[For the Post—a paper owned by Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos—scaremongering about lefties is job one. On a national level,
that’s led to the Post’s hysterical coverage of Bernie Sanders.
On a local level, it’s led to the paper’s attacks on Elrich.]
[[link removed]]

A SOCIALIST IN WAPO’S SUBURBS  
[[link removed]]


 

Pete Tucker
June 17, 2022
FAIR [[link removed]]

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_ For the Post—a paper owned by Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos—scaremongering about lefties is job one. On a national level,
that’s led to the Post’s hysterical coverage of Bernie Sanders.
On a local level, it’s led to the paper’s attacks on Elrich. _

,

 

After Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the country’s
third-most powerful democratic socialist may be a former elementary
school teacher you might never have heard of.

While Marc Elrich isn’t yet on the nation’s radar, he’s very
much on the WASHINGTON POST’s. The paper tried desperately to stop
him from becoming chief executive of Montgomery County, Maryland, an
influential jurisdiction located just outside DC, smack dab in the
heart of the POST’s coverage area. (Montgomery is “the state’s
economic dynamo—a place where leadership and governance are
consequential,” the POST notes
[[link removed]].)

Despite the POST’s efforts, Elrich narrowly won the county
executive seat in 2018. And now he’s standing for reelection, with
a good shot at winning
[[link removed]].

That’s an outcome the POST is determined to prevent, lest Elrich
set a dangerous example: that a lefty can not only win, but govern so
effectively that voters return him to office.

For the POST—a paper owned by the third-richest human
[[link removed]] alive, AMAZON founder
Jeff Bezos—scaremongering about lefties is job one. On a national
level, that’s led to the POST’s hysterical coverage of Bernie
Sanders
[[link removed]].
On a local level, it’s led to the paper’s attacks on Elrich.

‘COUNTERCULTURE CRED’

[WaPo: Marc Elrich's pragmatism belies his radical reputation]

_More than a decade ago, the WASHINGTON POST (10/11/10
[[link removed]])
was writing about “the evaporation of [Elrich’s] radical rep.”_

It wasn’t always like this. There was a time, prior to the 2018
campaign, when a humanizing story about Elrich could appear in
the POST. For example, an upbeat 2010 profile (10/11/10
[[link removed]])
began like this:

There’s no doubting Marc Elrich’s counterculture cred. He was 12
when he went to his first peace rally in 1961. A few years later, when
he got to the University of Maryland, he promptly helped take over the
philosophy building.

He’s been arrested at an anti-apartheid protest. He’s run a
natural food co-op. He pushed Takoma Park to declare itself a
nuclear-free zone and served ten terms on that activist enclave’s
City Council.

The POST’s 2010 story went on to note how, after protesting the
Vietnam War and marching for civil rights as a young man, Elrich
became an elementary school teacher. “By the time he left [teaching]
almost two decades later, he was legendary for bringing reluctant
fourth- and fifth-graders to a love of numbers,” the POST wrote.
“To this day, he’s the best math teacher my daughter ever had,”
the parent of a former student told the POST.

‘IDEOLOGICAL EXTREME LEFT’

[WaPo: A Leftist Is Poised to Lead Montgomery County. There's Cause
for Concern]

_Calling Elrich “an outlier who proudly positioned himself on the
ideological extreme left,” the Post (7/11/18
[[link removed]])
warned that “business and development leaders…are openly
worried.”_

The POST wrote this upbeat profile over a decade ago, at a time when
Elrich was on the County Council. Back then, the POST was open to
endorsing Elrich, as it did in both his 2010
[[link removed]] and 2014
[[link removed]] council
reelection bids.

But once Elrich sought the county’s top post in 2018, things quickly
turned sour. Suddenly, in the pages of the POST, Elrich became
a Venezuela-hugging
[[link removed]], Che
Guevara–loving
[[link removed]] union
shill
[[link removed]],
who’s “skeptical of capitalism
[[link removed]]”
and “proudly…on the ideological extreme left
[[link removed]].”

He “possesses an agile mind and a silver tongue,” which he uses to
justify his extremism, the POST wrote
[[link removed]] of
Elrich, who’s Jewish.

