CHEVY CHASE, Md. — What happens when a coveted House seat opens up a quick subway ride from the Capitol? A hugely expensive free-for-all, studded with celebrities (or what passes for celebrities in Washington) — with a whiff of dirty tricks.
This affluent D.C. suburb, along with surrounding Montgomery County, is home to countless politicos, journalists, lobbyists and policy wonks — not to mention cabinet secretaries, White House officials, retired members of Congress and the chief justice of the Supreme Court — who bump into each other at grocery stores and on the sidelines of their children’s soccer games.
But the raucous nine-candidate race for the Democratic nomination to replace Representative Chris Van Hollen in the Eighth District — likely to become the costliest House primary in the nation — is holding up a mirror to life inside the Beltway. The reflection is not pretty.
Analysts say total spending in the race could exceed $10 million.
“Isn’t it crazy?” asked one candidate, Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state.
He has serious foreign policy credentials, is backed by a “super PAC” and boasts of “the coolest endorsement in the entire race” — the actor Michael Douglas. Instead, he has struggled to gain traction in what he calls “a caldron of power couples and Washington, D.C., politics and overlapping relationships.”