Presidential purity?

In the wake of comments many believed exposed Donald Trump as a religious bigot, there was condemnation on both sides. But what happens if he wins the Republican nomination in a deeply divided GOP? Maybe my fellow blogger and Central Committee member from Howard County Dave Wissing gives us a clue. He took to social media yesterday to state:

I usually keep my political posts to a minimum, but after today it has reached the point where I can’t stay quiet any longer. As a lifetime Republican who has always supported Republicans for President, I will not support Donald Trump for President should he get the Republican nomination and will work to defeat him. If this costs me my position on the Central Committee, so be it.

More in my party should be saying this.

I’m not going to look at this from the standpoint of whether what Trump said was right or wrong. Instead it brings up the question of whether members of the Central Committee are supposed to blindly follow the party, even if they nominate a person who would seemingly represent the worst possible face of the party.

In the past we have had discussions about something we dubbed the “David Duke rule,” named for the white supremacist who was successful enough to finish second in Louisiana’s 1991 gubernatorial “jungle” primary. Duke ran as a rump Republican against party-switching incumbent Buddy Roemer and former scandal-tainted governor Edwin Edwards, who eventually won a fourth non-consecutive term over Duke. Duke was shunned by practically every elected Republican in the country up to and including President George H.W. Bush, who backed the Democrat Edwards. While my philosophy is to trust the wisdom of the voters, sometimes circumstance forces you to turn your back on a candidate. For many, including Wissing, this seems to be the case with Trump.

Nor does every Central Committee have a loyalty clause.

In reviewing our county’s bylaws, making a statement like Wissing’s is not automatically grounds for removal. Instead, the only grounds for removal is that of missing meetings or conventions. Further, in our case, a 2/3 vote of the committee would be enough to not endorse Trump (or any other candidate) as far as our county is concerned. If Howard County’s rules are similar, those calling for Wissing’s resignation are out of order despite his proclamation.

Yet there is the average Trump supporter to consider. He or she tends to be the working class voter that Republicans constantly try to keep from defecting to the Democrat Party where they came from to vote first for Ronald Reagan. I know a few Trump supporters who like his tough-talking rhetoric, if not his record of political accomplishment, and they’re bound and determined to see him become President.

They can’t seem to move the Trump needle over 25 to 30 percent in the polls, though. There are still over a dozen candidates in the race, but eventually more will drop out and support will coalesce behind other challengers who may eventually replace Trump as the frontrunner. This may solve the immediate problem but create a second one – disheartened Trump supporters who stay home rather than vote for another Republican.

There is a piece in the Onion that satirically illustrates the perils of underestimating The Donald, though. Things that may sink another’s campaign seem to energize Trump supporters even more. The trick may be to interest them if Trump falls short.

Pessimistic part of the state

I said the other day that I wanted to look more deeply at a poll done by the Washington Post last week, and my focus is on how the outstate areas that overwhelmingly supported Governor Larry Hogan compare with the rest of the state on these issues.

For example, the right direction/wrong track polling showed statewide respondents had a 48-40 opinion that the state was on the right path, but those who answered from outstate were the most pessimistic by a 36-55 margin. It was eight points down from any other group.

Yet those who voted for him from the hinterlands were still not sold on Hogan’s efforts. Their 43-24 approval of Hogan’s performance was almost identical to the 42-24 statewide numbers. On the other hand, they were slightly more confident in his ability to turn things around, believing he would by a 61-30 margin compared to the statewide average of 58-33.

Tellingly, the number of outstate repliers who believed the state should be governed more conservatively was several notches above the average, with 44% agreeing we need a more conservative direction as opposed to 36% overall. Only 22% favored more liberalism among outstaters compared to 28% as a whole.

And when the polling turned to the performance of General Assembly Democrats, the 49-43 favorable margin among all voters melted down to a 36-58 disapproval outside the I-95 corridor. The strong disapproval of 35% from those polled outstate was by far the highest. Outstate voters also differed from the norm as they believed the hot issue the General Assembly needs to work on was the state economy (21%) followed closely by public education and taxes at 20% each. Overall, Maryland picked public education at 26%, with taxes at 18% and the state economy at 16%.

We on the geographic fringes also didn’t fondly recall Martin O’Malley, giving him a 37-57 approval-disapproval number compared to 49-43 for the state at large.

There was also a tendency to see particular issues in a more conservative way, which is to be expected from the regions of the state which aren’t urban or suburban. In general, the Post lays out its geographic regions to specifically cover Prince George’s, Montgomery, Anne Arundel, and Howard counties, along with Baltimore City and its suburbs. The rest of us are lumped into the “rest of state” category, which covers a wide swath of the state from border to border in both directions.

