The Fart of the Deal
As expected, Wes Moore's wasteful Preakness deal is already blowing up in his face
It’s not Triple Crown season (if that’s even still a thing…..more on that in a minute), but it has been an eventful week for the newly socialist Preakness.
Yesterday, Churchill Downs announced that a new thoroughbred horse racing series was being initiated, consisting of six races. And the Preakness isn’t in it.
Just days after state officials announced they had finalized an $85 million deal to acquire the rights to the Preakness Stakes, they learned that Pimlico had been excluded from a new championship racing series organized by the other two Triple Crown tracks.
Churchill Downs Inc. and the New York Racing Association Inc. announced Monday that they are launching a six-race, five-month Thoroughbred Championship Series to be run at Churchill Downs, Belmont Park and Saratoga Race Course. Three-year-old thoroughbreds that compete in the series will get points across the season, with a $5 million prize pool for the series, in addition to individual race purses.
Officials with the two organizations said the championship series, which is scheduled to start in 2027, is designed to create a season-long competition that will encourage the best horses in the field to compete against each other repeatedly. Races at Churchill Downs will be broadcast nationally on NBC while races at NYRA tracks, Belmont and Saratoga, will be broadcast on Fox.
It is hardly surprising that the Preakness was left out of this new series. After all, Churchill Downs was poised to purchase the intellectual property to the Preakness when Wes Moore executed Maryland’s right of first refusal to match the company’s offer and make the Preakness Stakes a socialist enterprise. If Churchill Downs can’t control it, why bother including them in their brand new organized effort to push the Triple Crown into obscurity?
But Governor Moore has already fired a salvo back at Churchill Downs. He has announced that the Preakness will now no longer be 14 days after the Kentucky Derby. It will be…22 days after the Derby and held on a Sunday.
In a historic shift for Maryland’s premier sporting event, Gov. Wes Moore announced that the Preakness Stakes will move back on the calendar starting in 2027, sliding eight days to the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
The decision pushes the second leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown from its traditional slot two weeks after the Kentucky Derby to a three-week gap. State leaders and racing officials say the extra recovery time is vital to protecting Maryland’s massive public investment in thoroughbred racing by ensuring top-tier horses—including Kentucky Derby winners—continue competing at Pimlico.
I cannot fathom the level of intelligence (or lack thereof) whichever mental midget in the Moore Administration come up with this stupid idea. In an effort to switch things up we’re now moving it to a holiday weekend?
In his official statement, Moore and the First Lady try to put lipstick on this pig:
“The state of Maryland and Preakness are stepping into an exciting new era; and I am delighted that the Maryland Jockey Club has renewed its media partnership with NBC and Peacock,” said Gov. Moore. “The continuation of our partnership and the new schedule ensures optimal and accessible coverage for everyone from horseracing experts to casual fans, as our administration makes historic investments to leverage the iconic race as a cornerstone of Maryland’s history, culture and economy.”
“Preakness Weekend is more than a race—it is a celebration of more than 150 years of Maryland history, Baltimore, our proud equine tradition, and the communities that make this event so special,” said First Lady Dawn Moore. “This new schedule honors that extraordinary legacy while opening an exciting new chapter—elevating the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes, bringing even more attention to Maryland on the national stage, and creating new opportunities for local businesses, families, and racing fans.”
But again…..Memorial Day weekend. People have plans on Memorial Day weekend. People go to the Ocean on Memorial Day weekend. People around the country are attending college and high school graduations or visiting family. They are not gonna sit down on a Sunday evening and watch a horse race, espsecially on a weekend where the Preakness will be at best the third most popular sporting even in the country behind the Indianapolis 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 (and, locally, probably behind College Lacrosse Championship weekend).
What this does (again) is highlight Wes Moore’s poor leadership and lack of critical thinking. As I have been saying for well over ten years now, keeping the Preakness in Maryland is nice to have but is not vitally important to our state economy. And for well over ten years, Maryland politicians have plowed money into the horse racing industry in order to prop up a dying industry that has fewer and fewer participants and fans everything. And depsite all of that, Wes Moore has spent well over half-a-billion dollars in public funds socializing Marlyand’s horse racing industry into a state controlled entity. An entity that has no real, legitimate reason to be a government owned and operated enterprise.
Wes Moore would probably have propped up the horse and buggy industry in 1910…
The best thing Maryland could have done was to not spend all of this taxpayer money on buying the Preakness, buying Pimlico, buying Laurel, and pouring good money after bad. The next best thing Maryland can do is to extricate the state from this situation as soon as possible. Wes Moore may have made a generationally stupid decision, and while that can’t be undone the time for corrective action is as soon as humanly possible. Maryland must divest itself of its Horse Racing assets before we lose every more money on this bad, bad deal.