nation is facing the most serious internal attacks on the frontal and institutional structures that define a democracy. since the pulitzer s were introduced a century ago. precisely to counteract problematic, authoritarian tendencies throughout the society. that warning was followed by the announcement of that year s pulitzer prize for national reporting which went to the washington post in new york times for quote, relentlessly reporting coverage in the public interest on russian interference in the 2016 election. and it s connections to the trump campaign, the president elect s transition team, and his eventual administration. that choice naturally drew the ire of then president donald trump, who did not stop complaining about the decision, even after he left the white house. it actually lead the pulitzer boards to open two separate independent investigations into the awarding of those prizes. this week, the pulitzer board announced the results of those investigations,
to look at, ayman, is that it s on the state by state basis. there are a few states where they play that card, and they have failed. the trump candidate lost. and did not win. that now has created a very competitive environment for democrats in those particular states. then you have states like pennsylvania and maryland, where the ads worked. the question certainly now, as you showed the poll on pennsylvania, where the candidate who was supposed to scare the heck out of pence it is within four points. you re sitting there going, did somebody see that coming? here the rub is, the difference between pennsylvania and maryland is that maryland registration. what you will likely see in a place like maryland is the concern about a dan cox becoming governor, and it will draw out democrats who ordinarily would not vote in
call the vice president pence a traitor. these are going to be the larry hogan voters. no, they re not going to vote for dan cox in that regard. this is going to be a very difficult struggle for the gop, to hold the governor s mansion holding this summer. give me your political stance here for a moment. what should democrats do to more effectively propose these candidates. i want to be careful in the way that we characterize those ads. democrats are paying for them, but we are really running. they are leading the republican field, and in any campaign, candidates attack one another, are the democrats who are running these ads during the primaries, are they galvanizing trump supporters to the republican voters? to the advantage of those far-right candidates, or should they just simply ignore them it till they get to the general election? what is the smart play here for the democrats? i think that what you have
they don t. largely because the numbers work against republicans in maine. we are outnumbered 2 to 1, in democratic versus republican registration. what we saw happened at the time that i ran in 2002, and wet larry hogan did in 2014. it was to create a narrative that appealed to center right democrats, and independent voters who typically and traditionally voted democratic. it gave them a choice to consider. wet dan cox has done, abstention ubly, is by defeating kelly, has taken that choice away from those voters. the likelihood that they are going to, in the first instance, the first blush, vote for somebody who believes that joe biden was installed in the white house. it busts people to january 6th,
up back in may. as it turned out, doug mastriano won that primary. it seems like the money that the democrats spent on the attack ad actually helped mastriano win that race, perhaps because some republican voters actually wanted a win for what donald trump stands for. and now, mastriano, a far-right candidate has a real shot at the governor s office. he is now pulling within the margin marginal error of democratic nominee josh shapiro. and this gop donors. democrats are running the same playbook in maryland, with one democratic group spending more than 1 million dollars on advertising the elevated republican candidate dan cox, promoting his ties to trump, as well as his pro-life and second amendment stands. a lot of maryland republicans were actually into that description. yesterday, dan cox won the republican primary for maryland,