Misdirection

Once again, I will caution readers that the reason I never had a big desire to run for high political office was that I hate asking strangers for money. But I was alerted to an investigation into the financial windfall a company servicing GOP Congressional candidate Kim Klacik received.

Granted, this investigation was done by the Washington Post, and they’re not going to shine a favorable light on any Republican, especially an overtly Trump-supporting minority GOP member like Klacik. But I’ll play along because it leads to another point.

As you may recall from last summer, Klacik became the “it girl” among Republican House candidates thanks to a viral ad she had shot on location in the slums of Baltimore, blaming the decades of Democrat leadership for the decrepit and hopeless conditions. It was a turn of Donald Trump’s “what the hell do you have to lose?” question to black voters, which make up the majority in Klacik’s district thanks to much of it being in Baltimore City.

Yet according to the Post:

By the end of Klacik’s campaign, she would raise a staggering $8.3 million and pay nearly $3.7 million of it to Olympic Media, according to campaign finance filings and her campaign manager. Klacik, now a frequent Fox News and Newsmax commentator, lost to Mfume in Maryland’s 7th Congressional District by more than 40 percentage points.

“Donors gave a House candidate more than $8 million. A single firm took nearly half of it.” Meagan Flynn and Michael Scherer, Washington Post, March 2, 2021.

The fact that she raised $8.3 million for the race based on a viral ad may be scary enough, but then considering nearly half of it went to a consultant made it worse. This reaches back to a subject for which I sometimes kick myself for not devoting more pages to it in The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party and that is the effect of scam PACs, particularly in the later years of the movement. This comes from the chapter of my book called “The TEA Party Is Dead”:

The incessant fundraising off TEA Party regulars, who skewed heavily toward those 60 and over and who had the disposable income to use for political causes, made consultants – a group of characters who often countered that doing mass e-mail appeals wasn’t as cheap as those on the outside of the business thought – fabulously wealthy for next to no effort, while achieving little to assist actual candidates who could have used the funds if they were given directly. Oftentimes less than 10% of the money raised by a PAC would go toward candidates, with much larger amounts used to pay for more fundraising.

The Rise and Fall of the TEA Party, p.129.

I gave the subject about a page and a half, but in retrospect it probably deserved at least twice as much. This is particularly true because Klacik, as revealed in the Post story, is another failed candidate who has began a PAC of her own, called the Red Renaissance PAC. (Just like Lauren Witzke here in Delaware.) So she will be yet another grifter taking her cut instead of moving the money where it belongs, and I think that greed is what stunted the growth of the TEA Party. Imagine if that scam PAC money had instead assisted local candidates, who may have won races they lost had they had the additional funding that instead found its way into some consultant’s bank account. Instead of paying for 100 yard signs, donors to scam PACs paid for Mr. Consultant’s yard work to be done.

There was another reason this came to mind: many Delaware school districts have at least one seat on their board of education coming up for election this spring. In my little school district, the one open seat has attracted four candidates as the incumbent decided to forgo another term. What do you think a couple dozen people of like mind donating $100 apiece could do to a candidate in a race like this where winners seldom spend more than a few thousand dollars as opposed to a Congressional election where that group of 24 is outspent by some corporate PAC that donates the maximum?

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if you want to donate to a candidate, skip the middleman of a PAC and send it directly. (Or, even better, be a volunteer for them.) It will do the most good for the people who really need it.

Fun with numbers, part two

A few days ago I put up a post with some possible Election 2018 scenarios based on turnout and the results of some recent polls. Well, armed with a couple of very recent polls and fresh voter registration numbers from September, here are a couple more shots at an alternative universe for a patented Friday afternoon data dump:

2014 2010 2008
Gonzales 10-10 Hogan 1,100,393 58.7% 1,233,450 57.6% 1,748,905 56.4%
Jealous 722,161 38.5% 847,923 39.6% 1,258,739 40.6%
Quinn 35,151 1.9% 40,243 1.9% 62,202 2.0%
Schlakman 17,948 1.0% 20,815 1.0% 33,136 1.1%
Wash. Post 10-09 Hogan 1,127,428 60.1% 1,254,747 59.0% 1,801,299 58.1%
Jealous 701,675 37.4% 819,119 38.5% 1,225,116 39.5%
Quinn 28,532 1.5% 31,586 1.5% 45,383 1.5%
Schlakman 17,712 0.9% 20,408 1.0% 30,664 1.0%

 

2006 worst case
Gonzales 10-10 Hogan 1,299,198 56.8% 1,377,472 52.8%
Jealous 919,731 40.2% 1,158,084 44.4%
Quinn 43,831 1.9% 46,381 1.8%
Schlakman 23,216 1.0% 26,325 1.0%
Wash. Post 10-09 Hogan 1,322,971 58.3% 1,392,322 53.7%
Jealous 888,970 39.2% 1,142,257 44.0%
Quinn 33,299 1.5% 32,111 1.2%
Schlakman 22,367 1.0% 26,879 1.0%

 

Because Larry Hogan is in the mid-30’s insofar as percentage of Democrat support is concerned, there is no possible turnout scenario among those depicted that places Ben Jealous within 8.4 points of Larry Hogan. Even if you had the most optimistic Democrat scenario of a presidential election turnout with the lowest recent GOP turnout as depicted in “worst case” above plus the Gonzales results for the GOP and independents – which are slightly friendlier to Jealous – Jealous still has to drive Hogan down to 31% among Democrats. But in a more likely scenario Jealous needs to get Hogan down to 23% to win with the 2006 or 2008 models, to 21% to win with a 2010 model, and to 19% to win in a 2014 universe – one where neither candidate draws a million votes.

