WCRC meeting – July 2006

To continue the seafood theme that last week’s Tawes Crab and Clam Bake began, people were packed in like sardines for this month’s meeting. Over 60 were stuffed into our meeting room and dined on crab dip among other finger snack foods, thanks to volunteer (and District 5 contender) Dorothy White.

Now originally when this meeting was announced, District 37 Senator Rich Colburn was the featured speaker. But thanks to Colburn’s calendar having conflicting events, Wicomico County Sheriff candidate Mike Lewis was added to the speaker bill, and honestly I think he’s the one who drew the increased crowd.

As usual, we started with the Pledge of Allegiance and the usual business of the minutes and treasurer’s report. And as usual, both were motioned, seconded, and passed unanimously. Interesting how that works. But we did find out that there’s 227 active members in the club now, with 61 unpaid.

We did hear first from Dustin Mills, who was volunteered to restart the dormant Lower Shore Young Republican Club. He was hopeful to get it off the ground in late September, and it would involve the same three counties that host our Lincoln Day dinner (Wicomico, Worcester, Somerset.) A word of advice to young Dustin, from someone who’s been there…make sure you have motivated volunteers and a leader who knows how to delegate. Unfortunately, I’m probably the worst delegator in the world. But the part about motivated volunteers is helpful because without them you have no one to delegate to.

Also, the club needs a food volunteer for next month’s meeting. I’m not sure how to beat crab dip though.

We also heard briefly from Woody Willing of the Wicomico County Board of Elections, where they still need GOP election volunteers. But the main part of his remarks was a breakdown of the current party affiliation by Council District (there are 5 in Wicomico County.)

District 1 (which takes in the northwestern sections of the county, including Delmar and Hebron) has 5,448 Democrats and 2,450 Republicans.

District 2 (the western section of the county, including Sharptown, Mardela Springs, Fruitland, and the small communities along State Route 349) runs 5,418 Republicans to 5,200 Democrats.

District 3 (Pittsville, Willards, Powellville, and the remainder of eastern Wicomico County plus a swath along its southern border that curls around to the U.S. 13 bypass and the southeastern portion of Salisbury) has 4,637 Republicans and 4,345 Democrats. This is my district because of that curl – if I walk across Old Ocean City Road I’m in District 5.

District 4 (predominantly the southern half of the city of Salisbury, but with a panhandle that takes in a narrow swath between U.S. 13 and the north branch of the Wicomico River in Salisbury) has 3,637 Democrats and 2,591 Republicans.

District 5 (sort of the northeastern section of the county between U.S. 13 and Parsonsburg Road, it includes part of Parsonsburg and the northeast quadrant of Salisbury including the Centre of Salisbury) contains 4,259 Democrats and 3,382 Republicans.

By my public school math skills, I added these totals up to give me 22,889 Democrats and 18,478 Republicans. While my goal as a Central Committeeman would be to reverse these numbers in four years, it still means that the 7,000 or so independents are going to decide many an election.

After Willing finished, we got to hear from Senator Colburn. Stating that this is “the most important election in my lifetime”, he related a story from his childhood. When he was four years old, Hurricane Hazel struck the area and Colburn said he could recall it clearly. A month afterward, Governor Theodore McKeldin was reelected but Colburn said he had no memory of that. However, what makes that important is that 1954 was the last time a Republican governor won a second term in Maryland. While I’m sure no one would like a major hurricane blowing through Chesapeake Bay again, we’d all like to see Governor Ehrlich remain in office. One reason is the two appointments that the incoming governor will make the the Maryland Court of Appeals. Further, Colburn commented that despite the usually negative editorials from the Baltimore Sun, the paper still termed the election as being “up for grabs.”

For his part, the Senator remarked that when he was first elected to the House of Delegates in 1982 (in his second try, he lost the first by just over 300 votes) he was one of just two Republicans in the Eastern Shore delegation. Even with his move to the Senate, he’s remained a very staunch and pro-business Republican, getting high marks from organizations like the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation for Independent Business, and Maryland Business for Responsive Government. All of the organizations gave him a rating of at least 90% as far as his votes, the NFIB score was a perfect 100.

But, Colburn warned, this record would make him a target for the liberals. He saw the opposition galvanizing around three votes he made in the last two sessions – the Healthy Air Act, the minimum wage bill, and the Fair Share Health Care Act. In defending these votes, he stated that the effects of the Healthy Air Act could be the closing of one power plant and possibly brownouts due to the constrained supply. He criticized the minimum wage bill as “politics over economics” and noted that the Democrats didn’t make this an issue when there was a Democrat governor who obviously would’ve supported it.

His most stinging rebukes were saved for the Fair Share bill, a measure he said was “unfair…and selective” and was a “highly partisan bribe to (the) unions.” Continuing in that vein, he quipped that this was a “tough month for the liberals” as they lost two court cases concerning the Public Service Commission and the Fair Share bill, plus saw the utilities they chained up by passing a so-called rate relief bill have their bonds sink into junk bond status, thus guaranteeing them higher interest rates for borrowing.

To close, he said he expected “lies and innuendo” from the Democrats campaigning against him, and concluded “I don’t want Maryland managed like Baltimore city”, an obvious jab at Baltimore mayor and Democrat candidate Martin O’Malley.