One thing the Post did not poll on was the Phosphorous Management Tool, the enactment of which Hogan delayed within hours of taking office last month. Naturally, counties where this was sold as another tactic to clean up Chesapeake Bay would likely be against this change, which the rest of the state (particularly the Eastern Shore) may be solidly behind Hogan’s action.

If you ever wanted real proof that there is more than one Maryland, this poll is a pretty good indicator of the differences.

Jobs report dreadful to Shore

As has often been the case, Martin O’Malley’s personal irritant – that burr under his saddle known as Change Maryland – came out with hard jobs data which showed he’s the job-losing governor.

Using federal employment figures, the number crunchers at Change Maryland found out that 22 of Maryland’s 24 jurisdictions have seen total employment fall from 2007 through 2011. The only two jurisdictions showing gains were St. Mary’s and Howard counties, with St. Mary’s state-leading growth pegged at 6.2 percent. (In real jobs, it’s just under 2,500. Howard County had a smaller 2.8% gain but it translated into just over 4,000 jobs.)

To be fair, though, the numbers through the first half of 2012 would prove sufficient to put eight counties in the black from their 2007 average. Even that comes with a caveat, though, for in June employment tends to be around the highest in the calendar year; in particular June numbers would pull Worcester County to a point where its employment growth would be 20 percent. That’s why Change Maryland opted to use a common yearlong average in compiling its bleak set of figures.

Speaking in the press release accompanying the numbers:

“Coming out of the recession, we’re just not posting strong gains consistently, across the state,” said Change Maryland Communications and Policy Director Jim Pettit. “And we’re finding that our largest jurisdictions are pulling employment levels down, and we need to see an opposite trend in order to restore economic performance statewide.”

On the very last page of their release, Change Maryland ranks each county in percentage growth (or decline) and that’s where Martin O’Malley’s War on Rural Maryland (and, in particular, the Eastern Shore) rears its ugly head. The bottom nine performers, the laggards in an already slothlike recovery, just so happen to be the nine counties comprising the Eastern Shore. (In order from bad to worst, they are Caroline, Worcester, Somerset, Dorchester, Queen Anne’s, Wicomico, Talbot, Cecil, and Kent.) 12,853 jobs have been lost in the period between 2007 and 2011 within that nine-county area, which had a total employment of 159,501 as of the end of 2011. Put another way, for every 100 jobs which existed here on the Eastern Shore in 2007, only 92 remained four years later.

So why is the Eastern Shore holding back the state? I have a number of theories, some of which can be traced to O’Malley’s liberal policies and others being systemic problems without such a quick fix.

Obviously the O’Malley bias against rural development is best shown by the passage of SB236 last year, a bill which allowed the state to butt into local planning decisions and encouraged growth only in limited areas. Want to build a job-creating facility in an area with room to expand? Not so fast. The ever-increasing taxes and fees adopted or expanded by O’Malley haven’t helped much either.

But we can’t completely blame O’Malley for everything, regardless of the temptation to do so. Bad decisions have been made by the previous federal, state and local authorities as well, most particularly in the area of infrastructure and transportation. Most glaring among those to me was not building a southern crossing over Chesapeake Bay at its narrow portion just west of Cambridge and not pushing to have a better north-south highway built through Delaware, to allow quicker access to the Northeast. Both of those would be difficult, if not impossible, to complete now in the present anti-growth climate.

There will be those who say the problem with the Eastern Shore is that it’s grown too much and losing its rural character. But I beg to differ, as that rural character is falling victim more to the ubiquitous, homogenized media culture than to any growth. We are a long, long way from becoming Howard County or the bedroom suburbs south of Washington, D.C. because we don’t have a large metropolis to serve as a driving force for suburbanization. (The largest Eastern Shore city is Salisbury, with a population just over 30,000. Several I-95 corridor suburban bedroom communities are larger by themselves, not to mention the root urban area.) Even if we grew at an astounding rate of 10 percent a year, Wicomico County would take decades to get to the level of a Montgomery County.

But we’re not going to get anywhere except to becoming the next deserted dust bowl if policies in Maryland (and nationally) don’t change. Change Maryland just showed us the evidence that what we’re doing now is a disaster.

As an aside, it’s worth pointing out that Delegate Mike McDermott introduced a bill to repeal last year’s SB236. HB106 is seventeen pages long, but practically all of the text is there in order to show existing law which would be scrubbed. A total of 24 GOP co-sponsors are behind the bill, which is awaiting a hearing in Delegate Maggie McIntosh’s Environmental Matters Committee.

