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Long Shot Josh Rales Trying to Get Noticed
Josh Rales, back right, with Adrian Harpool, speaks to Tonya Charleston and her daughters Autumn and Ashele at the Prince George's black heritage festival.
(By Mark Gong -- The Washington Post)
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At the pier across from Mount Vernon, he told a couple of children about Washington's journey from land surveyor to aristocrat to war hero to the nation's first president.
"You have fun. That's a story for the day," Rales told the children.
Rales doesn't talk as much about his own history-- at least in this Democratic primary. You see, Rales was a Republican not too long ago. He toyed with the idea of challenging Democratic Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski as a Republican in 2004, and he and his wife, Debra, have been major donors to GOP candidates, campaign finance records show. They have given $10,250 to Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), most recently in September 2004. They gave $4,000 to President Bush in 2003.
A fiscal conservative and social moderate, Rales said he began to feel uncomfortable in the Republican Party in the 1990s when right-wing religious fundamentalists gained prominence. His main regret, he said, is that it took him until 2004 to change parties. "You don't just flip a switch," he said. "The disillusionment can take a long time."
Rales was born in Pittsburgh to a family of modest means and grew up in Montgomery County. He was a football quarterback and baseball player at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda. Rales developed entrepreneurial zeal as a child; he says his father gave him his MBA at the dinner table.
In college at the University of Virginia, he started a travel agency and used profits to pay tuition bills. He later sold the business for five figures.
Then he was off to law school -- not to become a lawyer but to enhance his career.
For more than a decade, Rales made millions of dollars in real estate development and investments in the Maryland suburbs. In the past few years, he said, he has sold all of his investments in preparation for a run for public office.
As Rales traverses the state this week and next, Democrats are wondering how much of an impact he will have on the Sept. 12 primary. Many political analysts believe that he will not win but that his aggressive ad campaign will draw votes away from Cardin and help propel Mfume to the nomination.
At the Accokeek festival, campaigning for his own reelection just a few yards away from Rales, state Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) dismissed the candidate as a "spoiler."
"He's going to force Cardin to open up his bank account and spend money he needs in the general against [GOP candidate] Michael Steele."
Rales defended himself, saying his "ego is not tied into this."
"I can guarantee you this," he added. "If I don't get the public support, it won't mean they didn't know me."
And voters on the trail do seem to know him. At the festival, Rales scouted for some targets and found two women eating lunch. As he approached the mother and daughter from Fort Washington, Mimi Lim, 66, told Rales that she recognized him from television.
Rales handed the women his campaign business cards and asked, "Do I seem like a phony, or do I seem like I'm real?"
