“My campaign’s not about Ben Cardin. My campaign is about change. It’s about trying to do something to change the way this country works,” Neal Simon said. | POLITICO screen shot from Baltimore Sun video Independent to launch bid for Senate in Maryland Neal Simon, a Baltimore businessman, is one of several candidates backed by Unite America, a group working to elect independents.

The path to a bloc of independents in the Senate will start Tuesday in Maryland, according to a group trying to spark a national movement away from the Republican and Democratic parties.

Neal Simon, a Baltimore businessman with plans to partially self-fund his race, will officially enter the Senate race as an independent against Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, who’s seeking a third term. Cardin has already drawn a primary challenge from Chelsea Manning, a transgender woman who was convicted in 2013 of leaking thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks, but has no major Republican opponent to date.


“My campaign’s not about Ben Cardin. My campaign is about change. It’s about trying to do something to change the way this country works,” Simon said in an interview before his announcement.

He’s been encouraged to run by Unite America, formerly the Centrist Project, which did polling that the organization's leaders believe shows a clear path for an independent, even in traditionally very Democratic Maryland and against a politician who hasn’t lost a race in 52 years campaigning in the state.

It’s not just that the incumbent governor, Larry Hogan, is a Republican in strong shape for reelection this year. Unite America’s Joel Searby said that the group found low-intensity support for Cardin. The group's theory is that this, added to President Donald Trump’s weighing down Republicans despite the overall disaffection with Democrats, creates a path for an independent in the state.

The collection of factors will make voters “rethink their loyalty,” Searby predicted.

Unite America is also working with an expected Senate candidate in Missouri, Craig O’Dear, who has already been attacked by both the Democratic incumbent and leading Republican as a spoiler. There are four gubernatorial candidates endorsed by or active with the group: Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, running for a second term; Terry Hayes in Maine; Bob Krist in Nebraska; and, in Kansas, Greg Orman, who may be the group's most promising candidate after Walker. It is also getting behind a slate of Colorado state Legislature candidates, with others scattered around the country.

Since a planning meeting in Philadelphia last summer, Unite America has been providing support, strategic advice and fundraising help for candidates looking to run under its banner.

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“The parties both have claimed that we’re ruining everything for them. And my response to that is, 'Yeah, we are,'” Searby said. “We just reject the idea that independents are spoilers. They have every right to run for office.”

On the issues, Simon sees health care as a right, though he would push for a plan to bring costs down. He supports a path to citizenship for Dreamers while slowing down the naturalization process for other undocumented immigrants and bolstering border security. He believes the tax cut bill passed in December by the Republican majority in Congress was needlessly complicated and unfairly hit states by removing the state and local tax deduction.

But Simon’s main goal is getting elected to a closely divided Senate and establishing a beachhead for other independents to essentially control what happens by forcing the Republicans and Democrats to win them over.

“It’s an entity,” he said, “where with a very small number of independent moderates, you can make a difference.”

