Primary election wrapup

Just going through all the results, particularly in races I endorsed. I’ll start with the state level and work my way down. (There’s an update at the bottom.)

The governor’s race was set back on July 3rd. No, that wasn’t the day Doug Duncan dropped out, it was the day the fourth and final duo of governor and lieutenant governor filed. Obviously Ehrlich/Cox and O’Malley/Brown made it through their primaries. But little known is that we have two other hopefuls in the race, Ed Boyd with James Joseph Madigan for the Green Party, and Christopher A. Driscoll with Ed Rothstein of the Populist Party. I would expect if anything they take a few far-left votes out of the O’Malley column, and that might pick up one to two points for Ehrlich.

It’s now become possible that the entire statewide political landscape could be different come January, as the venerable incumbent William Donald Schaefer was knocked out and Peter Franchot, who was way behind in the polls a few weeks ago, stormed to victory on the Democrat side. Franchot won the urban counties to get the victory, since Wicomico voters selected Owens with 45% of the vote and Schaefer had 36%. He’ll face Republican Anne McCarthy in November, McCarthy’s 43% statewide was a little below her 50% performance here.

(By the way, I really liked Schaefer’s press conference. Watch out Ocean City.)

Meanwhile, retiring Attorney General Joe Curran will be succeeded by either Democrat Doug Gansler or unopposed Republican Scott Rolle. Gansler won easily over Stuart Simms, who got a late start because he was Doug Duncan’s running mate. It’s too bad, Simms is a nice guy – I spoke to him briefly in Crisfield at the Tawes gathering.

The U.S. Senate race turned out to be pretty much a landslide for both winners. All of the pundits who were worried that the two dozen lesser candidates would doom Cardin and hand the race to Mfume looked pretty bad as Cardin still won by 4 points. The closest of the also-rans besides Mfume was Josh Rales, with 5% of the vote. The Democrats’ monoblogue-endorsed candidate, Dennis Rasmussen, was fourth with just under 2%. So much for “common-sense” moderatism. As it turned out, the candidates on the Democrat side who answered my Ten Questions combined scored a whopping 6.15% (but 11.77% here in Wicomico County – did I help them?), and while I thought the number of words in just one of Lih Young’s TQ answers was larger than her statewide vote total, I checked and she outpolled her most long-winded answer by 1,738 votes to 850 words. On the GOP side, the question was whether Michael Steele would crack 90% and he didn’t quite make it, only getting a shade under 87%. Republican answerers of the Senate version of Ten Questions managed only 4.99% of the vote (3.91% in Wicomico, so the Ten Questions REALLY didn’t help the Republicans) – then again the answerers on my side were either too moderate, barely literate, or way-out there wacko!

I did get the matchup I expected in the U.S. House District 1 race, although it was closer than I thought it would be. While I didn’t know much about Christopher Robinson, apparently some people did because he only lost by 10 points, 43% to 33%. 2004 candidate Kostas Alexakis was a distant third with 23%. But Robinson actually carried Wicomico County by 10 votes over Dr. Jim Corbin, who I endorsed. I look forward to debate regarding the merits of health care currency and the fusion surge between him and incumbent Wayne Gilchrest.

Now I can turn to the General Assembly. Despite the fact that monoblogue endorsed two District 37 Democrats, it didn’t help much as they were steamrollered by more established candidates. But I expected that. Actually, they both did a little better than I thought they might – I figured Ronald Warden would get just 10% (he got 24% – 26% in Wicomico County against Hilary Spence) and Charles Cephas Sr. I had pegged for about 25% (he finished with 30%, 21% in Wicomico – Rudy Cane’s home county.) So as expected it will be Spence against incumbent Rich Colburn in District 37 and Rudy Cane gets another 4 years in Annapolis representing District 37A. Now the District 37B race I had pretty close to what I expected, I figured about 45-40 Atkins over Quinn and it turned out 44-42. Both of the monoblogue endorsees will face the incumbents, who also did about what I expected and left Redgie Lancaster the rest. I figured he’d get 15%, he only got 9% (14% in Wicomico County.) But by 75 votes, my order was reversed – I thought Addie Eckardt would poll higher than Jeannie Haddaway. I could still be correct though after absentees are counted. That’s the lone instance where I got my endorsed candidates on both sides (Atkins and Quinn against Haddaway and Eckardt).

In District 38, I only had to endorse two races, since Senator J. Lowell Stoltzfus was unopposed and so were Delegates Page Elmore, Jim Mathias, and Norm Conway. I was happy to see District 38A voters decided the gameplaying by the Somerset and Wicomico Democratic parties wasn’t going to fly and advanced Patrick Armstrong by a easy 18 point margin. And as I stated in my endorsement, any District 38B Republican was more than qualified enough to take over in Annapolis, the voters selected Michael James and Bonnie Luna. I got half a loaf there, I thought Jack Lord (who monoblogue endorsed with James) was better because of his common-sense law enforcement and farming background. But Luna will also be fine to take the place of one half of the Conway/Mathias duo along with Michael James.

