Luna volunteer meeting

I was very impressed with the meeting I was at this morning. At 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday it’s sometimes hard to get people up for anything but District 38B candidate Bonnie Luna had a nice contingent at her volunteer meeting.

District 38B hopeful Bonnie Luna addresses her supporters.

A photo of Bonnie Luna's volunteers and supporters.

It was quite refreshing to be at this sort of meeting rather than a candidate forum. Bonnie did address the crowd for a few minutes about her campaign, but the thing I really liked about it is that she asked all of us who were there starting with her fellow candidates (Ron Alessi and James Gillespie were present), to briefly introduce themselves and state whatever thoughts they had. Since I was a candidate in the primary, I introduced myself as an incoming member of the Republican Central Committee and briefly stated my goals as such.

Doing more of the speaking was State Senator J. Lowell Stotzfus. While noting that Luna “won’t be put in a corner office and forgotten”, he spent more time discussing the legislative record of her main opponent, Delegate Norman Conway. In part Lowell stated that Conway:

* Voted to raise taxes, including the sales tax.
* At one point, Conway had a MBRG (Maryland business organization) rating in the 80’s, which meant he voted pro-business over 80% of the time. Now his rating is in the 20’s.
* Conway voted for three veto overrides of measures that eventually were overturned by the Maryland Court of Appeals.

Also, Stoltzfus reminded those present that Maryland has an “executive budget” thus the General Assembly cannot add anything to the operational budget and has little power over the capital budget. The only thing legislators can do with the capital budget is in the form of what Stoltzfus termed “bond bills”, and that piece of the pie is only about $20 million.

As an example of Conway’s handiwork, Stoltzfus stated that the $1.5 million of state funding to build the new MAC Center (our senior center) was orginally in the capital budget, removed by Democrats including Conway, and reinserted as a “bond bill.” So the money stayed the same, but this way it could be claimed that Conway got the state funding.

A wall full of volunteering opportunities.

What I liked about the setup is that the person who organized it did so in a way that was quite clear. The photo above is a series of sign-up sheets for working the polls on Election Day, and each polling place was there. (I signed up to work mine.) There were also sheets for other volunteer opportunities (placing signs at polling places, phone banks, door-to-door, etc.) so it was easily discernable what was being signed up for.

I’ll freely admit that I didn’t vote for Bonnie in the primary, not that I didn’t think she was qualified, but I liked two other candidates slightly more than her (to me any of the five were an improvement over the Conway/Mathias cabal.) However, I definitely have to tip my hat to Bonnie as far as campaigning goes as she’s been to all of the right places and obviously she’s leading a campaign staff that’s extremely well-organized and focused. Her website has had one of the best calendars I’ve come across as far as where she’ll be and when.

So I’m happy to lend her a hand as she attempts to bring back a House of Delegates she termed as “out of control.”

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.