Wicomico County’s top two officials, County Executive Julie Giordano and Sheriff Mike Lewis, are embroiled in a salacious dispute involving allegations of nude selfies, pornographic images, and “revenge porn.”
This is Kevin Diaz.
The story burst into the open this month as the two face reelection. It’s based on a terse exchange of letters. Kept secret for two years, the letters were recently released in response to a public data request by WBFF Fox 45 in Baltimore. They show that in September 2024 Giordano demanded an investigation into the alleged sharing of nude photos of her by one of Lewis’ deputies. Lewis responded by blaming Giordano for the circulation of images. He noted that they appeared “self-generated, self-created, and ultimately self-distributed.”
The disclosure of the letters led to a press conference on June 10 in which Giordano denied having ever sent inappropriate images of herself to anyone. She also denied receiving a separate letter – still not publicly released – that allegedly asked her to stop sending the photos. She noted that no photos of her have ever been seen publicly, because, she said,P they don’t exist. Lewis, however, claimed in his letter that he was prepared to testify that he saw the images himself on a deputy’s cell phone.
Both accounts obviously can’t be true. So where does that leave a bewildered public? We decided to check in with Maryland political consultant Len Foxwell. A native of the Eastern Shore, Foxwell has decades of experience in state government, politics and crisis management.
We reached him by phone in Easton:
Len Foxwell:
I have been following this issue with Mike and Julie quite a bit….
Kevin Diaz:
And what sticks out to you about it in the context of Eastern Shore politics, small town, rural county politics. What stands out to you about it?
Foxwell:
It is eerily similar to a situation that took place in Cecil County earlier this year where it was revealed that the former Cecil County executive, a woman named Danielle Hornberger, a Republican, was being discussed in most crude and socially unacceptable ways by members of the Cecil County Sheriff's Department about some of the things that they would like to do with her sexually. And so some of the narrative points were different, but you had some of, there were similarities in the characters involved, and both instances you had young telegenic, Republican County executives and members of the local sheriff's office involved in a kerfuffle about sexual matters. And so for those of us who follow politics statewide and regionally, it was a very interesting case of Deja vu. I think from a political perspective, the consequences are minimal. Julie does not face a strong candidate. She doesn't have a strong opponent for reelection. Wicomico County obviously is, once you get outside of the city of Salisbury, it is a red jurisdiction. And based on everything I can tell Julie has managed her politics in Wicomico County reasonably well.
Diaz:
And what about [Mike] Lewis? I don't know if you consider his race competitive. He's got a union guy [Scott Hamilton] opposing him. He doesn't look good in this either. I mean, she's all but calling him a liar. He says that there's a letter, she says there's not, nobody can really make heads or tails out of it. One of these two is not telling the truth. Right. Does he have a problem?
Foxwell:
I'm reluctant to speculate without having seen any polling data, and I've not seen any objective survey research on that race between Lewis and Scott Hamilton. Taking a step back for both of these politicians, this is what is considered a crisis of character. I teach crisis management at Johns Hopkins University, and what I teach is that there are three principal strains of crises in public life. There is a crisis of competence, there is a crisis of character, and then there is a crisis of circumstance. The latter being something that is beyond your immediate control, like an act of God or a mass shooting or something for which you're not responsible, but for which you as the leader are ultimately responsible for guiding your constituents through. And this is a classic illustration of a crisis of character. In a crisis of character. It becomes absolutely essential for the protagonist to be seen continuing to do their jobs and do their job well.
People can survive a crisis of character. If you follow a few basic steps, where it becomes impossible is when that crisis of character impacts their ability to deliver the services for which they've been hired by the members, by members of the public. And it becomes a dual track crisis of character and one of competence. And in that case then taxpayers tend to feel as if whatever their personal issue is intrudes upon their ability to do their jobs, and that's when their protagonist faces a great deal of difficulty. So the big question for Sheriff Lewis, to make a long story short is, is he has to be seen as someone who is still doing his job and performing up to the standards established by the public. If the answer is yes, then he'll be fine. If the perception is that this somehow threatens or has impeded his ability to work, to carry out his duties as sheriff effectively, then he's in trouble.
