Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler said that a drinking party he attended--which was in June but is coming to light now after a photo surfaced of him there--was outside of his jurisdiction, and that it wasn’t his job to report alleged underage drinking there.
Gansler briefly stopped by the party, at a rental home in Bethany Beach, Delaware, to talk to his teenage son, he said.
“Assume for purposes of discussion that there was widespread drinking at this party,” Gansler said, reported the Baltimore Sun. “How is that relevant to me? … The question is, do I have any moral authority over other people’s children at beach week in another state? I say no.”
Advocates against underage drinking disagree.
“It’s totally inappropriate for an adult, especially for an elected official whose job is to uphold the laws of the state or any state,” said Michael Gimbel, an independent consultant and the former alcohol abuse prevention official for Baltimore County. “For any parent to do this is irresponsible. But for an attorney general who fought for these laws on the books is even worse,”
Bob Wheelock, a Gansler campaign spokesman, said the candidate will talk Thursday afternoon at his campaign headquarters in Silver Spring about what happened.
Gansler’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the governorship is going through a rough patch.
The Washington Post published a story last week about Maryland State Police describing Gansler as directing troopers assigned to protect him to bypass traffic by driving on the shoulder and presenting other safe-driving concerns. Gansler also made headlines when he responded to the report by calling the commander of the state police’s executive protection section a “henchman” of Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley and Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who is running against Gansler for the Democratic nomination. Gansler’s response brought a rare rebuke from state police, which described the reference to the commander as “unseemly and unacceptable.”
Furthermore, Gansler’s office announced Tuesday that he paid a photo-camera speeding ticket the attorney general’s office received from the District of Columbia.Gansler said the failure to pay immediately was inadvertent as he sought to determine who was driving at the time. The attorney general said he went ahead and paid the ticket, even though he said it’s still unclear who was at the wheel.
In August, the Post reported that Gansler told campaign volunteers at a meeting a month earlier that Brown is relying on his race to get elected.
“I mean, right now his campaign slogan is, ‘Vote for me, I want to be the first African-American governor of Maryland,’” Gansler told the group in a recording obtained by the newspaper. “That’s a laudable goal, but you need a second sentence: ‘Because here’s what I’ve done, and here’s why I’ve done it.’”
The race for the Democratic nomination for governor got off to an early start this year, partly because the primary has been moved up from September to June. The race has also been highly competitive so far because O'Malley is barred by term limits from seeking a third term in the heavily Democratic state.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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