Maryland Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Doug Gansler responded yesterday to criticism he’s received this week over instagram photos showing him walking through a party of teenagers who were presumably drinking alcohol.
Here is the original Baltimore Sun article. Gansler said he had simply dropped by the party in Delaware last June to speak to his teenage son, and that it wasn’t his job to make sure there was no underage drinking going on. At a press conference Thursday, however, Gansler said he made a mistake and should have done a more thorough investigation.
The Washington Post collected documents relating to the Beach Week festivities, a popular post-graduation celebration for teenagers.
At the very least, the controversy sparked a conversation about parenting and teenage drinking. The Baltimore Sun's editorial board concluded, "Mr. Gansler may no longer be a perfect messenger on the subject of underage drinking, but he has the potential to be a very human one." Dan Kois at Slate wrote that Gansler is a "sensible parent." CNN quotes Michael Gimbel, formerly the director of Baltimore County’s Office of Substance Abuse, as saying that "the fact that he was observing illegal behavior and condoning it, I think was wrong.” And Dan Rodricks of WYPR and the Sun writes that "there's been a lot of moral indignation about this, and I can go along with that — up to a point."
How this exactly affects Gansler's gubernatorial campaign is yet to be seen. WJLA has an video embed of the 2012 PSA that Gansler filmed for the Century Council's campaign against underage drinking. The ad is being pulled.