Leaving nothing to chance, in addition to its blistering personal
attacks, the POST repeatedly warned Montgomery County voters
they’d be inviting financial doom by voting for Elrich. “He would
imperil the county’s economic and fiscal prospects,”
the POST (9/29/18)
[[link removed]] claimed.

Still, Elrich eked by (in the Democratic primary, the key race in the
deep blue county). His 2018 win so unnerved the POST that the paper
swiftly sought to undermine not only Elrich, but the election itself.

Four days after the election, the POST (6/30/18)
[[link removed]] claimed,
“The winner’s authority [will] be undercut.” The reason? The
county’s elections were badly in need of reform, the POST suddenly
determined, citing Elrich’s win as evidence.

‘SPENDING SPREE’

[WaPo: Marc Elrich is playing a shell game with Montgomery County’s
finances]

_The POST (3/25/19
[[link removed]])
scoffed that Elrich supported pay increases for public workers
“based on the bizarre logic that employees are somehow owed money
for scheduled raises that were scrapped after the recession.”_

In the intervening years the POST’s coverage of Elrich has proved
remarkably consistent, and remarkably untethered from reality.

A year into his tenure, the POST (3/25/19)
[[link removed]] claimed Elrich’s
“profligacy” was on full display as he “cannibalized tens of
millions of dollars” to provide a “bouquet of roses for his union
backers.” He’s playing a “shell game with Montgomery
finances,” the POST continued, and “it will be difficult to pay
for his fat labor contracts in coming years.”

This is how the POST, a newspaper with a history steeped
in anti-unionism
[[link removed]],
talks about working people receiving previously negotiated pay
increases.

Midway through his term, and now amid a pandemic, Elrich was still at
it, “lavishing major pay increases on thousands of county
employees,” the POST (8/30/20
[[link removed]])
decried. Sure, frontline workers risking their lives to keep the
county running deserved a little something extra, the POST relented.
But Elrich was only going on a “spending spree” so he could repay
the unions that were “key to his election,” the POST insisted.

As a result, Elrich was inviting financial ruin, the POST (8/30/20
[[link removed]])
claimed for the umpteenth time:

How will Mr. Elrich pay the bill? Will he raid the county’s
reserves, thus jeopardizing Montgomery’s bond rating and, in the
process, its ability to borrow cheaply? Will he divert funds… [meant
for] individuals struggling to pay rent?… Unlike the federal
government, Montgomery cannot print money.

‘DIVISIVE FIGURE’

[WaPo: Under attack, Montgomery County’s Marc Elrich says he’s
misunderstood]

_The WASHINGTON POST (5/1/22)
[[link removed]] says
“Elrich is struggling to defend a record he says is
misunderstood.”_

After four straight years of insisting Elrich was bankrupting the
county, how does the POST now explain to readers that Montgomery is,
in fact, in good financial shape
[[link removed]]?
The answer: carefully.

Buried down in the 18th paragraph of a recent profile of Elrich,
the POST (5/1/22)
[[link removed]] admits:
“The worst fears about Elrich have not materialized in his first
term.”

The cleverest part of the POST’s half-assed admission is the last
four words—“in his first term”—which pivots readers’
attention away from Elrich’s successful first term and towards an
imagined “worst fears” second term.

Of course, by the time readers make it to the 18th paragraph,
Elrich’s unfitness for office is not in doubt. The opening graph
alone paints Elrich as barely civilized: “He doesn’t care for
wearing neckties or cleaning up for pictures, he’s nonchalant about
fundraising and he’s known for rambling.” And the next sentence
calls him “a divisive figure” with “a devoted army of
supporters.”

The POST’s profile gets even more slanted thanks to its
quotes. It’s amazing how, in a county of 1.1 million residents,
the POST can no longer seem to find anyone who has anything clearly
positive to say about Elrich.

The closest the POST came in its May profile was a quote from Tony
Hausner, a longtime Elrich supporter, who said, Elrich “is not a
salesman. He doesn’t try to sell you on himself.” Which is not
exactly a ringing endorsement.

