This Isn’t Typical Andy
The video is everywhere now: ABC News, the New York Times, all over your social feeds. Andy Harris, the most disciplined Republican in Maryland politics, pointing his finger at a reporter in a Cambridge press gaggle and telling her she’s not allowed to record him. “If you record, we will refer you to the prosecutor.”
The reporter, Cat Murphy of Capital News Service, pushed back the way any reporter would: everybody else in the room was recording. Harris pointed at her. “But you are not allowed to.” He invoked Maryland’s two-party consent law, which, whatever its merits in a private phone call, is a strange thing to cite in a press gaggle after your own debate, in front of a room full of journalists with cameras running.
And a few minutes earlier, during the debate itself, a woman in the audience had laughed out loud while Harris was blaming Democratic environmental regulations for the price of diesel. He stopped and scolded her. “You are rude.”
Watch it all in sequence and you see something Maryland political people almost never see: Andy Harris rattled.
