BALTIMORE COUNTY, Md. (WBFF) — There are questions over outside players potentially having a hand in the race for Baltimore County State’s Attorney.
Sarah David is listed as being publicly backed by the Working Families Party, a political group with financial ties to George Soros.
“So, that’s an independent expenditure group, so they can’t coordinate with our campaign at all,” David said.
David is denying any direct affiliation with the progressive billionaire who has spent millions reshaping the nation’s justice system.
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According to campaign filings, in just the last month alone, the Working Families Party spent half a million dollars on David’s behalf. Records show roughly $260,000 went toward television advertising, while another $240,000 was spent on mailers, many of them critical of longtime Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger. Among them was a widely circulated flier criticizing Shellenberger over his office’s involvement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“One of his number one issues is elections. He calls it election integrity or election security,” Seamus Bruner said.
Seamus Bruner, Executive Director of the Government Accountability Institute, says George Soros has mostly passed the baton to his son Alex, who chairs the Open Society Foundation.
He says their influence on local politics shouldn’t be ignored.
“They disguise funding. It goes through a number of pass through organizations. It’s called dark money because the recipients do not have to disclose their donors,” Bruner said.
Bruner says they’re targeting more and more local races across the country adding they’ve heavily funded progressive district attorney races.
“What we’ve been seeing is not only are they targeting local DA’s across the country they’re starting to put money into sheriffs’ races in local jurisdictions even lower on the totem pole than DA’s, but the sheriffs exercise an enormous amount of law enforcement activity obviously,” Bruner said.
On Thursday, FOX45 News asked David about the messaging being used in advertisements supporting her campaign and concerns surrounding national influence in a local race
“I think that there’s a lot of people who want change in Baltimore County, and I think that Scott Shellenberger has made a lot of statements that have made a lot of people in this community feel less safe,” David said.
When pressed again, specifically about outside groups influencing the race, David continued to point to local concerns.
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“I think there’s a lot of people in Baltimore County who feel that way, and a lot of people in Baltimore County that want to make sure that we are engaging with these issues in our state’s attorney’s office,” she said.
David also stopped short of distancing herself from ideas or policy positions associated with groups supporting her campaign.
“When we talk about changes that we can make to the state’s attorney’s office, there are a lot of important places to listen, and I’m not rejecting any ideas out of the bat,” David said.
Meanwhile, both Shellenberger and fellow candidate Baltimore City Prosecutor Lauren Liscomb argued the outside spending raises serious concerns, saying voters should consider not just the message itself, but who is paying to deliver it.
“I think so, because that means people outside of Baltimore County, who don’t know a thing about fighting crime in Baltimore County, are trying to influence who’s going to fight the crime,” Shellenberger said.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for individuals who don’t live in the area and are not impacted by these day-to-day crimes to weigh in by way of funding,” Liscomb said.
FOX45 News also reached out to Open Society Foundations, founded by Soros, which acknowledged supporting organizations within the broader Working Families network, but denied any involvement in this local race.
“Our grants prohibit the use of funds to support or oppose candidates for office, and the Open Society Foundations is not involved in decisions regarding support for candidates in this race,” the organization said in a statement.
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