Adam Roop – monoblogue

Molasses flowing uphill

Yes, things are that slow these days. In fact, they’re so slow that even the upcoming city elections in Salisbury promise to be snoozers.

With just 20 days remaining before the January 15 filing deadline, there’s a dearth of willing people out there to run for the three open positions. Whether it’s a 2010 decision to set the term of office back to about 2 1/2 years (all city offices voted upon in 2013 will once again be up for election in November, 2015) or the prospect of being savaged on the internet, the election front is unusually quiet this time.

I’ve heard a number of names bandied about, but until one or more sign on the dotted line it’s likely that city government will be the same six months hence with no one stepping forward to challenge Mayor Jim Ireton, District 1 Council member Shanie Shields, and District 2 Council member Debbie Campbell. While Adam Roop and Joe Albero have announced intentions to run for office, the lack of movement on their part leads me to believe they could be sitting this one out. For a challenger, it’s about name recognition and neither have gone beyond their comfort zones to any extent, such as making a formal announcement. I can expect that an incumbent would wait until right before the filing deadline to verify they’re trying again, but that doesn’t always work as well for a challenger.

If no more than two candidates file for any office – which was the case for the District 2 Council seat on the ballot four years ago – the primary process is skipped and both automatically qualify for the general election. Both District 1 and the mayoral election drew four candidates in 2009.

After all the shouting

We’re just about through the last weekend of the 2012 campaign, and hopefully by late Tuesday night we will have a good idea of where the country will be heading over the next four years (or perhaps four decades, should the incumbent win.) Of course that’s assuming we have no protracted recounts such as we endured 12 years ago – the prospect of two such occurrences in a lifetime boggles the mind.

Yet regardless of what happens Tuesday life will go on, and the sun will come up Wednesday. I’ll still have my work to do as will most of the rest of us who don’t toil for candidates.

I’ve always been about thinking two to three steps ahead where possible, which is why I’m writing this postmortem of sorts on the Sunday before the election. (It’s also why I wrote my book and eschewed the normal publishing process to get it to market prior to the campaign season hitting high gear. Did it cost me some sales? Perhaps, but readers can remedy that situation easily enough as I link to the sales sites from monoblogue.)

Just in the next three months there are a lot of political stories still to be written, from the local to the national. Here in my adopted hometown of Salisbury, the mayoral race will take center stage. No one has formally declared for the office yet, but it’s highly likely we’ll have at least two (and possibly three) candidates: incumbent Mayor Jim Ireton will go for a second term, realtor Adam Roop made it known almost a year ago he was seeking some unspecified office – his two choices are a City Council district seat or mayor – and recent transplant and blogger Joe Albero has made his own overtures. At least he’s invested in the shirts:

That will probably begin to play out in the next couple weeks.

After that we begin the holiday season, which may be politicized to a certain extent as well. My thought is that if Barack Obama wins, the early predictions of a modest year-over-year growth will hold true or end up slightly lower than imagined. I seem to recall last year started out like gangbusters on Black Friday but tailed off once those big sales came to an end. On the other hand, a Mitt Romney win may open up the purse strings and result in an increase twice of what was predicted. I think seeing him win with a GOP Congress will boost consumer confidence overnight as they figure the long national nightmare is over.

Once the holidays are over, it’s then time for both the 113th Congress to get started and, more importantly for local matters, the “90 days of terror” better known as the Maryland General Assembly session to begin. In the next few weeks I will finally wrap up my annual monoblogue Accountability Project for 2012 in order to hold our General Assembly members accountable for all the good and bad votes they made in the three 2012 sessions. With so much written about in 2012 on my part, I had to put that project on the back burner for most of the fall.

At the same time, state races for 2014 will begin to take shape. Unlike the last three gubernatorial elections we do not have the prospect of a candidate named Ehrlich in the race, which leaves the field wide open. While the three who have made overtures toward running on the GOP side have already made their presence known, only one (Blaine Young) has formally announced and the conventional wisdom (such that there is for Maryland GOP politics) labels him as the longest shot of the three most-rumored candidates, the other two being early 2010 candidate Larry Hogan and outgoing Harford County Executive David Craig.

But there are also down-ticket statewide races to consider as well, and there’s a decent chance that both Attorney General and Comptroller may become open seats as Doug Gansler and Peter Franchot, respectively, consider a race for Governor. (While there are three hopefuls so far for governor on the GOP side, there may be at least five on the Democratic side: Gansler, Franchot, current Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, and Delegate Heather Mizeur.)

The GOP bench is a little shorter for the downticket positions at this time, but I believe William Campbell is willing to reprise his 2010 Comptroller run and wouldn’t be surprised if Jim Shalleck doesn’t make sure he’s on the ballot this time for Attorney General. Another intriguing name for the AG position would be 2010 U.S. Senate candidate (and attorney) Jim Rutledge, who obviously has the advantage of having already run statewide. On the other side, I’m hearing that State Senator Brian Frosh (who generally serves as a dictatorial Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee) is one name in the mix for AG, but another intriguing one is former First District Congressman Frank Kratovil, who is now a judge in Queen Anne’s County.

