Former Maryland State Delegate and Senator Susan C Lee, now Maryland’s Secretary of State under Governor Wes Moore, has made local and national headlines in the past week for her “consideration” of removing current Presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump from the Maryland primary election ballot. Why? For “aiding an insurrection”.
Because of too much power vested in the MD Secretary of State’s office, Elia Griffin at MoCo360.media reports “…candidates running in congressional, state and local races must file a certificate of candidacy with the State Board of Elections to be included on the ballot. However, candidates who are running for [the] presidency must be designated by the Office of the Secretary of State for their name to appear on ballots.”
Per the Secretary of State’s website, referencing power given to it by Election Law Article, §8-502 of the Annotated Code of Maryland, “The Office of the Secretary of State is responsible for designating the people whose names appear on the ballot for each primary election. This is done when the Secretary has determined that the candidate’s candidacy is generally advocated or recognized in the news media throughout the United States or in Maryland and in accordance with party rules.”
It is important to note that nowhere on this MD government site or in this text as of September 2023 does it reference any “new considerations” for use by the Secretary of State when determining candidate placement on the ballot in a primary election in Maryland. But this hasn’t stopped the Secretary, Susan C Lee of Montgomery County, from inviting yet another federal lawsuit that MD taxpayers will shell out the bucks for. Per the Elia Griffin piece referenced earlier, Lee is quoted as saying:
whether a candidate qualifies if they have “aided an insurrection”–is being factored into the Secretary of State’s role in designating presidential candidates.
“You’ll hear from me very shortly,” Lee said about the decision. “I probably will be issuing a statement in the near future.”
Lee then goes on to claim she’ll issue an “edict” in January of 2024 on the decision of whether to include Donald Trump on the MD primary ballot (forget what the MD GOP wants or asks for), like some kind of nobility. While this whole charade is ridiculous, but it also seems like something Susan C Lee is being pressured to do by external partisan forces. But by who? For that, we can go into her past a bit and see who the influences in MoCo might be for this career politician turned Secretary of State who has come up through the MoCo machine and now seeks to influence a primary election.
In 2000-2001, Lee’s own Maryland Manual biography indicates she was “legislative assistant to President, Montgomery County Council, 2000-01.” That would have been one Blair G Ewing, now deceased. Blair Ewing lost his bid for re-election to the County Council in 2002 as a voter-diluting “At Large” candidate. His worship of the state is evidenced by this quote:
I am a big believer in the role government can play in the solution of problems. I am not one of those who subscribes to the notion that government is the source of the problems.
Susan C Lee, interestingly enough, ditched Mr. Ewing for political power and then “won” her first election as a state delegate in Montgomery County after first enjoying the benefits of incumbency via “appointment” (yes – that ol’ democratic “appointment” process by a select few party insiders). Writing for the Washington Post back in 2002, Michael Cottman reported:
In District 16, Del. Susan C. Lee (D) appeared to win the House seat she was appointed to fill last winter when it was vacated by Bethesda Democrat Nancy K. Kopp, who became state treasurer. Lee is Maryland’s first Chinese American lawmaker.
Conveniently, 20 years later as a career politician, running for re-election as a State Senator, Lee then responded to a questionnaire by the Bernie Sanders / socialist affiliated 501c4 “Our Revolution MD” with the following hot air of a response:
Important to note – there was no such bill up for debate in 2022 and then-Senator Lee never even gave a half-hearted attempt to end the practice of Democrat Central Committee “appointments” to vacancies in Montgomery County or state elective offices. This undemocratic appointment practice goes on to this day.
In 2014, Lee ran for the Maryland state senate. Per campaign financial reports available at OpenSecrets.org, Lee received a lot of interesting donations – including some labeled “cash / carry”. Over $16,000 shows up as being “unavailable” for OpenSecrets.org’s records. Screen shot is below, after filtering to 2014:
Seven Seas Restaurant is in Rockville, MD and is owned by Corinna Shen, or at least was back in 2013-14. Per AsianFortuneNews.com (photo below also hosted by AFN):
Corinna Shen, owner of Seven Seas Restaurant located in Rockville, Maryland, believes that “education is the key for any kind of success.” Her great grandfather was one of the founders of Hunan University and was a secretary for the Education department in China.
Shen is also noted as being on the Asian American Advisory Board of Maryland State, Montgomery County.
So, we’ve covered a lot of ground and connections, but there is much more to come on the background and machine politics that elevated Susan Lee to the Secretary of State position. There are donations from large lefty corporations, large Democrat power players in Montgomery County, and much more to review. And it seems like this machine is now pressuring her to remove a candidate’s name from the primary ballot in the state of Maryland, potentially disenfranchising thousands of voters and setting up an expensive court battle.
More to come in part two.
