David Craig (hearts) the Maryland conservative blogosphere

A headshot of Harford County Executive David Craig, provided by his 2014 campaign.

On Friday evening I, along with a number of other Maryland political bloggers, was invited to a confab with current Harford County Executive and likely 2014 statewide candidate David Craig.

Now unlike a lot of events, I chose beforehand not to provide a blow-by-blow account of the proceedings. I intentionally didn’t bring a notepad because I figured there weren’t going to be a lot of detailed questions or answers. I was sort of wrong, but that’s okay – why should I write the same thing four or five others may write? So what you’ll read are my observations of the evening, with a few pertinent items tossed in from memory.

Let me begin with a roster of the other bloggers who attended – there were six of us. I was told that there were about a dozen or so invited, but the list of non-attendees seems to be guarded like a state secret. And that’s fine, because I was just curious when I asked.

Besides yours truly, those who came in to Annapolis for dinner and conversation were Greg Kline and Brian Griffiths from Red Maryland, Bryan Sears and Brad Gerick from Patch.com, and Richard Cross, who does Cross Purposes. (He beat me to the punch with his thoughts on the evening.) It was a cordial conference with Craig and four of his staffers, and the conversations were broad in scope and depth around various parts of the table.

Besides dinner, we all received a party favor: the picture you see at the opening of the article comes from a flash drive Craig provided with his 2014 logo on the outside and various photos, background information, and news articles on the inside. Obviously it will be more useful once the 2012 election is over and Craig decides on whether he’ll seek the post of Governor, Comptroller, or Congressman – if I were a betting man I’d say that in rank order it’s about a 70-25-5 probability for which office he’ll run (the 70% being Governor.)

It was interesting how my fellow bloggers handled the evening. Sears (and to a lesser extent Gerick) treated this like an interview, asking pointed questions of the candidate about a number of statewide issues. Obviously Cross was taking some notes as well, while Kline and I did more listening. (Brian Griffiths came late since the Maryland GOP Executive Committee meeting was held down the street simultaneously to our gathering and he was representing the Maryland Young Republicans there.)

It’s funny that much of my direct conversation with Craig came when we talked about – baseball. He’s obviously familiar with the struggles of the O’s minor league system since the Aberdeen IronBirds play in his county and he could relate to my feelings about the Shorebirds. On the other hand, I wasn’t enthused about his ideas for league realignment but liked his stance on the designated hitter – indeed, it needs to go.

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Is redistricting a done deal?

Well, perhaps, and that’s how my sentiments lean when it comes to the question of redistricting in Maryland.

But Saturday around 30 interested observers sat in the brand-new Perdue School of Business at Salisbury University to listen to eight observers testify before the three members of the Redistricting Advisory Committee who could be present – while Chair Jeannie Hitchcock, President of the Maryland Senate Mike Miller, and board member Richard Stewart were there, board members James King and Speaker of the House of Delegates Michael Busch were unable to attend. The size of the room made the crowd look smaller, too. While Hitchcock said the group was “here to listen, primarily” I noticed some of the members seemed a bit disinterested at times.

Out of eight speakers, five of them represented Democratic interests while the other three (including myself) were Republicans. However, there was one piece of common ground expressed by both sides, that being the issue of resident Delegates. As you’ll read, though, the ideas on how to achieve this were somewhat different.

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