Meanwhile, another supporter, Scott Schneider, a retired labor
organizer, is quoted as saying Elrich’s communication skills are a
“handicap.”

Not even the union leader quoted could come up with two nice words to
say about the man. “Absent a scandal,” said Ginno Renne, who heads
the union representing most of the county’s employees, “Montgomery
County voters don’t have a tradition of turning out incumbents.”

‘BUILD, BUILD, BUILD’

Seeing words like “scandal” and “handicap” appear in
purportedly _favorable_ quotes, I decided to reach out to the three
quoted Elrich supporters to see if they’d given the POST more than
backhanded-at-best comments about Elrich. And it turns out they had.

“I said a lot of positive things about Marc, and I was floored that
she didn’t include any of those things,” Hausner said of Rebecca
Tan, the POST reporter who wrote the May profile of Elrich.

Among the chief issues Hausner said he raised with Tan was Elrich’s
effective leadership amid the pandemic. The other two Elrich
supporters said the same.

Schneider, the former labor organizer, is so jaded by the POST’s
coverage over the years that he wasn’t surprised by the profile.
“The WASHINGTON POST has never been very sympathetic or favorable
to Marc,” he said.

Schneider attributed the POST’s dislike of Elrich, at least in
part, to their differing approaches to development. The POST’s
“build, build, build” approach is the local version of “drill,
baby, drill,” he said.

Elrich, on the other hand, prefers to protect and create affordable
housing in a more direct manner (like progressive New York
legislators are doing
[[link removed]]),
rather than by providing taxpayer giveaways to developers. This has
earned Elrich the ire of developers—and the POST
[[link removed]].

‘MAGICAL THINKING’

[WaPo: Montgomery County’s leader prefers magical thinking to action
on affordable housing]

_WASHINGTON POST (11/24/19
[[link removed]]):
Rather than approving development projects, Marc Elrich “prefers to
engage in magical thinking.”_

Elrich’s “magical thinking” is inviting a future in which
Montgomery County may be “plagued with problems like San
Francisco’s and Seattle’s—gilded playgrounds for the rich where
middle-income residents are banished and the poor forced onto the
streets,” the POST (11/24/19
[[link removed]])
declared.

It’s amazing the POST can get away with saying stuff like this.

While Elrich spent the past decades fighting against social
inequities, for far longer the POST has been teaming up with
developers to turn DC into the very gilded playground it now
(wrongfully) attributes to Elrich’s policies.

A little history is in order.

The Graham family—which owned the POST for eight decades before
selling the paper to Bezos in 2013—wasn’t content to merely
advocate for the removal of DC’s Black population in the pages of
its powerful newspaper. So in 1954, a time when DC had no local
governance of its own, POST publisher Phil Graham created a shadow
government
[[link removed]] consisting
of himself and downtown white business owners. The explicit goal of
the group, called the Federal City Council, was to remove African
Americans from DC. And they were so successful that five years later,
on a tour of the targeted area near the US Capitol, former first lady
Eleanor Roosevelt asked, “What has happened to the people who once
lived here?”

Today, the POST is the only game in town, so it can whitewash its
own ugly history. This leaves the paper free to claim the moral high
ground, even on housing issues, and even against someone like Marc
Elrich, who’s dedicated his life to fighting the very injustices
the POST has long orchestrated.

Returning to the POST’s May profile of Elrich: In addition to
Schneider and Hausner, I also spoke with Gino Renne about what he told
the POST.

“There was a lot more conversation than that one quote,” the labor
leader told me. “Of course, they always try to pick out, I guess,
the most controversial or most bombastic quote.”

_Pete Tucker is a journalist based in DC. He is
on Twitter @PeteTucker_

 

_FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering
well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We
work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater
diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that
marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints. As an
anti-censorship organization, we expose neglected news stories and
defend working journalists when they are muzzled. As a progressive
group, FAIR believes that structural reform is ultimately needed to
break up the dominant media conglomerates, establish independent
public broadcasting and promote strong non-profit sources of
information._

_FAIR’S WORK IS SUSTAINED BY OUR GENEROUS CONTRIBUTORS, WHO ALLOW US
TO REMAIN INDEPENDENT. DONATE
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