Diaz:
That is going to be hard for voters to determine, unless we get new information sometime soon, because at this point the public still doesn't know how this issue even arose. It’s a two-year-old exchange of letters that happened in 2024. We don't know why it was raised now. Nobody has any idea. And obviously for Fox 45, the TV station out of Baltimore that broke the story last week, it's based on sources. We don't know where this came from, who raised it. We know that Giordano and Louis have been sitting on this for two years and keeping quiet about it. I guess neither one of them thought they… but who knows? I mean who, why it's coming up now. But that would certainly, if we did know that, that would certainly speak to the character issue, right? I mean…
Foxwell: Correct.
Diaz: Giordano obviously sees this as a political hit job. But by who she doesn't say. So we don't really have that much.
Foxwell:
It really began to pop though a couple of weeks ago. I think that was the first that we started to hear about it a couple weeks ago. And since then it has been a topic du jour because the details are salacious. And what I would say is that the details of who did what precisely are murky, but that the big loser here is Wicomico County. And why I say that is that because Wicomico County, it's a growing regional hub jurisdiction with major colleges and universities. It's proximate to technology industries and close to a thriving aerospace sector. And I think the collective leadership of Wicomico County has an interest in branding the county as a sophisticated hub for commerce, culture, education, and entertainment. There's reason to present Wicomico County in that favorable light, and I think there's merit behind it. Stories like this make Wicomico County look like a small town cultural backwater regardless of who did what and when it happened. It puts Wicomico in a very provincial light.
Diaz:
But to be fair, can't you just simply ascribe this to just the general coarsening of our politics in America, that this is just one instance of that? This just says something more about the days, the times that we live in.
Foxwell:
I believe that fairly or unfairly, the conduct of your elected leadership is a reflection of the county's political and social culture as a whole. And so, for example, when Prince George's County had its county executive Jack Johnson go to federal prison, or when Baltimore City had three consecutive mayors get in trouble with the law, it was a reflection not only on those individuals, but upon the jurisdictions as a whole. And I think the same is true of Wicomico County, and it's not fair. I would certainly push back as someone who went to school, who attended Salisbury University, who is from the Eastern Shore, I would certainly push back just like you have, but also understand the realities of politics. And also don't think that when the county executive posts a picture of herself, what I assume is, and I don't know firearms, I'll probably misidentify it, but posing with a semi-automatic rifle on her social media page, I don't think that reflects well upon her, the office she holds or the county she represents. I think her response should be to show her constituents that she's rising above the chatter and the noise intending to the business of government, which is what she was hired to do.
Diaz:
Yeah. You're referring to her update on her Facebook page showing Julie Giordano holding what looks like a pretty ginormous rifle. It's definitely a semi-automatic, maybe even fully of some kind, and in front of a gun rack, by the way, with a lot of other… yeah, that's an interesting picture.
Foxwell:
I understand that her first instinct is always to play to her base, but I think that in a situation like this where her character is being questioned, I think that her best and most politically astute response would be to show her in an official setting in one that reflects a sense of gravitas, tending to the duties of a county executive.
Diaz:
There seems to be a general trend in modern politics of modern voters being fairly forgiving, seen with Bill Clinton, with Donald Trump, and the grab her by the, you know what? We're seeing it among Democrats right now in Maine with Graham Platner, with all these disclosures about sexting, rough treatment of women, what have you, but yet he just won a Democratic primary in Maine. So what does that mean? Voters just not care? Do they just assume that people's ability to govern is separate from their private lives?
