Time for healing, time to move on

Aside from the fact this is sort of an election wrapup, it almost would qualify as an “odds and ends” post.

I’m going to start out with a concession. Probably when I do site cleanup this weekend I’ll add it to my template as a more permanent disclaimer, but just so there’s no confusion the opinions expressed on my website are not necessarily those of the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee. (However, they probably should be.)

Now I’m going to do some number crunching. I don’t recall who I said this to but on a couple occasions this week I opined that, in order to win re-election, Governor Ehrlich would have to carry the “out” counties in Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore by at least a 2:1 margin.

What I’ve done is set up two sets of numbers. The first set is the county’s Ehrlich percentage from the 2002 election followed by the October 2002 Republican voter registration percentage in (parentheses).

Western Maryland:

Allegany – 64.2 (47.9)
Frederick – 66.0 (46.4)
Garrett – 73.2 (63.3)
Washington – 68.6 (46.5)

Eastern Shore:

Caroline – 74.7 (40.1)
Cecil – 68.1 (37.7)
Dorchester – 67.2 (34.5)
Kent – 65.0 (36.0)
Queen Anne’s – 74.2 (46.3)
Somerset – 68.3 (31.2)
Talbot – 70.0 (44.8)
WICOMICO – 64.2 (37.4)
Worcester – 64.9 (37.3)

Particularly on the Eastern Shore, Ehrlich got a ton of crossover votes – anywhere from 25% to 35% inroads among registered Democrats and Independents within those nine counties, and about 10-20% in Western Maryland where the GOP has better registration numbers.

Fast forward to 2006. I have the unofficial results from last night (no absentees yet) and the October 2006 GOP registration percentages.

Western Maryland:

Allegany – 56.6 (47.4)
Frederick – 59.4 (45.3)
Garrett – 67.8 (62.3)
Washington – 60.3 (45.9)

Eastern Shore:

Caroline – 65.5 (41.0)
Cecil – 57.5 (39.1)
Dorchester – 61.2 (36.2)
Kent – 54.2 (36.0)
Queen Anne’s – 66.2 (46.9)
Somerset – 59.3 (32.3)
Talbot – 62.9 (44.5)
WICOMICO – 62.4 (38.0)
Worcester – 64.3 (38.9)

Last night the Democrats came home to a much larger extent for Martin O’Malley, and the crossovers were reduced to a figure anywhere from 5% in heavily GOP Garrett County to 27% in Somerset County (which has the lowest GOP registration percentage of the selected group). But no county had a 30% or better switchover as four counties did in 2002. It does say something about the efforts of our tri-county GOP (Somerset, Wicomico, Worcester) that we managed to switch more D/I voters than the average (24-27%) and come closer to that 2/3 we needed on the Eastern Shore. But Garrett County was the only 2/3 county and that would be expected given the 62% GOP registration.

I suppose the other feathers in the cap go to Ellen Andrews and Ann Granados, who managed to almost stem the downward tide that Ehrlich had in his reelection attempt. While all 23 counties and Baltimore City had a lesser percentage for Ehrlich, Worcester County was only off 0.6% and Wicomico second-closest at 1.8%.

I also should congratulate fellow MBA blogger Stephanie Dray, who did some work for the winning campaigns (she was out working the polls and such yesterday as I was – hey Stephanie, take your camera next time!) Today she got to feel the euphoria that comes from working on a campaign and being victorious, while I had the crushing disappointment of seeing the hard work I did pretty much go to waste. It’s been more often than not that I’ve been in the latter category, but that’s not to say I’ll work any less to place myself on the winning GOP side in 2010.

But since Stephanie may have her interest piqued because I linked to her, and since she’s the huge O’Malley fan of our group, I have a couple things to ask about.

Martin O’Malley claimed on literature I acquired that he’d be “(a) governor for all of the Eastern Shore. This literature quoted onetime Governor Harry Hughes about “doing what’s best for the people of Maryland, including protecting the Bay and saving family farms.” Regardless, there are two things I think we on the Shore would like to make sure the governor-elect keeps in mind.

First of all, do not balance the vast amount of spending you’re promising (almost every plank on his platform called for what he liked to term “additional resources”) on the backs of our businesses by raising the sales tax. Because of our geography, the Eastern Shore (and Salisbury in particular, being only 5 miles away) has a competitive disadvantage with sales-tax-free Delaware close by. Increasing the sales tax would only drive more capital over the line – already Route 13 is lined with big-ticket outlets for furniture and used cars and increasing the sales tax would make that disadvantage grow.

The other item cuts to the heart of the pull quote on your literature. Governor Glendening was loathed in these parts because he valued the environment voters of the Western Shore more than the farmers of the Eastern Shore by overregulating what farmers could do. Don’t repeat that mistake. Governor Ehrlich was well-liked around these parts by farm families because he called off the Glendening dogs.

One relief was that the election seemed to go relatively smoothly, and aside from a charge of misleading literature being distributed by the Ehrlich campaign, things went relatively well, particularly for Democrats. (Obviously voting is smooth as glass when they win, as opposed to seemingly always screaming “voter suppression and fraud!” when they don’t.) So we seem to have the computer voting pretty much down.

To me then, that means it’s time to perfect the system even more. Because this was a smooth, fraud-free election and a clear mandate for the Democrats based on the results, they should have nothing to fear by adding the requirement for photo ID’s at polling places – particularly with the Election Day registration that Question 4 would bring about. Heck, Arizona has a voter photo ID requirement (or two non-photo ID’s) and they managed to oust a sitting GOP Congressman (J.D. Hayworth) and pass a minimum wage increase.

So, Governor-elect, add these to your to-do list or we’ll have to make you a one-termer like Governor Ehrlich. People who voted for Ehrlich generally didn’t want the bad things about the city of Baltimore (high crime, lousy schools, oppressive taxes) replicated throughout Maryland, it’s up to you to prove them wrong.

I have one other point to make. Last night I read that the demise of the Charles Jannace write-in campaign (which will probably total 700-800 votes once absentees are counted) coincided with the demise of his Justice For All? blog. Probably most among local blogs, his had most of the local GOP’s collective knickers in a wad, and the blowback from it affected my blog. (Not that I really much cared.)

So now we have three main blogs if you count monoblogue (Duvafiles and Salisbury News being the other two I link to) plus a rapidly growing second tier from both sides of the political aisle (examples are Crabbin’, Delmar Dustpan, integrity only matters sometimes, Westside Wisdom, and What I See and Hear) With the popularity of the free blogging site Blogspot, these “second tier” blogs all have popped up in the last few months.

To make a long story short, we as a group are here to stay. The names may change, but someone will have an opinion about something and write it out, and it may or may not draw favor with the local Republican Party. But they’ll have to learn to deal with them, and my suggestion is to welcome them with open arms because more often than not these folks are average conservative types and it’s good to have them on our side.