2012 Maryland GOP Fall Convention in pictures and text (part 1)

Yes, this puppy is going to need to be a two-parter because I have photos a-plenty.

I can start with the first thing I did after checking in and getting a little freshened up: the host county had their reception for arrivals.

There were also advertisements for the evening to come.

I’ve often wondered what guests who happen to be here for other purposes think about all of these advertisements – and how many of them drop in for the free food and drink, sort of like wedding crashers.

Previously I have characterized the conventions after an electoral loss (which have happened all too frequently in Maryland) as wakes. But this one had a little less bitterness and a little more of a hopeful tone to it after we admitted our side indeed took a shellacking. After all, as Andy Harris noted during a surprise appearance at the Executive Committee meeting Friday evening, “we have to remember where we were three years ago.”

Of course, when Harris said that “we’re going to expose the President for what he is…he doesn’t get it,” I had the thought those of us who already knew that couldn’t get the message through the thick skulls (or entitlement-addled psyches) of the voting public. But we carried on and Harris stated unequivocally, “I’m going to hold firm – no new taxes,” adding that “Democrats are the ones who tax the middle class.”

Andy’s closing message was that we needed to lay the groundwork for 2014.

On the other hand, MDGOP Chair Alex Mooney knew we had a lot of grievances to go around. “Be prepared for a long meeting,” he warned Executive Committee attendees. “These things need to be aired out.” As it turned out, I’m told their affair lasted almost three hours.

Yet Mooney echoed what we all knew: “It was a disappointing year top to bottom.” For example, he “never thought in a million years” Question 6 would pass, but it did. We have to “look hard to ballot questions” in the future, Mooney continued.

But Alex also looked ahead to 2014 opportunities.

Both National Committeewoman Nicolee Ambrose and National Committeeman Louis Pope spoke before the group. While Ambrose chose to defer most of her report, which was to assess the success of the “Super Saturday” program this fall, to the general meeting Saturday afternoon, Pope bluntly called the time since the election “a tough 3 1/2 weeks.” Yet he also snapped back at critics who questioned his role at the national convention, saying there are “some factions (that) continually want to divide us.” Fighting among ourselves throws us off track, said Louis.

He also reminded us about an upcoming event at this very facility: the Reagan Presidential Ball on February 9, 2013. “One thing this party needs is fundraisers to be solvent,” Pope concluded.

It was then time for committee reports, and the unrest began from the youth.

Brian Griffiths of the Maryland Young Republicans gave us a rundown of what the MDYRs had done within the state during this election cycle before tartly noting, “I wish the officers and others would make that effort.” That was in reference to several MDGOP-sponsored bus trips to Ohio and Virginia. I happen to agree with Brian, particularly in hindsight.

Equally critical was the College Republicans’ Fiona Moodie, who saw a “vast disconnect” between the College Republicans and the main party message.

A few county Chairs were also more critical of the 2012 effort than others. In announcing he was stepping down on December 31, John McCullough of Dorchester County told us that we have one of two choices: either we target (and change) the media, Hollywood, and the schools or “we let everything collapse and we rebuild on the other side.” Preparing his young family for whatever hits the fan was more important than being part of the MDGOP at this time, said John.

Sandy Terpeluk of Kent County was impressed by the effort to get the ballot initiatives to the voters via petition, but agreed with Brian Griffiths that we should have stayed home and made more of an effort to defeat O’Malley’s laws. Her message was that we need more of an organization for these types of ballot issues.

After the county chairs gave their reports, the meeting moved into closed session and I went to see just what was going on. Turf Valley has perhaps the best room ever for an Executive Committee meeting, since it was set up like a college classroom and I could have easily liveblogged it had I known, but it had perhaps the worst setup for hospitality suites since they were in two different parts of the facility. To get from one side to the other, you had to return to the lobby and get to the other elevator.

Since I had to go back to my room to drop off a few items, I started on my side of the facility and dropped in on Maryland’s leading elected Republican.

Andy looked very relaxed, don’t you think? I stopped by his first because he wasn’t staying too late. But he had some scrumptious desserts as always.

Another guy with dessert was Delegate Tony McConkey, whose suite had plenty of Hostess products. On this I’m going to use a photo taken by my good friend Maria Ialacci since for some reason mine didn’t come out – camera issues.