So the beat will go on after this year’s election is over. It’s not surprising to me that I’ve had some great readership numbers over the last few weeks, but the last couple weeks in particular have blown me away. The trick, though, will be maintaining the audience through a period where fewer discuss politics and more concentrate on friends and family during the holiday season. I won’t be so presumptuous to believe that my humble little site should be uppermost on everyone’s mind, but I hope to roll into year number 8 of monoblogue in grand style.

New entry or publicity hound?

Originally I was going to use this item yesterday as part of the headquarters story, but on second thought I decided it deserved its own headline and post.

In five months beyond the November election, Salisbury voters will decide the fate of three of their leaders: District 1 Councilwoman Shanie Shields, District 2 Councilwoman Debbie Campbell, and Mayor Jim Ireton. I’m under the impression Shields won’t run again; the other two are presumably going to seek another four-year term.

You may recall that earlier this year I profiled a campaign kickoff by local realtor Adam Roop, for a yet-to-be-determined city elected office. But I hadn’t mentioned this effort by political gadfly and blogger Joe Albero – until today.

Joe Albero and his rack 'o shirts.

Now I understand my political advice is generally worth the price paid for it, but it seems to me that having shirts and bumper stickers will build name recognition but not give someone a reason to vote for you. As it stands right now, the website listed on the shirt simply redirects to his Salisbury News website, not a separate campaign site.

I can already see the comment now should Joe deign to add his two cents to this conversation, something along the line of “it’s my campaign, I know what I’m doing, you simply fail to understand my master plan to win this race.” Whatever – as I said, my advice is sometimes worth the price paid for it.

But if he’s as popular as his rhetoric makes him out to be, why would he be wheeling out a nearly full rack of shirts (presumably as a giveaway to supporters?) The shot was taken as he was leaving to go to another event, as Joe said to me.

I have a hard time taking Albero seriously as a candidate until I see a formal announcement and (as a Salisbury voter myself) his ideas on how to improve the city. Several of those I spoke with this afternoon felt similarly, preferring to keep their distance for the time being.

That didn’t have anything to do with the headquarters, nor will the local GOP be actively involved in the Salisbury city races because they’re non-partisan elections. Hence the reason I decided this should be a separate post. But I took the picture since Albero’s space was placed next to the GOP’s at the Farm and Home Show; aside from that, the Wicomico GOP has no official connection to the Albero mayoral campaign – or any other Salisbury one, for that matter.

As I made clear on my comments on the Roop event, the current mayor didn’t kick off his spring 2009 campaign until November, 2008 – after the election of Barack Obama. Aside from perhaps trying to build name identification (and as a fellow blogger who HAS run for office in this county twice, I am quite aware that simply having a website doesn’t necessarily translate into lot of people knowing who you are – that’s why I barely hung on to my seat in 2010) I’m not sure what Albero’s point is, aside from perhaps a publicity gimmick to promote his site. If that’s the case, give him an A for marketing but an F for being taken seriously for future political endeavors.

Early to rise

As the calendar turns to 2012 and the political calendar becomes focused on the presidential primary, over the weekend we had our first prospective 2013 Salisbury City candidate announce the possibility he would run.

That’s right – Adam Roop announced in January, 2012 for an election to be held in April, 2013. Roop made his statement before perhaps a dozen supporters according to a Daily Times story by Jennifer Shutt. The story presumes he will be running for mayor, but Roop made no firm commitment to a particular office. Bear in mind, however, that based on where Roop resides he would either have to challenge Jim Ireton to become the new mayor or District 2 Council member Debbie Campbell, whose term also expires in 2013. Neither Ireton nor Campbell have confirmed their desire for another term at this time.

As a point of comparison, I did a little research and found that Ireton announced his mayoral bid in November 2008, just five months before the election. In that 2009 race, Jim won a four-person primary over then-City Council Vice-President Gary Comegys, former City Council member Bob Caldwell, and 2005 candidate Mike Della Penna before again defeating Comegys in the general election. Out of that field, Comegys declined to run for re-election in 2011 due to illness, Caldwell was elected to County Council in 2010 before his death in October 2011, and Della Penna has finished well out of the money in both previous runs. In short, the time is indeed ripe for new contenders in the political arena.

But will announcing so early create a problem? There’s no question Adam Roop has a little bit of name recognition based on his real estate ventures, but he’s not nearly as well known for his community involvement – it’s a shortcoming he addressed in his statements. And if elected, Roop would be the youngest mayor Salisbury’s had in some time as he won’t turn 30 until June of 2013. By comparison, Jim Ireton will be 43 years of age by the 2013 election – still, that’s younger than any member of Salisbury’s City Council, where the current roster ranges in age from 46 to 62.

In my observation, Roop may have been better served by getting involved more in the community first before making an announcement. Certainly there is some lead time required in plotting a political campaign against an incumbent officeseeker but running for office is far more than putting together an attractive logo and hosting a gathering for would-be supporters. Yes, it’s good to know that one of those who may be running for re-election in 2013 will not go unopposed, but there’s such a thing as looking too eager to serve.