan and nodding her head n total agreement as he needlessly shut down small businesses in the state for Covid. This may be why she won’t appear in person with various groups, including the Patriot Club of America and Republican Women of Baltimore County at their recent Republican Gubernatorial Debate. It’s hard to debate when she has nothing to say about what her vision is for the State’s economic, educational, law enforcement and health care systems.
But it is easy to find some people willing to write that vision for her. That’s why she needs these coalitions to do “campaign events and identify supporters throughout the State.” After all, it’s hard to identify people who you have never met in person or even in a local event. So, you need others to do it for you.
She has other coalitions. Women for Kelly, Heroes for Kelly, Farmers for Kelly, to go along with the Watermen for Kelly. All artificially engineered coalitions that were not created organically but in some desperate attempt to gain momentum where there is none.
Someone should tell Kelly that artificial coalitions created by the candidate herself do not constitute a “grass roots” effort. Grass roots means that it happened in a ground swell of support by regular people who have heard the ideas of the candidate and agreed with them, not a group of union like leaders who have been schmoozed and given fake promises.
