Maryland Moderate Fights "Longshot" Label

In Maryland's crowded GOP Senate primary field, candidate Neil Cohen has positioned himself as a moderate and is fighting the media perception that he cannot win.

I’ve been on the phone with Maryland GOP Senate candidate Dr. Neil Cohen for about twenty minutes when he starts to really get irritated. Not with me, but over the coming defeat of his candidacy.

He talks like an honest candidate, a benefit afforded to him by a flailing campaign. Social security is unsustainable, he says: We may have to raise taxes to pay it off or cut services.

“As a Republican, I shouldn’t be talking like this,” Cohen says. “But we can’t keep having programs that are this generous – we just don’t have the money.”

Something about how he shouldn’t be talking this way changes his tone quite drastically, and Cohen’s real frustrations open up.

“At this point I don’t think I’ll ever get elected. No one wants to hear the truth. I’m so frustrated right now – I think the whole system is going to hell in a hand-basket,” Cohen says. “My voice never gets heard. There are no newspapers to cover what I say, no radio interviews.”

His gripe is that the media has lumped him in with other long-shot candidates: a single-issue pro-life advocate and a candidate who has never showed up at any Republican candidate forums.

“I’m relegated because I’m a dentist… [they say] I must not be able to think about these issues” despite his political science undergrad degree, says Dr. Cohen. “I’m putting up all these signs, and I know it won’t mean a damn thing.”

One can’t help but think that, had Cohen spent more time working within the Republican Party apparatus, he would have had a serious chance at a career in politics. He’s smart – he clearly knows his policies, knows his figures, and has a clear disdain for talking points.

Maryland’s Republican Senate primary is a crowded field, and even the winner is a long-shot against incumbent Senator Barbara Mikulski. Cohen is doing the best he can. He’s been trying to carve out a niche as the only ‘moderate’ in the race. He’s pro-choice, believes that TARP was necessary, and supports the concept of a fiscal stimulus, but not necessarily the form it took in 2009.

“I believe in smaller government…  [but] the mistake the Republican Party has made is that they’ve locked themselves into the idea that smaller government means that all government should be smaller,” said Cohen. “What we want is government that works.”

A dentist residing in Rockville, Maryland, Cohen has practiced his profession in the state for nearly thirty years. His son is a Maryland Deputy Fire Marshall. He would have made an appealing state legislator, and perhaps in a few years, a ‘straight-talk express’ candidate for higher office. But this doesn’t appeal to him.

“I’m 62. I’m a dentist. That’s my profession. We have a citizen’s democracy. The perception that you have to run for lower office – where has that gotten us?” says Cohen. “I don’t have time for that.”

His irritation is palpable. Why shouldn’t an intelligent, hardworking professional be able to win a Republican primary in Maryland? Do relationships with party donors and Republican higher-ups for ‘experience’ make for better political representation?

He’s the kind of person who would make a great representative. Why aren’t there more Neil Cohens? Or rather, why aren’t there more Neil Cohens that can win?

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