Sheriff's Race: Slater Picks up the Pace; Latecomers Penniless

August 27, 2010
By

  Dan Slater, a candidate for Cecil County Sheriff in the Republican primary,  picked up the pace of his fundraising and broadened his financial appeal to voters throughout the county in recent months. But going into the Sept. 14 primary, his campaign is all but broke and poorly positioned for a general election campaign.

  Slater is the leading Republican primary challenger to incumbent Sheriff Barry Janney, who in the past has raised up to six figures in his  well-funded campaigns.

  Slater got an early start on his uphill battle last year and in January filed his first campaign finance report. As  The Cecil Times reported in January here: http://ceciltimes.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/slater-for-cecil-county-sheriff-gop-challenger-is-poor/ Slater’s initial fundraising report showed he had concentrated his fundraising efforts in his North East area homebase. He raised a total of $5,965 but spent $4,813, leaving him with nearly $1,152 in the bank.

  In his latest campaign report, Slater has picked up the pace, and geography, of his campaign fundraising. Since January, he raised $7,805, including $3,435 in direct contributions and $4,370 in tickets sold to fundraising events. 

 Among his events were a barbeque held in Crystal Beach, in the southern Cecil County community of Earleville. That event scored him some political points, if not a big cash benefit, since southern Cecil residents often feel slighted by candidates running countywide.    Slater also held a bullroast at the Wellwood in Charlestown and raffled off a shotgun to raise money for his campaign.

  The largest donor to the Slater campaign is RKB Investments, LLC,  of Rising Sun. The business entity donated $200 in July, after previously donating $1,000 to the campaign as listed in Slater’s January report to the State Board of Elections. Slater also received a $500 donation from PEPCO, Inc., listed at a Water St., Charlestown address; and $200 from AMNF, Inc., of Elkton.

Slater has had a solid presence around the county with yard signs and larger signs along key highways. But that presence doesn’t come without a price.  In his latest financial statement, he reported spending $8,887 on printing, campaign materials and the costs of putting on fundraising events.

As a result, Slater has just $69.01 in the bank. That figure, about the cost of a full tank of gas in an SUV, gives him nothing to fall back on for a general election campaign against a Democrat if he were to pull off an upset victory in the GOP primary. The late primary this year gives candidates little time to reinvigorate their campaign accounts before the November general election.

 The winner of the Republican primary for Sheriff will face the winner of the Democratic primary in November. The leading candidates in the Democratic primary are Chris Sutton– a corporal in the Sheriff’s Department who ran unsuccessfully against Janney in the general election four years ago– and Robert “Skip” DeWitt, a longtime deputy and the son of the late Jack DeWitt, the widely popular Sheriff of the county for many years.

  Among other lesser-known candidates, campaign funds are short to non-existant.

 Al Michael, of North East, a former state trooper and former police chief in Rising Sun, was a late entrant into the Republican primary but has been raising his profile a bit by peppering the county with a single-spaced letter outlining his views on the issues and he appeared at a public candidate’s forum. His bare-bones campaign has been largely self-financed, with $1,911 out of his pocket to pay for signs, printing and ads. He did hold a fundraiser with $1,320 in tickets sold, but expenses of his fundraiser, at the Nauti-Goose, almost equaled the funds raised from ticket sales. So after raising $3,231, and spending $3,011, he has a cash balance of just $220 in the bank.

  The last candidate to file for Sheriff, William T. Gerczak, a Democrat from Rising Sun, filed an affadavit stating that he had not raised or spent over $1,000 on his campaign. Gerczak, a former Baltimore city police officer, filed a few hours before the July 6 deadline. There has been much speculation whether his candidacy was put forward as a “spoiler” to split opposition to Sutton in the Democratic primary and draw votes away from DeWitt, who has emerged as a strong challenger to Sutton in the primary.

Cecil Times will be posting separate articles on the Janney, Sutton and DeWitt campaigns in upcoming days. For Janney’s and Sutton’s reports, we needed to go out and buy new ink cartridges for our computer printer and are thinking of adding arm lifts of their weighty reports to our exercise routine.

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2 Responses to Sheriff's Race: Slater Picks up the Pace; Latecomers Penniless

  1. Terry S on September 3, 2010 at 12:52 pm

    Thank You Cecil Times for your articles.

    As I read through some of these, I did not see where Slater was acknowledged for donating proceeds to The Woman’s Abuse Shelter in Elkton, MD last month. Some of his competitors have had twice as much money and never put it back into our community? It is refreshing to know that the Slater team isn’t all about how much money they have, it is what they will do for our county.

    Thank you again,
    Terry

    • ceciltimes on September 3, 2010 at 3:50 pm

      Thank you, Terry, for bringing this to our attention. If he has donated to the shelter from campaign funds, it will probably show up on the next report filed with the state Elections Board. The state sets deadlines for filing and the dates that are to be covered by each report.

      The next report, due today, Sept. 3, will cover finances after August 10. It takes the state several days or more to get the reports posted online. We will look for that report and will update Mr. Slater’s account. Good for him for giving back to the community and for such an important cause.

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