2022 Maryland governor candidate fined $2,000 for document targeting Wes Moore

Former Maryland gubernatorial candidate John King’s campaign was fined $2,000 for violating state election law when it anonymously circulated a dossier targeting now-Gov. Wes Moore in the 2022 Democratic primary, the Maryland State Prosecutor said Wednesday.

Sent to members of Maryland’s powerful teachers’ union just before their endorsement vote, the document claimed Moore encouraged a false perception of his upbringing in Baltimore in his 2010 book, “The Other Wes Moore,” and in public statements.

Moore, then a former nonprofit leader making his first run for elected office, filed a formal complaint with state officials. He called the opposition research “a document of lies” and rejected accusations that he’d been misleading, including through a campaign-sponsored website, FactsMD.com.

Sending the document to the Maryland State Education Association also broke campaign finance law by not disclosing who paid for the communications, his complaint alleged.

A two-year investigation verified those claims, State Prosecutor Charlton T. Howard III said in a statement announcing the civil citation.

The investigation found Joseph O’Hern, King’s campaign manager, was behind the anonymous emails, using the account “honestmddems@gmail.com” and identifying himself only as “Honest Dem.”

Maryland law requires an authority line disclosing where communications come from if they’re paid for by a campaign. O’Hern was paid more than $123,000 for his work on the campaign between May 2021 and August 2022, according to the prosecutor’s review of campaign finance records.

“Identifying the source of campaign material is essential to honesty and transparency in our electoral process, particularly as advancing technology enables ever broader outreach to the electorate,” Howard said.

King, a former U.S. Department of Education secretary under Democratic former President Barack Obama, finished a distant sixth in the Democratic primary, with 3.7% of the vote. He now serves as chancellor of the State University of New York.

Moore won about a third of Democratic voters to emerge from the crowded 10-person field and go on to win the general election. His campaign declined to comment Thursday.

O’Hern, who officials discovered was the source of the emails by securing subpoenas to identify IP addresses, did not return a request for comment.