Will Larry Hogan be a Maryland hero?
Now you know I couldn’t resist some reference to that. But seriously, this group may have some merit as perhaps being attractive to the TEA Party element yet acceptable to the conservative Republican establishment. I’ll let him take it from here:
We need YOU to Change Maryland.
Join the grassroots movement that’s fighting to bring fiscal responsibility and common sense to Annapolis. Change Maryland was born out of the frustrations of average Marylanders who are fed up with politics as usual in our state, want to stand together, and fight back for a change.
Our elected leaders are not solving the problems – they are causing them and making them worse. We’re concerned that Maryland is way off track, headed in the wrong direction and that our very economic future is at stake. It’s time to send a message to Annapolis.
We can’t sit back, accept the status quo, and allow the out of touch monopoly in Annapolis to continue to run our state into the ground with no opposition, no debate, and no checks and balances. It’s time we said enough is enough.
All Marylanders –Republicans, Democrats, and Independents – suffer when the professional politicians and the special interest groups go unchecked and continue to push the same failed ‘tax and spend’ policies. This cycle must stop. We can stop it together.
Together, we can Change Maryland. Real competition, honest debate of the issues, and the competition of a healthy and strong two party system are needed to turn Maryland around. Say no to more spending, more debt and higher taxes.
This isn’t just a fight between the right and the left. It’s a fight between right and wrong. We don’t need partisanship; we need honest leaders in Maryland who will tackle the tough issues. This isn’t about Republicans versus Democrats. It’s more important than that. This is about Maryland’s future, and it’s a fight worth fighting.
The group referred to already has a website; naturally it’s ChangeMaryland.org. This is a pretty solid introduction:
You can’t help but notice the tagline “from Election Strategies.”
So why now? Well, I haven’t asked Larry (although I do believe he checks out this site from time to time) but if I were to hazard a guess it would come from two distinct pieces of information:
- Brian Murphy has been a frequent guest on radio programs around the state and contributes the occasional op-ed piece, too.
- Charles Lollar was selected to head up the Maryland chapter of Americans for Prosperity – a natural bully pulpit.
The reason these are important is quite simple, really – these two gentlemen either ran for or considered running for Governor in 2010, as did Hogan before he withdrew in favor of Bob Ehrlich. We know that Murphy followed through until losing in the primary (with a little help from the Republican establishment) but Lollar considered the race until he was tripped up by an arcane residency rule. That won’t apply in 2014.
So perhaps part of the reason behind Change Maryland is to keep Larry’s name in the spotlight, although in actuality his name is nowhere on the site. Yet, in looking at Larry’s Facebook page he’s been a one-man promoter for Change Maryland, and that’s how I became familiar with the CM page. I figure he had something to do with its creation, and certainly I don’t have an issue with the message. But you know me: always looking for that deeper meaning.
We’ll keep an eye on the page as it develops, but in the meantime this could be an indication that Larry Hogan’s not through with politics just yet.
I thought I said NEW leadership!
Despite fighting fatigue, I can still smell a rat a mile away.
Slowly but surely, people are beginning to filter into the various races for Republican Party positions. Since I last wrote I received confirmation that Maryland Society of Patriots head Sam Hale is in the race, and Larry Hogan is out. From Hogan’s Facebook page:
Many people were pushing me to run for State Party Chairman, and are dissapointed (sic) that I declined the position. I believe in the party, I’m very excited about our potential in Maryland and I do plan to stay very involved. I appreciate all the support, however, as a potential candidate in 2014, I think that it’s better for someone else to focus their energies on the state party HQ.
Fair enough. At first glance, Hale is a guy who would match most of what I’d like in a state party Chairman – but I need to learn a lot more.
But there’s another candidate who’s considering a run, and her infamous words tell you most of what you need to know:
I don’t know if we are going to see another [Republican governor of Maryland] in the next 40 years. It is a shame.”
The woman who uttered these words: Mary Kane, Bob Ehrlich’s running mate and probable darling of the establishment set. According to the Washington Post, she’s “interested” in making a run. (A tip of the hat goes to Ann Corcoran for spotting this.) Does that quote above square with this tidbit from the Post piece?
“I believe in the Republican Party, and I don’t think we should give up on this.”
It doesn’t sound like you believe in the party too strongly if you dismiss our chances of electing a governor in the next four decades! Richard Cross over at Cross Purposes does a nice job of looking at what the party achieved on a local level (although he missed Wicomico County; I took care of his oversight.)