But perhaps the liveliest pair of suites on that side of the facility were the ones hosted by Strategic Victory Consulting and the Montgomery County GOP. Since I ended up returning there to wrap up my long evening, my narrative will work back to those because, in the meantime, on the other side of the Turf Valley hotel, there were also dueling rooms let by two candidates for Governor.

Blaine Young had an entire ballroom, complete with finger food and open bar. At last I had something good and substantial to eat.

I thanked Blaine for my time on his show, but the room was crowded with a number of people who believed his more conservative message was the right way to go in 2014.

On the other hand, David Craig’s hospitality suite was more modest and featured…hotdogs.

I actually don’t recall speaking to David while there. Someone else there was trying to ply me with spiked snowballs, which with a liberal dosage of vodka and cherry flavoring were actually not too bad.

The nascent Charles Lollar draft effort seemed to have an insignificant presence at Turf Valley and, as Joe Steffen of Global Rhetoric writes, Larry Hogan’s Change Maryland group was conspicuous in its absence this time.

In his assessment Steffen also relays his dealings with 2012 U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino, who I ran into going between sides of the building. He was nice enough to pose with my fellow blogger (and Bongino worker) Jackie Wellfonder.

Once I got upstairs I came across a group trying to flex its political muscles at Turf Valley. This was the dual suite of the Maryland Liberty PAC.

Their message and fundraising choices were obvious: pro-liberty is the way to go.

You may have noticed the podium in the first picture. The idea behind the suite was to feature a number of pro-liberty speakers (including Dr. Greg Belcher from here in Wicomico County); alas, I arrived too late to hear any of the speakers. In fact, I would have to say their party was dying out as I tardily showed up.

But two things I noticed about the hangers-on: they weren’t all familiar faces I was used to seeing at MDGOP conventions and most of them were rather young. I’m not a great judge of age but I would peg the average age of those I saw at about 25 to 30. These were the activists who were energized by the message of Ron Paul and may have felt betrayed by the actions of the national Republican Party. While they returned this time, I would be wary about losing their support once again.

Whether that was the “disconnect” Fiona Moodie of the College Republicans spoke out on or not, the fact I heard a few people disparagingly speak about the “Ron Paul people” as I was going from place to place shows that there’s still a clique mentality in our party rather than the “big tent” philosophy we try to sell.

As I talked about earlier, there were a different group of younger Republicans working their best efforts at political capitalism. One lively suite belonged to Strategic Victory Consulting, and the hook was an addictive purple drink they called the SVC. They also had elephant-shaped food.

The SVC suite had some interesting people and props; in the background of this picture you can see the professional photography setup.

In my first go-round through the suite the online Red Maryland Radio Network was doing a live broadcast. From behind the bed and clockwise were Andrew Langer, Greg Kline, guest Hillary Pennington, and Brian Griffiths (standing.) Hillary Pennington and fellow SVC leader Kristen Shields also do their own online radio show called Purple Elephant Politics, so I’m thinking Hillary knows the drill.

Those photography props made for interesting pictures later on.

From left to right in this one are Julianne Grim, Ryan Miner, Kristen Shields, and aforementioned blogger Joe Steffen (aka the ‘Prince of Darkness’ during the Ehrlich era. Thanks to him and Hillary Pennington for setting me straight on names and faces – definitely not my strong suit in most cases and really bad after a couple concoctions.)

The other rocking suite was the Montgomery County Republicans’ one next door.

They had karaoke going on, and we found out Anne Arundel County Councilman Jerry Walker and National Committeewoman Nicolee Ambrose can sing – in this case, the duet ‘Summer Nights’ from ‘Grease.’

Me? I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. And by the time I had ate, drank, been merry, collected a few business cards, found a few of my fans, and spoken to a whole host of people at and around the various convention suites and lobbies, it was getting past 2 in the morning. So I was finally off to bed in order to try and be up for breakfast and what promised to be an interesting convention proper.

You’ll find out my observations about Saturday in Part 2 tomorrow.

WCRC meeting – November 2011

I wasn’t sure what to think about the meeting when I found out who the speaker would be, but Wayne Strausburg turned out to be an interesting guest who had a lot of things to say.

Of course, we attended to our usual opening business, but the bulk of the meeting dealt with the prospective changes to our county Charter from the committee of fifteen interested citizens – three of whom were in the room – headed by Strausburg.

Wayne explained his role as speaker would be to relate the process and entertainment of ideas that the Charter Review Committee (CRC) would review on their way to making recommendations to County Council. As head of the group, Strausburg wanted to have a “consensus” on proposals because “we don’t take changes to the document lightly.”

