2008 Wicomico County Lincoln Day Dinner in pictures and text

Last night our county held its annual Lincoln Day Dinner within the pleasant confines of Salisbury University. Although we didn’t get the Presidential candidate we may have hoped for when we set the date on the weekend prior to the Chesapeake Primary, we still had four of the five First District Congressional hopefuls along with our featured speaker, two-time candidate for Maryland governor and recent State Department official Ellen Sauerbrey. I’ll get to them later, but first let’s go in event order.

Obviously it was an evening for possibly changing the minds of those in attendance. The first Congressional aspirant I saw arrive was State Senator E.J. Pipkin.

A little later it was State Senator Andy Harris’s turn to shake hands and say hello.

This was just before we were all told to sit down and the programmed events began. Dave Goslee Jr. did the invocation, and I was given the honor of leading the Pledge of Allegiance. We then had a special guest speaker straight from 1865:

President Lincoln reflected on the practice of law in his day, and what stuck out most was his admonition to not go out to create business, as there was plenty to be had. I guess his era had its ambulance chasers too.

For the first time in the three years I’d been to these dinners, this was “our” dinner and not a tri-county event with Somerset and Worcester Counties. (I know Somerset’s is on March 1st, not certain about Worcester’s.) So we added – or possibly resumed – the selection of our “Republican of the Year.” There were two selected, both worthy of the honor:

I serve with Blan Harcum on the Central Committee. Someday I’m going to have to look up and see which came first, me being born or the beginning of his service on the Central Committee. Bob Miller is a fixture of the Wicomico County Republican Club and helps with a lot of our fundraising events like the Crab Feast and our annual Salisbury Festival food booth. I’m not sure either happens without him.

As I wrote earlier, our featured speaker was Ellen Sauerbrey. While she finished just short of her goal of becoming Governor (with the dubious “help” of Baltimore City in 1994), she most recently served as an Assistant Secretary of State, heading the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration.

After an introduction by fellow Bush Administration official Luis Luna, Sauerbrey began what she termed as her first political foray after leaving her State Department post. With the aid of a vast array of images, she described her efforts to improve the lives of the millions of refugees around the globe. It made her feel “good and proud to be an American.” And the images, many of which were taken at refugee outposts in Kenya, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Jordan, showed some of what our foreign aid and assistance from the United Nations and other humanitarian organizations was doing to attempt to improve things for those displaced from their native lands because of a “genuine fear of persecution.” Her aim in the presentation was to show “what it’s like to be a refugee.”

The overall goal of her program was to give refugees assistance in the camps where they were in the short-term by working with the host countries – many of whom really didn’t want the refugees in the first place and tried to not make them feel welcome – to at least allow the refugees some rudimentary standard of living while attempting to resettle them back in their homelands, or, failing that, here in the United States. We accept about 50,000 refugees a year in various resettlement cities. But most aren’t that lucky; in fact, Sauerbrey told us the average stay in a refugee camp was about 15 years.

It was an intriguing look at places most of us would never dream to go, and showed the side of America that many of our enemies would like their people to believe doesn’t exist – our charitable side. (I was told that even the bartender, who I presume was an SU student, was surprised that a bunch of Republicans were capable of this sort of humanitarianism.)

But we are Republicans and it is an election year, so the discussion switched to politics. We gave our state party officials in attendance a couple minutes to speak, then switched to the First District aspirants.

First up was our RNC Committeewoman, Joyce Terhes, who talked about our “choice” in November – we could sit out because we didn’t necessarily get the candidate we wanted but did we want to allow the Presidency to go to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and their policies? A similar message was offered by State Chair Jim Pelura in his remarks, that of a “spirit of unity” regardless of who won the nomination.

Then it was the First Congressional District officeseekers’ turn – two minutes (or so, some were a bit liberal in their time) to make their pitch. Since they went in alphabetical order, I’ll begin with Dr. Joe Arminio.

Joe hammered on the main themes of his campaign, pointing out in particular that the American dream was “stunted” after 1972, with the advent of two-earner families; also, claiming we were in Iraq “to defend the dollar against the euro.”

Next it was Congressman Gilchrest’s turn. Unbeknownst to me, he brought a couple friends who were at his table: Congressman Roscoe Bartlett from Maryland’s Sixth District and Congressman Steve LaTourette from Ohio. Sadly, I missed the opportunity to greet my fellow Buckeye (although I actually root for “that team up north.”) Wayne touched on the key issues in the campaign – taxes, illegal immigration, agriculture, and a need for “exquisite diplomacy” in Iraq. Also, he spoke about the “beauty, majesty, and tragedy” in Ellen Sauerbrey’s presentation, having seen some of the regions she had in his travels.

Since his campaign had gone nine months up to now, Harris compared it to having a child: “joy up front, joy at the end, and hard work in the middle.” He pledged to serve in Congress and build the party where he could by invoking the three-legged stool of Reaganist principles – social and fiscal conservatism along with “peace through strength,” desiring to win the global war on terror “whatever it takes.”

First off, Pipkin described the race as “trivial” when compared to the images we’d seen of refugees around the world. To him, it was time for some changes in the way we addressed a number of financial issues in Congress, an area he claimed as his expertise since he’d worked in the financial arena during his time in the private sector and worked against tax hikes in Maryland.

After all the speeches and remarks, our county chair Dr. John Bartkovich introduced various elected officials in attendance along with those running as prospective delegates to our national convention. Maybe the most interesting introduction was for Salisbury City Council President Louise Smith, who was “pulling knives out of her back.” Actually I spoke to Louise a bit before the event started because she asked me who I thought would win. I gave her my opinion but for the rest of you I’m saving that for tomorrow.

With the benediction (again by Goslee) we concluded the evening’s schedule but many of the 150 or so in attendance hung around for the chance to speak to the First District candidates who had stuck around. I greeted all of them but Senator Pipkin afterward.

What I thought was sort of funny is that I brought the greatly reduced box of items that I’ve kept for campaign literature, but there wasn’t much brought by the campaigns that I saw, except for one:

Eventually the crowd dwindled down and there were just a few of us left, including Dr. Arminio. Since we both cleaned up our items at the same time, I walked out with him and talked about how he viewed his first campaign and about the Ron Paul endorsement of Wayne Gilchrest, one that had to be a bitter disappointment to Dr. Arminio. (I chalked it up to Congressional courtesy.)

Judging from the conversation we had, I think Joe is a history buff. The story he left me with to sum up his quest goes roughly as follows, since I’m writing from memory here.

In the Battle of Yorktown during the Revolutionary War, the commander of General Washington’s artillery said to his men, “Do you see that big house on the hill? That is the headquarters of Lord Cornwallis, so fire all of your guns at it first.” Unknown to his men, the house was this commander’s home and in following the order, all that was his was destroyed.

The point was that sometimes you have to sacrifice part of yourself for a cause you believe in. On Tuesday, we will elect two men to continue on in the political process, but seven men will see their hopes dashed for at least two years. Some may run for or continue to serve in other offices, but for some this may be their one attempt to hold an office representing the interests of about 700,000 of their peers in the district.

I was pleased about one aspect of last night’s presentation. There was no negative campaigning from the podium – each candidate gave their view of key issues and what they would do to address them. We may not agree on all of the solutions, but on Wednesday it will be time to unite behind one person. Hopefully this chance meeting of four of the five contenders, one where no ill will was shown toward the others, will begin some of the healing we’ll need after this nasty campaign in the First District.