My Senate Run Ends

Folks, a number of you were in on the fact that I was considering (seriously) a run for the US Senate in Maryland in 2018. I decided last night to walk away from that quest, and here is the text of what I sent out in a newsletter:

"I took a lot of time over the summer thinking about the 2018 Senate race in building a “Theory of the Case”. Essentially, the question was “what would justify the long-shot candidacy of an inexperienced man, in a heavily Democratic state, who has lived only ten years in MD, and who knew few people in the state outside his own town?”

That (admittedly thin) case was built around a central proposition—that Hillary Clinton would win the upcoming Presidential election, that in the first election in her off-year Presidency her party would take a beating, that the Democrats wouldn’t necessarily want to spend money (at least early on) to shore up what was generally an “in the bank” state, that a popular Republican Governor would be on the ballot, and that Obamacare would have had two more years to fester, creating additional problems for the Democratic incumbent.

Under these circumstances, a perfectly run, well-financed, and “lucky” Republican could have a small chance.

Donald Trump’s victory Tuesday dramatically alters the landscape. The Party on the hotseat in 2018 will be the Republican Party, with whom my brand of conservatism is somewhat out of fashion. Obamacare will not be an albatross to hang around the Democrats’ neck, as it will by then have been reformed. 

And so, I simply can’t justify all the sacrifices that I and people I love would have to make for this run to happen. I tried to bring method and planning to the decision, so that in the end, my case for running was more than “I’d really like to be a Senator”. The tentpole planning supposition of that method and that case has now fallen, and all I am left with is the desire to be a Senator and the desire to make things better. I will always think these noble impulses, and if I were independently wealthy, nothing would stop me. But I am not, and so I bring this process to a close.

Thank you so very much for having taken me seriously for the past few months, and thank you for being a part of my life.

Bryan McGrath