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Throughout my 2022 Baltimore County Executive campaign, I was practically begging to have my campaign covered by local big media outlets. WCBM and the Patch were the only ones who gave me a fair shake. Credit to both of them, I will always be forever grateful!
Today, the Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Banner published articles about how Deputy State Prosecutor Sarah David will be running against Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger. The headlines? “Challenger outraises longtime Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger in 2026 race” and “Meet the well-connected lawyer challenging Scott Shellenberger”. Her campaign has already raised more than $105,000. Oddly, the Banner article and David’s LinkedIn page says that she graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2007 but the State Prosecutor web page says 2003.
Wealth, aesthetics, youth (relative to most in politics) and intelligence…what a combination to have! It’s amazing the snowball effect that occurs when you get to become friends with taxpayer funded colleagues AKA government employees and elected officials. Like I’ve been telling my younger relatives lately, success in life is more often determined by who you know, not necessarily what you know. That’s not to take away from any accolades that Ms. David earned throughout the years, but when most can’t get past the application and interview phase, life trajectories can be very different.
She holds degrees in political science, Comparative Ethnic Conflict and Law. During the course her privileged life, she’s lived in Maryland, Ireland, Egypt, Morocco and New York City.
Shellenberger was nearly defeated by Robbie Leonard, 42,847 vs. 44,962 votes, after Leonard received a last minute marketing push from the George Soros funded Maryland Justice Public Safety PAC. You couldn’t go anywhere on YouTube without seeing his video ad. That primary race received a lot of coverage but County residents barely heard a peep about the one between Olszewski and Reuter.
One question I was asked by different groups was how much money I had raised for my campaign. The “war chest”, as it’s colloquially called. Unfortunately, I’m not a wealthy man and I don’t know a lot of rich people, so in all honestly it was pennies compared to the well-connected politicians. I naively thought that media outlets would cover my campaign because I was the sole individual running against incumbent County Executive John Olszewski, Jr. during the primary election…but I was wrong. Very wrong.
You see, the vast majority of these big media outlets don’t really care about the politicians. Sure, they’ll run articles about scandals but when someone from the middle class challenges them? Crickets. To their credit, WBFF FOX 45 did ask for a high resolution photo, but that’s about it.
Sour grapes? Absolutely. Imagine if you entered a foot race and you were handicapped with 25 pounds ankle weights that your competitor didn’t have to wear? The Baltimore area media outlets showed their true colors back in the year 2022. They exposed themselves even more when a Republican competitor was ignored during the first day of early voting. Two media outlets–WBAL and WMAR I was told–refused to interview this candidate while they waited for Johnny Olszewski to arrive. They waited for more than an hour and refused to provide fair/balanced coverage.
This past year, I reached out to different campaigns. Some agreed to do interviews, others either told me no or ignored my e-mails and phone calls. The treatment I received in 2022 was a big reason this online news site was started! It will only grow into a bigger media force once word gets around and at that point people may really begin questioning how honest the multi-million dollar media outlets are. That’s my hope, anyway.
Regardless of all that, I wish both candidates the best of luck in 2026.
Sarah David and Scott Shellenberger: It’s All About the Money When It Comes to Baltimore Politics
