The Maryland Democratic Party has been acting like a party in panic mode. This week it sent out a race-baiting mailer to African-Americans around the state urging them to vote for Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown because he is black, and saying that not doing so would be akin to a return to the segregated South. His opponent, businessman Larry Hogan, has internal polling that pulls that theoretical panic into reality, and the Democratic Party is doubling down on the race vote.

Hogan’s campaign released internal polling showing this to be a one-point race, a major shock in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one. According to WBAL Radio, the poll “showed Brown leading Hogan by just 1 percentage point, with Hogan leading among moderates and independents.”

Republican Governors Association chairman New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, campaigned with Hogan earlier this week, and he must’ve liked what he saw. The race is so competitive now, the RGA has started running ads in support of Hogan, a much-needed boost to the significantly less-funded challenger.

The Democratic Governors Association has been running ads on behalf of Brown for some time, spending $750,000. That DGA ad buy, rare for such a deep blue state, was the first indication that this was much a closer race than pundits had predicted.

So worried are Democrats that they’ve sent out a second race-baiting mailer to African-American voters, this one linking voting for Anthony Brown to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Sent to the same woman as the mailer yesterday (FredomGirlRN on Twitter), the cover shows Martin Luther King waiving to the crowd at the March on Washington, next to a picture of President Obama in a similar pose. The text reads, “We’ve come a long way on our journey…”

The next pages reads, “But they’re still trying to hold us back…” It features the same picture of Donald Trump superimposed over a billboard asking “Where’s the birth certificate?” It also shows someone holding a sign reading, “Impeach Obama.” But the first image is the most disturbing.

It shows a man on his knees, hands in the air, in front of a raging fire. It’s next to a young black man with his hands in the air while multiple police officers in riot gear point their guns at him. There is no context to either of the pictures, but over top of them reads, “Ferguson, MO, August 2014.”

These pictures appear above the text, “Today in Maryland, it’s our responsibility to take another step in that journey…”

The next page continues, “Vote for Anthony Brown as Maryland’s first African-American Governor.”

As if to put a bow on it, the last page has a picture of President Obama and Anthony Brown with the caption, “In Maryland, we’ve got their backs.”

The mailer has the same authority line as Thursday’s, “Paid for by the Maryland Democratic Party.”

Tying Martin Luther King to Barack Obama to Ferguson to Anthony Brown is not the action of a party brimming with confidence.

Exploiting the situation in Ferguson for political gain has backfired in Georgia, where Democratic candidate Michelle Nunn has so far refused to condemn it. But Maryland has been dominated by progressive Democrats for decades, and has been run the last eight years by Gov. Martin O’Malley, with Brown as his lieutenant governor. Every situation in the state, from the economy to the state of race relations, is a direct result of O’Malley and Brown’s policies. How Ferguson, Mo., ties into that is difficult to understand.

Progressive activists from Baltimore did recently travel to Ferguson to take part in “Justice for Mike Brown” protests, but Anthony Brown need not look that far if he wants to find injustice. He need only look to Baltimore, to the sad story of McKenzie Elliot.

McKenzie was a three-year-old girl sitting on her porch on a nice afternoon, then she was killed by a stray bullet from a dive-by shooting up the block. No one is in custody, police have no leads, and the story is, sadly, fading from public memory.

A Google News search for “McKenzie Elliott” and “Anthony Brown” returned zero results.