Maryland’s top two candidates for governor met Wednesday for what is likely their only debate. Here’s three moments — verbatim — that stood out during the debate.

Election results

Pamela Wood, Baltimore Banner politics reporter: This question is for state Delegate Cox. You have a history of promoting distrust in elections. You claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. You worked as a lawyer on his behalf in Pennsylvania. And you co-hosted buses to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021 for his “Stop the Steal” rally. And here in Maryland you just fought unsuccessfully a legal battle of how some of the ballots will be counted. Do you trust that Maryland’s election system is accurate? And should Marylanders believe that you will honor and accept the election results?

Del. Dan Cox: Absolutely. I believe in our constitutional system and as a constitutional civil rights attorney, that is exactly what I’ve been working to do in the legislature. That is exactly what I have pledged to do as your next governor, to ensure that, really, democracy is at stake, right? We have a republic; that means that constitutional procedures must be followed. That’s all I’ve ever sought to do and that’s exactly what I intend to continue to do.

Wood: Just to follow up. I asked if you would accept the results of the election and believe that there is integrity. The way that the election is being carried out this fall, do you believe that will be accurate and will you accept the results?

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Cox: Well I’ve always accepted the election results that are fair and that are following the Constitution. I intend to look to the Constitution and uphold the law and the Constitution. At this point it would be similar to saying that before a surgery takes place to find out whether or not, to decide whether or not the surgery went well. That is why the statute of Maryland actually protects Democrats, Republicans alike to say that there’s a process that has to be followed. And every single candidate on the ballot has a right to that process and I intend to uphold that process.

Controlling guns, crime and violence

Bees Beesley: Hi, I’m Bees Beesley, the editor in chief of Salisbury University’s student newspaper The Flyer. My question for the candidates is how will gun control and crime prevention intersect under your administration.

Cox: So it’s important that we get the guns off the streets that are there illegally and being used illegally for crimes. This is why I was on the governor’s crime task force in my Judiciary Committee, fighting with my fellow legislators to take guns off the streets that are there illegally and being used in crimes.

Mr. Moore and his team they actually supported decriminalizing much of this and refused — the approach is, their approach was to refuse the felony approach that if you’ve used a gun in crime that you should go to jail and instead they want them to run the streets. That’s why we have 60% of the murders in Baltimore City right now being unsolved and unprosecuted.

That’s going to change on my watch. We’re going to bring back law and order. We’re going to bring back the safety on our streets that everyone is crying out for.

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Jason Newton, WBAL-TV: Mr. Moore?

Moore: Thank you so much for that question, and it’s incredibly important because there’s no higher priority for any chief executive than public safety. People need to feel safe in their own communities, in their own homes and in their own skin.

And I think about what my opponent’s said that I said — which by the way, I never said, once again. And also how my opponent likes to say that he backs the blue. The irony is the blue doesn’t back you because the police officers have endorsed our campaign.

And so the things that we are going to do in partnership in our communities is ensuring that we can get and keep these illegal guns off of our streets and get and keep these violent offenders off of our streets. There’s an important role that the state plays in that.

There’s also an important role that the state plays in making sure that we have a strong parole and probation system when you consider a third of all violent offenders are in violation of parole and probation. That is a state function and right now it is understaffed and undermanned and we have to fix that; that we can actually put state resources to be able to make sure that we’re providing supports for violence intervention programs and violence interruption programs, which are continuing to show impacts because the people who are closest to the challenge are oftentimes closest to the solutions.

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So we have to make sure that we have a state that’s working in partnership with our local jurisdictions and also working in partnership with our federal counterparts to ensure we are getting and keeping illegal guns out of our streets and keeping violent offenders out of our neighborhoods.

Economic opportunity

Alexis Taylor, news editor at the AFRO: What will you do, if elected governor, to close the racial wealth gap — not just talk about it — what will you actually put in place and do reparations actually play a part in that at all? I will give that to Mr. Cox first.

Cox: So, the only thing we need to talk about with reparations is making sure that the people who were robbed of their business and their wealth in the last two years with an authority that my opponent supports, and that is a lockdown authority, we need to make sure that we’re back in the position to prosper once again. That’s my platform and plan.

When you look at my opponent he’s talking about, you know, transferring wealth away from people because of their skin color. That is racist, it’s wrong.

I will stand against that and say I’m a civil rights attorney. I’m about equal justice for all of Maryland. Making opportunities, bridge loans, opportunity zones — we need to make sure that our, all of our citizens in Maryland have what they need to have an education.

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I mean it’s preposterous when you go to Baltimore City, and I’ve been there plenty in fall and I’ve been to Morgan State when Mr. Moore refused to attend, and the cry of everyone’s heart is we’ve got to get our city and our state back on track, both economically and safe. That’s my platform. Mr. Moore wants to undermine that.

Moore: The impacts of racial disparities did not start two years ago, Delegate Cox. We are watching something that has been a long-term challenge that our state has got to wrestle with and address.

The fact that we have an eight-to-one racial wealth gap in our state is real. Let’s not pretend. It’s not because one group is working eight times harder. We have got to address this issue because it’s not just impacting one group it is impacting every single one of us. A recent report showed the racial wealth gap has cost this country $16 trillion in GDP — not of a group, GDP.

And so we’ve got to focus on creating pathways for work, wages and wealth. Having an education system that’s teaching our young people how not just to be employees, but employers. Making sure we are increasing wages for Maryland families and getting to a $15 minimum wage and peg it to inflation. Making sure that we’re creating pathways for wealth, and that means addressing things like unaffordable homes.

That means addressing things like unfair appraisal values and historically redlined neighborhoods. That means fixing broken procurement laws that have in the state of Maryland that calls for a 29% goal in MBE [Minority Business Enterprise program] participation but we have not come close to hitting that number.

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We’ve gotta take this, we’ve gotta move into a direction where we’re taking meaningful action and reparative action to be able to address the economic gaps that we continue to see in our society.

john.oconnor@thebaltimorebanner.com

John edits political coverage for The Baltimore Banner. Previously he's covered Washington, D.C. for WNYC public radio and politics and education in Maryland, South Carolina and Florida. 

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