Foxwell:
So there's a certain calculus that voters make when they're confronted with scandals like this, and the first question they ask themselves subconsciously or consciously is, does this affect me? Does this affect the price of milk, bread and eggs? Does this affect the price of gas? Does this affect my ability to get and hold on to a job? And if the answer is no, then they're likely to be less preoccupied with the scandal of the moment. I'll give you a classic example. Bill Clinton emerged from the Monica Lewinsky scandal in 1998 with his favorability ratings substantially higher than when he began 1998. For one reason, the stock market was booming. We were at the height of the tech boom and everyone was making money, 401Ks, college savings balances, bank accounts were all going through the roof.
Diaz:
Donald Trump would probably be interested to hear that because as we speak, I think the Dow is above 51,000. But yeah, I mean, I take your point.
Foxwell:
And so by contrast, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, which is a name that you're probably...
Diaz:
I remember. He had an Argentine lover or something, didn't he?
Foxwell:
He had an Argentine lover, Maria Belen Chapur. And people judge him harshly because he essentially abandoned the state and he provoked a constitutional crisis by not handing off his power to the Lieutenant Governor when he left the state without telling anyone. And so people said, actually, that does affect me. We're paying him to be the governor. And he abandoned his post, and it could have had disastrous consequences. It was essentially a career ender as far as his national aspirations went. So the primary variable in a situation like this, does it affect me? And along those same lines, are innocent people hurt? Right. And in this case, this is a very self-contained crisis.
Diaz:
So there's certainly a pragmatic element to it, but I'm wondering, is there a sense in which there's also a political or an ideological aspect to it as well in the sense that somebody might be willing to overlook the personal foibles or peccadillos of a politician as long as they share their politics?
Foxwell:
I think there's two ways to look at that. One is that yes, people in this very partisan age are going to give license to or give more runway to a politician who shares their philosophy. But the other more important variable is the person perceived as a hypocrite. So in other words, one of the reasons Sanford took such a hit is that his public persona was out of a Bible belt church going devout Baptist, who was the model of piety. It turns out he wasn't, and he took a precipitous fall from grace. Bill Clinton. His sexual peccadillos had, for want of a better term, been baked into the stock price.
He never ran as a moral avatar, and neither did Donald Trump, divorced twice, children by three different women, too many affairs to count. He presented himself not as a man of character, but as a businessman who can crack a few eggs and get something done in Washington. Obviously, I don't think that that has turned out to be the case, but that is how he presented himself to the electorate. And so ironically, the higher your pedestal, the farther you have to fall. And I don't think that moral piety has ever been a core part of Giardano or Lewis's political game. Mike Lewis is a law and order sheriff, and Julie presented herself as an outsider who can come in and spend taxpayer money more efficiently than her predecessors have.
Diaz:
And they've been allies on a lot of issues, particularly on immigration and allowing the local police to cooperate with federal authorities.
Foxwell:
I do think that to the extent that there is a risk, Mike Lewis bears more of it for the reason you mentioned at the outset, that he at least appears to have on paper a credible primary election opponent. And if the voters of Wicomico County believe, for example, that hey, this scandal will make it hard for him to work effectively with the county executive and the county council to get the human resources, the technology or the equipment he needs to do his job effectively, they may take it out on him at the polls. If I had to guess, if this is the only dent in his political armor, I guess this he'll be okay.
Diaz:
Well, hey, just one last thing, Len, and this may not be a fair question, but you had mentioned earlier that there has been a lot of scuttle butt about this recently in an Annapolis, in the general sense of Annapolis, since at least the story broke, are there any favorite theories on where the story came from? Who brought it up? We know this has been sitting there like a cancer in a file somewhere. Where did this come from?
Foxwell:
Nobody knows and nobody cares. They just think it's a salacious story, and it's not a story that people take particularly seriously because it is a story that is self-contained, and it is largely without meaningful consequence. It's not as if it's a scandal regarding the misuse of emergency relief dollars, or there hasn't been a catastrophic failure to deliver government services or a privacy breach. It's just two politicians with a personal grudge against one another, and one of them's lying and one of them's not.
Diaz:
I think that's a pretty good summation. So I will leave it at that. Len Foxwell, thank you so much.