Continue reading “WCRC meeting – November 2011”

Fresh maps, rancid gerrymandering

Or maybe it’s O’Malleymandering?

This actually came out late Friday night, but I wasn’t made aware of it until last night. Annie Linskey and John Fritze of the Baltimore Sun posted two maps they claimed were the top choices among Democrat redistricters. Neither is an improvement on the jigsaw puzzle we have now, particularly in the central part of the state – in fact, both of these solutions try extremely hard to ignore any semblance of honoring geographic boundaries. But it’s obvious the 10-0 project is in full effect with one option.

In comparison with a previous incarnation leaked to the Maryland Reporter website, there’s little change in the Democrats’ strategy of placing D.C. suburbanites with residents of the Maryland panhandle in the Sixth District. However, Option 1 brings in more rural voters by corkscrewing the district eastward from the Pennsylvania border in Frederick County around through the western reaches of MoCo back to the city of Frederick.

The question for Democrats seems to be whether to go for broke and try to oust Andy Harris or not. Their revised Option 1  tends to maintain the district as relatively Republican, but extends it west right along the Pennsylvania line to include portions of Carroll County for the first time. In return, much of Baltimore County is chopped away, with most of it going to the Seventh Congressional District of Rep. Elijah Cummings.

It’s Option 2 where they sell out to wipe out all the Republicans. While it’s a somewhat cleaner map geographically, for the first time in memory the Eastern Shore would be split among two Congressional districts – Salisbury would be the linchpin.

From Salisbury northward, the Eastern Shore would remain in District 1, with the Lower Shore population replaced by a bloc of voters accessed by a narrow strip through Anne Arundel County. Andy Harris, meet your new constituents in Prince George’s and Howard counties. Andy’s current residence would be a county removed from the new district, which would end at the Susquehanna River.

On the south and east sides of Salisbury, we would be introduced to our new Congressman – one Steny Hoyer. Yes, the Democrats would place all of Somerset and Worcester counties along with about 2/3 of Wicomico into the Fifth Congressional District. Good luck for us trying to outvote the swath of PG County left in Steny’s district to keep it a majority Democratic district. (In fact, adding Somerset might well make it a majority-minority district.)

It’s also interesting to look at the map and see the lengths Democrats went to in maintaining that each of their existing Congressional delegation remain in their districts, as pathways were created just long enough to keep  Chris Van Hollen in District 8 (which would either run westward along the Potomac or north into Carroll County) and Elijah Cummings in District 7.

Well, Democrats, you outdid yourselves. See you in court, because I would imagine either of these monstrosities will end up there.

Update: If Red Maryland is to be believed, the Eastern Shore will dodge a bullet with Option 1.

A county coup

This is sort of what I envisioned for our Lincoln Day Dinner next year; of course the problem may be that our usual February date is too far away from the state’s primary date and by the time we get to the primary the field may be winnowed down to perhaps two or three contenders who will be looking for votes in larger counties.

But Howard County was fortunate enough to secure a presidential candidate for their Lincoln Day Dinner the other night. Herman Cain made an impassioned pitch in his stump speech.

What I’m sharing is parts 2 and 3 of a video produced by O.P. Ditch of Elkridge. The introduction of Cain in part 2 is by our state’s RNC national committeeman, Louis Pope.

It gets me to wondering whether we’ll see any of the presidential contenders for our state convention this fall, wherever they decide it will be held. I’m not holding my breath that any of them will come to Salisbury, but you never know. (Historians: when was the last time a active Presidential candidate came to Salisbury? Ever?)

Obviously at this stage Cain wasn’t talking a whole lot about policy, but more about philosophy. And he knew he’d have a friendly crowd which isn’t too happy about the leadership in Washington. Fair enough. Given his rags to riches story, I think he’s a good addition to the race and perhaps we are seeing our next President in this video. But I’m chomping at the bit for more contenders to get into the race and start outlining their platforms so I can see who to get behind.

There is one other comparison to draw, though. Our state Red, White, and Blue Dinner on June 23 will feature Newt Gingrich for the second time in three years. The minimum charge there is $200, compared to the $75 minimum Howard County charged for hearing Cain speak. (In 2009 the state party charged $125 to see Gingrich.) I guess becoming a candidate means you cost more?

If our GOP gets more active thanks to the in-state tuition for illegal immigrants petition drive, perhaps we can see more candidates trolling for votes all over the state. I’m sure the folks out Garrett County way would like to see a little love from the GOP contenders too.

But kudos to Howard County for having the foresight to snag Cain as a speaker. I’ll bet they did quite well.