Out of the candidates who answered my MGA Ten Questions, 5 of 8 advanced to the general election. I lost Sonny Bloxom and Jack Lord from District 38B, and the death of Tony Bruce ended his District 38A campaign. But Rich Colburn, Jim Adkins, Addie Eckardt, Patrick Armstrong, and Michael James play on.

Time to look at Wicomico County races. My endorsed candidates for County Executive both finished last in their fields. Bob Culver managed only 23% on the Republican side and the underfunded Tom Taylor the same 23% on the Democrat side.

Regarding Alessi vs. Corbin, I remarked at Monday night’s Central Committee meeting that I thought the Alessi campaign was going to be a race akin to a NASCAR driver who runs out of gas on the backstretch of the last lap – could he hold off the competition and coast to victory or would he be nipped at the line? The events of the last couple weeks or so all but crippled the Alessi campaign. However, I’m of the opinion that the 40 vote margin will hold up.

There are about 650 outstanding ballots total. But remember, of those ballots not all are GOP voters. My guess is that between 350 and 400 of these ballots are Democrats – absentee ballots are skewed toward the older population and that’s the “daddy” population of the people who say “I’m a Democrat because my daddy was a Democrat.” So out of a probable best case scenario of 300 votes left, Corbin has to get close to 50% of the votes to overcome Alessi because a percentage also goes to Culver – it would have to go something like 140-100-60 just to even the numbers out, then we’d have to sweat out a recount. And the fewer GOP votes left, the better Corbin has to do.

I have to congratulate Mike Lewis. I STILL think Major Doris would be the better Sheriff, but the voters spoke and it was shocking how well he did. I figured maybe mid 40’s but 60% blows my mind. I honestly think Lewis getting radio ads at the end pushed 10-15% his way and away from Doris. And the whuppin’ Kirk Daugherty laid on the Democrat field surprised me as well. So monoblogue went 0 for 2 on Sheriff endorsements. I did them awhile back, but I was in a hurry to put the last post on and forgot to add those to it. D’oh!

Overall for County Council monoblogue didn’t do so good on endorsements. The only district one I got was Sheree Sample-Hughes in District 1, her hard work paid off to the tune of about 70% of the vote. Neil Bayne was blown out in District 4 and Larry Dodd lost big in District 5. monoblogue did better on the at-large but that wasn’t too difficult, the only misstep was underestimating Brenda Hughey-Jones and way overestimating Carl Crumbacker. Then again, had I heard from Hughey-Jones at the NAACP forum that she missed it may have changed my mind.

When I add up the totals on monoblogue endorsements, I still have 12 of 23 candidates alive. Obviously I’m in favor of the Republicans in the general election so it was just a matter of trying to pick who I felt the best Democrats were as far as political leanings or unique and debatable ideas (or just avoiding chicanery.)

There’s one more important race left, and that’s how I fared in my Central Committee race. I’d like to say “thanks a million” to everyone who voted for me, which I suppose means they all get thanks roughly 300 times each. I have 3,200 votes at the moment and sit in 6th place of 7, but I’d have to believe that I’ll pick up another 100 or so from the absentees + provisionals. I’m not sure that’s going to keep me out of the basement though – Ed Heath is only 4 votes behind me and I believe a fair number of provisionals will come from his side of the county.

John Bartkovich has the most Central Committee votes with 4,142 – that means so far 69% of Republicans voted for him to remain on Central Committee and 31% either don’t like him or didn’t care to vote for him. (By the same measure I’m at 53.28% of ballots, but remember I started with near zero name recognition aside from 100 or so daily monoblogue readers and I’ve lived in this area less than 2 years.) The order was pretty much what I expected though, and I’m not that far out of fourth (140 behind Dave Goslee, Sr.) So I guess I’ll take this as something to build on for the next election. I am interested to find out once the results are all tallied up how I did in the two precincts I walked, 5003 and 5004. Aside from small portions of Precincts 5002 and 8002, that’s pretty much where I campaigned.

Now we start thinking about November, and I’ll continue to contribute to the Central Committee discussions as an outsider (I believe my term doesn’t begin until January.) But I’ll be out helping when and where I can for those who I support the most. It’s time to kick some Democrat ass. Oh yeah, also time over the weekend to drop a LOT of sidebar links!

Editor’s note: with the first batch of absentee ballots today I’m now just 1 vote ahead of Ed Heath – as I expected I didn’t do as well with absentees. Now I have 3283 votes, which means I got only 48.2% of the possible 172 absentee votes. Oh well, I guess someone has to be the cow’s tail and it’s likely going to be me. At least there’s still one close “race” since, as I expected, Ron Alessi picked up ground (23 votes) on B.J. Corbin so he’s all but official now.