Upon Colburn’s finish, the assembled perked up as Mike Lewis had a video presentation to go along with his words. First, he did have a few remarks, stating up front that he was a “die-hard Republican” who fully supported Bob Ehrlich, Michael Steele, and President Bush.

Lewis rolled on, speaking of his Maryland State Patrol career where he became an expert at interdicting drugs. He started out doing this along U.S. 13, which he claimed became the preferred alternative route for drug traffickers after the heat became too intense along I-95. Some of the nation’s largest crack seizures occurred along our stretch of that road. In fact, he noted that he was so good at stopping the smugglers that he had two contracts on his life, which led the MSP to promote him to become a sergeant at the Annapolis MSP office for his safety. He got back into the interdiction game when he was placed in charge of overseeing the task statewide by Governor Ehrlich.

He had one interesting comment up front. There was one where he stated that he’d never been a principal in any racial profiling lawsuits brought by the ACLU or NAACP. In the later stages of his presentation, he did talk a lot about the “investigative advantage” of traffic stops. This led me to believe that somebody thought he was targeting too many minority drivers, but as he explained there’s telltale signs that one can gather illegal activity from regardless of race. Put another way, “Criminals are most vulnerable at traffic stops.” As an example, Mike recited how mass killers Ted Bundy and Timothy McVeigh were captured due to observant state policemen at routine traffic stops.

As to how he became interested in the Sheriff’s job, he told us that he’d been “hurt and concerned” over what’s happened in Wicomico County, but had no interest in the job until Sheriff Nelms announced he wouldn’t seek another term. At that point he decided to run, since he had served long enough in the MSP for retirement.

The first presentation he showed us was a short remainder of the events of 9/11. While it’s good to be reminded of that, especially from someone in law enforcement, I wasn’t quite sure of the point of showing it. I know I haven’t forgotten, but perhaps it’s true that as he stated too many Americans already have.

I found the second part of his presentation quite interesting, as he showed a video of a traffic stop he had made. There were several tips and techniques he showed that he’s teaching others to do on a national and international scale. The most intriguing one is placing a hand on the car as the trooper walks up to it on the passenger side. (Ask him about why, I kind of thought it was a neat trick of the trade and I’ll not reveal it.)

But the video he went through blow by blow as the perp was carefully observed and certain actions and clues led Lewis and his partner to believe the van was carrying drugs. Sure enough, once a K-9 unit was on the scene, it became obvious and the man driving the car was arrested for having about a half million dollars of cocaine in his car headed for PG County. I had to snicker when I saw Lewis and his partner at the end of the video bust trading high fives and a shoulder bump.

One thing Lewis stressed in his talk over the video was the importance of in-car cameras, and he claimed that there was federal money available for grants because of our having a commercial airport. This would be Homeland Security money and he would strive to get some to provide Wicomico County deputies with that equipment.

He concluded his presentation by showing us a fishtank stand. But it wasn’t an ordinary one. This one was rigged with electronic pistons that were activated by waving a transmitter over the back. Once activated, it revealed a secret compartment. This was found at a home in Salisbury, and at one time held over $200,000 in drug cash. Now it’s part of Lewis’s show-and-tell presentation while its former owner is cooling his heels in prison for the next 25 years or so.

Mike then took a few questions after this informative multimedia show. In a query about school resource officers, he was quick to answer “we need more of them.” But the problem wasn’t quite about that, it had to do with turnover. Lewis stated that he would assign officers and walk the halls with them a few times as needed to build the students’ trust in the officers.

I’m going to go out of order here because the second question of the three had the most interesting answer. But the last question had to do with priorities – while busting drug smugglers on Route 13 was important, what happens to the call about a vandalized mailbox? Lewis told the man who asked that “everyone will get a quality investigation” and not just a police report. He added that he’d do “everything in his power” to reopen all of the substations; in fact one is to reopen shortly, I believe it was in Powellville.

Now to that most interesting and magnanimous answer. A question was asked about the Sheriff Department’s $7 million budget and 110 employees and how Lewis would handle the administrative end. Mike admitted that it was probably his weakest point and clearly stated that Doris Schonbrunner would be appreciated and welcomed to stay on as his second-in-command should he win the job, continuing in her current post.

He concluded by saying that he was planning to take his retirement and continue teaching the methods of drug interdiction full time until the opportunity of the open Sheriff’s chair came about. But in boiling the presentation down, it’s all about, as he termed, “organized crime against disorganized law enforcement” and that was something he was going to work to change.

As I wrote at the top, we had quite the turnout there. So there were a few closing remarks made, mostly by John Bartkovich. Much of it was soliciting volunteers for upcoming events, including the Farm and Home Show next month. I’m signed up to be there on the 17th at 4:00 p.m., the first guy out of the chute. But we’ll also have workers manning a space at the Riverfest in September and the Chamberfest and Autumn Wine Festival in October.

Another subject brought up was voter registration and getting those cards filled out. There’s a course on it and a call was placed about whether there would be interest in a club-sponsored class on that. Since there would be more discussion on it afterward, I don’t have the results at the moment.

But this month’s meeting was probably among the best we’ve had, particularly with turnout. We did a quick (well, except for Bonnie Luna and John Cannon) introduction of all the candidates who were there, and I counted 21 including myself. Just like on the ballot, I was the last one. So vote from the bottom up.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.