Perez announces his candidacy for Maryland AG

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Perez, a Democrat from Takoma Park who is completing his first term on the county council, is the second Montgomery County elected official to declare his candidacy to succeed retiring Attorney General J. Joseph Curran (D). Montgomery County State’s Attorney Douglas F. Gansler (D) announced last week.

A former federal prosecutor and civil rights lawyer, Perez promised to fight on behalf of consumers and take on big business.

‘‘At no time have the fundamental rights and protections of Maryland’s consumers been under a more sustained attack than in recent years,” said Perez, 44, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. ‘‘These attacks have come from many different directions — from the mailbox to the inbox, from the doctor’s office to the rental office.”

As attorney general, Perez said he would expand access to health care, take on insurance companies, predatory lenders and the pharmaceutical industry to ‘‘develop innovative legal strategies for lowering the cost of prescription drugs.”

‘‘The new attorney general must be prepared to embrace uphill battles, make all the wrong enemies and challenge the safe confines of conventional wisdom,” Perez said at his speech to about 75 well-wishers.

Perez, who also held announcement events in Baltimore and Prince George’s County, was joined at the Silver Spring announcement by Stephen H. Sachs, attorney general from 1978 to 1986 and a major figure in the Baltimore legal establishment. Sachs said Perez would carry on his and Curran’s legacy in the office.

‘‘I am drawn to Tom Perez because of what I will call, simply, character,” Sachs said. ‘‘Character is difficult to define, but it is palpable nonetheless. You know it when you see it, and you notice when you don’t.”

Sachs admitted Perez’s underdog status when compared with Gansler, who has raised $1.5 million compared to Perez’s $200,000. Frederick County State’s Attorney Scott Rolle (R) is running on the GOP ticket with the strong support of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).

‘‘Is he the underdog, yes, but will he be the underdog on Labor Day? I hope not and I think not,” Sachs said in an interview.

Sen. Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery) is also considering a run. A candidate from the Baltimore region is also expected to emerge, but Sachs said he has not heard from anyone interested.

‘‘It’s getting pretty late in the process,” Sachs said.

Perez said that he was counted out in his council bid four years ago, but the work ethic he picked up as the son of first-generation Dominican immigrants growing up in blue-collar Buffalo, N.Y., ‘‘breeds a certain resilience.”

A Harvard Law graduate, Perez said he paid his way through college as a garbage man and working in a Sears warehouse.

‘‘All we had was the power of good ideas, a dynamite grassroots following and the will to grind it out to the end — and we won,” Perez said. ‘‘So it was in 2002, and so it will be again this year.”

Several members of the county council — including the panel’s only Republican, Howard Denis (R) — endorsed Perez on Tuesday. So did House Ways and Means Committee Chairwoman Sheila Ellis Hixson (D-Montgomery) and former Maryland Democratic Party Chairman Isiah ‘‘Ike” Leggett, a former councilman and candidate for Montgomery County executive.

Perez’s campaign was saddled over the past few weeks by questions about his qualifications to run. The state constitution specifies that the attorney general must have practiced law in the state for 10 years. Assistant Attorney General Robert N. McDonald issued an opinion Friday that cleared Perez, a federal prosecutor starting in 1989, eligible to run.

That opinion could be challenged in court as some of Perez’s opponents have promised.

Perez has picked up several key endorsements over the past few days that bring an important volunteer and donor base to his campaign.

The Maryland State Teachers Association endorsed him Saturday; the Service Employees International Union endorsed him Monday and the 21st Century Democrats — a national liberal advocacy group — has made the Perez campaign one of its 10 priorities for this cycle.

E-mail Thomas Dennison at tdennison@somdnews.com.