Maryland gubernatorial candidate Valerie Ervin accuses Ben Jealous of costing her job

Valerie Ervin’s last-minute entry into the Democratic race for Maryland governor has given the sleepy contest a fresh jolt — both by forcing elections officials to scramble for a solution to include her on the ballot and by stirring conflict among the campaigns.

The Montgomery County Democrat accused rival candidate Ben Jealous of orchestrating an effort last winter to prevent her from joining the ticket of the late Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz. Then, she said, Jealous got her fired from her job after she decided to run for lieutenant governor.

Jealous denies the accusations.

Nevertheless, another candidate, Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III, seized on the reports on Twitter by welcoming Ervin to the governor’s race while linking to a report of her accusations. That led Jealous to retaliate with a series of tweets linking to negative articles about Baker, including a recent report showing that the former NAACP president raised more money than the Prince George’s County chief.

The bickering began when Ervin made the allegations against Jealous on the web radio show “A Miner Detail” on Sunday. In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, she repeated the claim that Jealous and his campaign manager, Travis Tazelaar, tried to block her from teaming up with Kamenetz and, when she decided to run, got her fired as Maryland political director of the Working Families Party.

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-ervin-jealous-20180524-story.html