Some District 1C residents say Alt-Myers is behind attacks on McKay

A Herald-Mail Media article published yesterday highlighting the District 1C Republican primary prompted a few residents from the Western Maryland legislative district to contact A Miner Detail with disputing information.

Republican incumbent Mike McKay (Allegany/Washington), first elected in 2014, is running for re-election and is locked in a three-way primary with Hancock attorney Jordan Lysczek and former Cumberland City Councilwoman Nicole Alt-Myers.

Alt-Myers is married to Washington County Commissioner LeRoy E. Myers, Jr, who represented District 1C in the Maryland House of Delegates for 12 years (2003-2014).

Herald-Mail Media reported that a “private citizen” contacted the newspaper last week about McKay hiring legislative aide Cameron Harris, who was featured in a January 2017 New York Times article for creating a website propagating misleading news stories across the internet during the zenith of the 2016 presidential election cycle.

Harris, who has been working in McKay’s Annapolis office since January, conceded to A Miner Detail that he made a mistake and has sought contrition.

McKay, when asked by Herald-Mail Media about his decision to hire Harris to work in his Annapolis office, said he believes in second chances and offered Harris the opportunity to correct his poor choices.

One Maryland Republican consultant said of Harris: “He is a bright and rising political talent whose experience in campaigns and elections is much too invaluable to discard.”

Herald-Mail Media questioned Alt-Myers about whether “her campaign” contacted the newspaper to write about Harris working for McKay.

Alt-Myers denies that she had anything to do with contacting Herald-Mail Media over Harris.

“I would never stoop to that.” I already told (McKay) personally I would not do that. God’s will will be done” in the election, she said. “If I have to discredit somebody (to win), I don’t need the job.”

After Herald-Mail Media released its article, however, a few District 1C residents contacted A Miner Detail claiming that Alt-Myers and her husband, Commissioner Myers, are behind the attacks on McKay.

One Hancock resident who requested to speak to A Miner Detail on background said Alt-Myers and her husband – who is embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal and is not seeking re-election to the commissioner board – are pushing “negative information out about McKay and others.”

“Nicole and LeRoy are telling everybody in Hancock and elsewhere that McKay can’t pay his taxes and that he’s a crook,” the Hancock resident told A Miner Detail.

LeRoy Myers spoke last year with A Miner Detail on Saturday, June 18, in which Myers suggested that “A Miner Detail delve into Mike McKay and how he is paying his taxes.”

“It’s a fact. Right now, the attorney general is looking into it… his business taxes – everything,” Myers said of McKay.

“You should look into it.”

Myers said during the same conversation that Commissioner Jeff Cline, Mike McKay and Hancock Town Manager Dave Smith are working “together and against “himself and Nicole.”

“Mike has become very good friends with Dave. This all boils down to the fact – which intertwines with what is going on at the county – that they want me out as a commissioner, okay, and they do not want Nicole to run as a delegate.

That’s what all of that boils down to. It boils down to the fact that they don’t want any challenges because Mike has his little thing set up where he gets Becky through the job. They are trying to put the placeholder and so on and so forth. And that person is not Nicole. That is not who they want there, okay.”

Myers went on,

“Secondly, they don’t want me there, because they don’t like what has been happening at the county. Jeff has become a very big advocate of Greg Murray.”

During the same conversation, Myers said that his wife, Nicole, decided against a bid for state delegate and that he, too, would not seek re-election to the Board of County Commissioners next year.

Alt-Myers later filed her state delegate candidacy paperwork with the Maryland State Board of Elections on August 23.

A Clear Spring resident contacted A Miner Detail this morning with a request to speak on background about Alt-Myers’ state delegate bid.

“When I read the news article this morning and saw that Nicole said it’s ‘God’s will,’ I thought what a hypocrite. She and LeRoy have been trashing him [McKay] for over a year now to anybody willing to listen. If anybody is running a negative campaign, it’s those two. LeRoy is on his way out. He’ll say whatever he wants.”

Maryland’s primary election will be held on June 26. No Democrat is running in District 1C.