And, just like the Bushes kept the presidency in the family after the eight-year respite of Bill Clinton, the Kanes may regain control of the Maryland Republican Party after a four-year hiatus where both Jim Pelura and Audrey Scott served as chairs – Mary’s husband John was Bob Ehrlich’s hand-picked choice to run the MDGOP from 2002-2006. Mr. Kane’s legacy is one of defeat – Ehrlich didn’t win re-election and the party all but bankrupted itself in the effort to keep him in Government House. (His tenure is part of the reason why the Maryland Republican Party needed its line of credit. Much of the remaining financial problem stemmed from a disastrous year of fundraising in 2007, with the projections likely based on the 2006 budget prepared by John Kane.)
Having only met Mary Kane briefly – most recently at her early voting campaign swing through Wicomico County – I don’t have a personal problem with her, but I can’t see her prospective tenure as being productive.
As I’ve pointed out before, the definition of insanity is to do the same thing and expect different results. If the Maryland Republican Party believes it can continue with an “establishment” person at the helm, don’t be surprised if we reach heretofore unknown lows in the next election cycle. Such a move will alienate the people the party needs most in the grassroots, and as we saw this time around a lack of grassroots support doomed the Ehrlich/Kane ticket while conservatives like Andy Harris and a number of others at the local level won with strong backing from the heretofore politically inactive.
It’s a Pyrrhic victory for the self-appointed party elite to be in charge of a sinking ship, but if conservatives allow the wrong choice to be made December 11th they’ll be kicking themselves daily for the next four years.
Murphy speaks out
It’s about four minutes of commentary, but former gubernatorial candidate Brian Murphy had the chance to discuss the recent election with Shari Elliker on WBAL Radio Friday.
There’s no doubt that Murphy paid as much attention to the election results as the rest of us did, and it’s not clear from the conversation that his campaign rhetoric about Bob Ehrlich being beatable wasn’t quite the “I told you so” in retrospect. Critics noted that Bob Ehrlich’s message was a little muddy in their postmortems.
But now is the time to look forward to what is and will be. Martin O’Malley has one more term to serve as governor, and it’s conceivable a number of state Democrats are playing the game of being coy about their 2014 plans while laying the groundwork for a run of their own for Government House. Anthony Brown, Peter Franchot, and Doug Gansler are naturally front and center in that conversation since they have ran and won statewide.
Meanwhile, the GOP side has its own contenders with Brian Murphy probably among them. (He was coy about this in his conversation with Elliker, but one has to believe he’s considering the prospect of seeking an open seat. We’ll see based on how much interaction he has with Republican and TEA Party groups in the coming months.)
But we can’t forget a couple other names.
The old guard establishment may well be represented by Larry Hogan, who began something of a placeholder run for Governor this year until Bob Ehrlich got in.
We also need to consider Charles Lollar, who was the beneficiary of a draft movement last year but was tripped up by residency requirements this time around based on when he first registered to vote in Maryland he was just a few months short of the five years required. Undaunted, he ran for Congress. Unless Democrats decide to push through a ten-year requirement to foil him again, he may well decide to run again IF he doesn’t win a Congressional seat first.
It’s going to be about message, though. With the strong probability of another set of tax increases or expansions for Maryland one has to wonder just how long it will be before the unaffiliated voters and thoughtful suburban Democrats realize that continually funneling more money to the state for fewer and poorer core services needs to come to a screeching halt and eventually be turned around. Given the slow pace of economic recovery, the prospect of a strong economy come 2014 can only be described as a crapshoot at best – people my age may recall that the Reagan recovery didn’t begin until his third year in office and if a Republican takes the White House in 2012 it may take that long to undo the Obama damage (even with a GOP House over his last two years.)
But I’m glad to see Brian Murphy hasn’t gone away. Maybe we should be hanging onto those yard signs.
Ehrlich won’t rule out Senate run
Bob Ehrlich surprised a group in Pikesville this morning by telling a questioner at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast that a Senate run against Barbara Mikulski was still “in the mix.”
That news may come as a shock should Ehrlich follow through with a Senate campaign, especially to a group of eleven people: the seven candidates who are already running for the Republican nomination to unseat the four-term incumbent (leading the way are Carmen Amedori, Jim Rutledge, and Eric Wargotz), the three men who explored but dropped out of the GOP race for governor (Mike Pappas, Larry Hogan, and Delegate Pat McDonough), and Brian Murphy, who might have the GOP nod handed to him as the only other active candidate seeking the Republican nomination for governor.
(for more visit my Examiner.com site…)
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