Forward Party Maryland Lands It’s Highest Profile Endorsement Yet – Behind the Scenes on the Endorsement Process with Forward MD Chair

July 23, 2024

The Forward Party is a relatively new party focused on election reform aspects as well as improving the electoral system across the country and focused on values and principles and individuals (Learn more about the national Forward Party here).

Last week, on July 17, the Maryland Forward Party announced it’s highest profile endorsement in it’s history: former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (for the U.S. Senate). The party also the same day announced their recommendation to vote against former President Donald Trump in the Presidential election.

We sat down to interview Maryland Forward Party Chairman Matt Beyers about not only these news items, but also about the Forward Party values and endorsement processes. Afterwards, you can check out our previous interview with Chairman Beyers from last year to get to know him better.

Q1: This is probably your biggest endorsement for the Maryland Forward party. Tell me a little bit about the endorsement process and how it was different with such a high-profile person.

Yeah, happy to. So first of all, it wasn’t any different with this high-profile person than anybody else. Everybody follows the exact same process. And that’s really the only way to be fair to all the candidates is to follow the same process. So, our process involves an initial contact of some sort, either we’re reaching out to the candidate, or the candidate reaches out to us. In this case, the candidate reached out to us, and we had an initial discussion.

And then we get them to sign the pledge the candidate pledge, because without a candidate signing the candidate pledge, there’s really nothing to discuss. And then we invite them to come before our board and have a discussion and the board will ask a variety of questions. After we’ve met with the candidate, we’ve thanked them for their time, and we go into a period of deliberation where the board will think about it for a week or so. We have further discussion before the vote and everybody hears what everybody else has to say about it, and then we take a vote. Depending on the vote the candidate gets endorsed or not.

Q2: Is it like majority rules vote or does it have to be unanimous or what?

It’s a majority rules vote. Absolutely. We believe in democracy and democracy that is the way that it works. One of the interesting things we do in our bylaws is that the chair of our party doesn’t get a vote unless there’s a tie. So, I actually did not get a vote in in the endorsement and that’s the way it’s been for all our endorsements.

Q3: It seems like most your endorsements previously had been Democrat, although I know not all of them have been. Have you gotten some pushback from one side or the other based on your endorsements?

Most of our endorsements have been democratic up until now, except for the one independent, James Cole on the Laurel city council, who was subsequently elected. The reason that most of them had been Democrats is because the Democrats are the ones that spoke to us. We pursued others but they were not interested in speaking with us, and this is the first Republican that was interested in speaking with us and pursuing our process.

I can’t really say we’ve gotten a lot of pushback, those candidates we’ve talked to are supportive of our process. And of the fact that Forward is not either Democrat or Republican, but is more of a centrist party, interested in the person behind the office, not the politics of the office. So we’re, we’re more interested in the values and the principles of that person.

Q4: I know these answers but for those new to the Forward Party, what are the key issues you’re looking at?

The things we’re most interested in establishing, as far as goals for short term, are to bring down the tone of politics, to bring down the rhetoric and to completely change the way that citizens interact with their politicians in a good way. So, we would like some sort of voting reform, rank choice voting is a good choice because of its popularity and because of its notoriety. But there are other forms, and we can put that up to a debate once we get a bill on the floor of the Maryland legislature. So that’s one thing, some sort of voting reforms so that we can eliminate first past the post voting and we can try something else that has been very successful in other areas.

Second thing we’d really like to see is single primaries or nonpartisan primaries, where all of the candidates from all of the parties run in the same race at the same time in the primary and we choose the top four or the top five or whatever the legislature decides to be the candidates to run in the general election. The two of them together will cause the candidates to have to appeal to a broader range of voters and therefore they will tone down the rhetoric and not be so partisan.

The third thing we really like to do is remove gerrymandering. So to establish independent redistricting commissions and return the power of choosing politicians to the people because right now the power of choosing the politicians is in the hands of the politicians. 

Q5: If multiple people from a single race support your Party’s ideals, would you endorse more than one or is this like okay, you make a decision on one you stick to that one.

Yeah, no, we, we could consider endorsing more than one. We actually did do that for the primary prior to one of the candidates withdrawing. And, in our mind, there’s technically nothing wrong with that, at least at the primary level because the voters should be able to choose the politicians that they want the candidates that they want, based on those candidates’ policies.

And one of the things that Forward does is it allows the candidate to choose their own policies. We’re not setting policies; we don’t have a “platform” other than our values and so it’s a different way of doing politics. Once we get past the primary, we haven’t actually gotten to that point yet. I mean, we don’t have recognized political party status yet. So I think there would probably be some rules about how many candidates you can put on a ballot, when you get past the primary. So I think we would have to narrow down to one candidate per party unless the rules change. The rules might change if we do nonpartisan/single primaries, and then you could have four Republicans elected out of out of a primary and then you’d have to have four Republicans on the ballot in the general so I guess to answer your question directly. There is nothing ideologically wrong with having more than one candidate from the same party on the ballot in our mind.

Q6: I guess my question was more thinking about take for example the current Senate Race. What if Angela Alsobrooks came to you and said, I support these three things. And I’m not trying to put you on the spot like yes or no with her but just as a general thing is that something you would even consider doing in general just using that race as an example.

Well, as a matter of fact, we did actually approach the Alsonrooks campaign, and we did ask if they would be interested in seeking our endorsement. And they did not answer us. So, to answer your question, yes, we follow exactly what I said we would do we want to look at all sides and, and see which candidate best fits our principles and our values. 

Great, last question. I noticed today that the Maryland Forward Party also put out an endorsement for essentially anyone but Trump. Can you tell me a little bit about this process since it seems to be a little unusual endorsement when you’re usually endorsing someone, for someone versus this was kind of against someone and I know that’s also something that I believe I’ve seen in the Forward Party, saying, we want to we want to be able to vote for people, not against somebody.

Yes, it is a little unusual, I’ll agree. But I want to be really clear. First of all, we didn’t endorse anybody. We are encouraging people; We are supporting the concept of voting against Donald Trump and the Republican Party for President. That decision was outlined in a blog, and I think it was outlined quite well, by Pete Oliver-Kruger. And it turns on the fact that in our estimation, Mr. Trump has promised to do away with some of the constitutional protections that we currently enjoy. He’s promised to be a dictator for a day that’s a really scary concept. And he has supported Project 2025 which is a threat to democracy from our point of view, and so to protect democracy, so that we can continue as a party and continue as a country and to continue as a people, we feel it’s incredibly important that we not elect somebody with that kind of an agenda. 

See Previous Interview with Forward Maryland Chair Matt Beyers

Breaking Barriers: An Exclusive Interview with Forward Party Maryland Chair Matthew Beyers

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