Leave it to perhaps the most whimsical candidate on the Maryland ballot to find humor in this morning’s minor earthquake, which was centered in the Rockville area.
Poking a little bit of fun at his electoral chances, Republican Daniel “the Whig Man” Vovak declared on his Montgomery County Daily website that,
“…a similar earthquake is inevitable if Montgomery County Democrats and Republicans join together to oust tax-loving Ike Leggett in November.”
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Ah, to be young and idealistic.
On Monday I got word of a curious offer from a politician I’d profiled before, Andrew Gall. If Steny Hoyer would work to pass the Fair Elections Now Act (H.R. 1826) out of Congress, Gall would drop out of the Fifth District race. We all know that’s not going to happen; especially not when Steny has about a million and a half in the bank while Gall has…nothing. If this were the World Series of Poker Gall would be going all in with a trey-deuce opposite suit combo.
Yet there may be a redeeming factor in all this – ironically, though, it will probably do more to help Gall’s ideological opposites in the Republican Party.
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It’s no secret that being the incumbent means you receive slings and arrows from your opposition, and Maryland’s U.S. Senate race is no different. But the two leading contenders recently leveled their artillery on different targets.
Of the two leading Republicans, it seems Jim Rutledge has been a little more savage against incumbent Barbara Mikulski. Here he berates the 74-year old incumbent, who’s no stranger to medical devices after recent ankle surgery, for opposing an amendment to exempt veterans from a tax on certain medical devices.
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On the heels of yesterday’s great results for Republican observers in Maryland – Bob Ehrlich overtook Martin O’Malley in polling numbers for the first time in a major survey – reality crashed back in when Rasmussen released a poll giving incumbent Senator Barbara Mikulski a 58% to 33% lead over their presumed leading GOP contender, Eric Wargotz.
This margin suggests, at least for the time being, that Mikulski will enjoy a margin of victory not unlike her 65% to 34% crushing of State Senator E.J. Pipkin in 2004, her last election.
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After slowly gaining on Martin O’Malley through polls taken in February, April, and June, the latest Rasmussen Poll of Maryland voters placed Bob Ehrlich ahead of incumbent Governor Martin O’Malley for the first time this year by a 47% to 46% margin.
And in even better news for the Ehrlich camp, support among Republicans for Ehrlich is far stronger than Democrats for O’Malley. 87 percent of Republicans favor Bob, while O’Malley can only claim support of 71% of Democrats – over 1 in 5 Democrats favor Ehrlich. Unaffiliated voters also prefer Ehrlich by 15 points.
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Shades of Arlen Specter or “Jumpin’ Jim” Jeffords.
With the number of candidates for the U.S. Senate nomination on the GOP side climbing over a dozen, perennial candidate Corrogan Vaughn made a surprise move to bypass a primary by dropping out of the crowded U.S. Senate field and perhaps securing the Green Party nod – for Governor.
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While it wasn’t a formal apology the campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Eric Wargotz released a statement this afternoon, parts of which are published below:
As per the suggestion of the Tarrance Group, The Wargotz for U.S. Senate Campaign has provided additional details subsequent to the initial press release announcing Dr. Wargotz’s lead in Baltimore County CD1.
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As an aside, I wonder how Jim Rutledge would do?
Heeding the admonition of The Tarrance Group, a national polling firm, Eric Wargotz’s campaign has removed a “misleading” poll citation from its website.
Wargotz’s Senatorial campaign trumpeted the data in a Wednesday press release claiming “Wargotz leads Mikulski by 3% in recent poll.” While the data was indeed correct, Tarrance warned that as a basis for a realistic snapshot of the county’s electorate the poll couldn’t be trusted because of its small sample size of 41 people and the fact it only encompassed the portion of Baltimore County lying within the First Congressional District.
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Over the last few days I’ve received not one, not two, but three e-mail pitches urging me to donate to Barb Mikulski’s campaign for yet another re-election to her Senate seat before tomorrow’s quarterly filing deadline. Yes, it appears now my best friends in the world are now Ben Cardin, Martin O’Malley, and Paul Sarbanes and they all want me to donate to Senator Barb. Some of these appeals even have a nice little picture of her asking me to “help Barbara reach her $20k goal today” in that pseudo-hip Gotham font which Organizing for America likes to use.
But that got me to thinking (and doing a little research.) After all, with $2.7 million cash on hand at the end of March 20 grand is pretty much chump change.
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Obviously the dirty tactics used by Martin O’Malley to smear Bob Ehrlich as a friend of Big Oil have a fan in Congressman Frank Kratovil. I recently received a fundraising pitch from the Democrat called “Apologize to BP?”
The e-mail screams that “Harris’s friends in Congress have gone so far as to apologize to BP for our efforts to hold the company accountable,” referring to Congressman Joe Barton of Texas – who later rescinded his “shakedown” remarks. Obviously we have no idea whether Harris considers Barton a friend, let alone whether they have even met.
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Perhaps I don’t listen to the correct radio stations since I haven’t heard the spot in question, but Martin O’Malley got the ball rolling on nasty campaigning by producing a radio commercial tying Bob Ehrlich to Big Oil. (Maybe that ball O’Malley started rolling is a tar ball.)
Obviously O’Malley is playing to both his radical environmental base and upon the fears of a Deepwater Horizon-style catastrophe fouling the waters of Chesapeake Bay.
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With a spirited battle brewing between Republican contenders Charles Lollar and 2008 candidate Collins Bailey for their party’s nomination, little notice has come to a challenger on Hoyer’s Democratic side.
Andrew Gall, should he be victorious over Hoyer in the primary and dispatch the survivor of the Lollar-Collins election, would become the youngest member of Congress. At 27, Gall’s entire life has been spent with Hoyer being in Congress representing Maryland’s Fifth Congressional District.
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