I did some quick and dirty math: in order to drive Hogan down to 31% support among Democrats in an instance such as a 2008-style election (assuming that the number of Hogan-supporting Democrats stays static) Ben Jealous has to find about 375,000 more Democrat voters that support him. Sorry, but Larry Hogan is not going to underachieve that much nor are there enough rocks in Maryland to look under.

It basically leaves Ben Jealous with no path to victory. And the Kavanaugh saga really didn’t do Ben any favors because it will probably goose GOP turnout up enough to keep things relatively even insofar as turnout percentage is concerned. The closest parallel to that sort of an election would be a 2006 turnout, where Democrats ran just three points shy of Republicans (as opposed to 7.61% in 2010 and a whopping 11.9% in 2014.) In 2008, the Democrats, buoyed by Barack Obama, actually had better turnout by 0.54%, which for all intents and purposes is even.

One other tidbit from this information – armed with more exact Gonzales numbers, this election also becomes a race to maintain ballot access for both the Libertarian and Green parties. The Greens are cutting it close in some scenarios, and the Libertarians don’t have a lot of room for error either. With such a high margin, the temptation may be there for people on both sides to help out the minor parties – “lost cause” progressives vote for the Green Party, disaffected conservatives vote for the Libertarian. There’s a lot that can happen.

I may have to rework my chart in a couple days with polling info on the Senate and AG races. Stay tuned.

40th annual Tawes Crab and Clam Bake in pictures and text

It was awful tempting to jump on into that water, but several thousand people managed to sweat their way through another hot Tawes Crab and Clam Bake. While Republicans tend to have a little more presence in the area, some of the Tawes regulars were absent because the event coincided this year with the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

That convention minted the GOP Presidential nominee, who seemed to be pretty popular.

That group of signs dwindled little by little, as Trump adorned a number of tents. On the other hand, there were far fewer Hillary signs – but the Democrats also had their crowded space.

Sarah Meyers (in the blue shirt) is a friend of mine, and she was tearing her hair out as the coordinator there because they overbooked the space. (You may see her at the Democratic Convention next week, as she will be there as a page.) By the same token, the Somerset Republicans only went with one tent as well and it was packed, too. So both parties had close quarters.

Yet the businesses seemed to have ample space. I didn’t peek into every tent, but many of them (as well as businesses lining State Route 413 into Crisfield) had a simple message: welcome Governor Hogan.

Even lobbyist Bruce Bereano, who always has the largest space, got into that act.

Yet among those businesses I did pick out I found an odd juxtaposition there, particularly under the auspices of the local economic development commission.

In order, these businesses are Cleanbay Renewables, which is a chicken waste recycling firm, Pinnacle Engineering, which services NASA, the Somers Cove Marina Commission, and Great Bay Solar I. The last is interesting because this project was originally supposed to be wind turbines, but objections to the siting of the turbine towers from the Navy forced the company to go solar, making lemonade out of lemons. With the exception of Pinnacle, the state has sort of forced the market for the other two businesses.

Yet on the other side was a law firm that objects to the approach the state is using to clean Chesapeake Bay through its Clean Chesapeake Coalition. They believe much of the problem comes from the sediment that leaches out from behind Conowingo Dam in severe storms.

I happen to think the CCC has a pretty good case.

Speaking of business, the food business did pretty well there. Almost too well.

According to my cell phone camera, which took all my photos today, I took that picture at 12:01 as I walked over to get in line for food. Here is the end result, 46 minutes and four lines later.

I actually asked for the onion rings as I inched closer to the front of the French fry line. And I certainly don’t fault the crew because they worked hard, even toward the end when I snapped this.

I think the issue is the increasing use of “runners” who get multiple orders of food and slow down the lines. It seemed like every third person in line was one, which meant those who just wanted to fend for themselves had to wait.

The guy who didn’t have to wait in line was Governor Larry Hogan, because I don’t think he ate a bite.

This is a second segment of time lapse. I took this photo above in the area where the food lines were at 1:57 p.m. Now, let me ask you: where’s Hogan?

He’s barely visible in the center of the photo, obscured by Delegate Charles Otto in the pinkish shirt. In 35 minutes he had advanced maybe 80 yards thanks to the crush of well-wishers who wanted to shake his hand, have a photo with him (although he suggested it in a number of cases) and perhaps say their piece. I was in the latter group as I wanted to thank him for his stance on the Presidential election. Larry commented that he had noticed the reception I’ve received on social media a couple times as it echoed a lot of what he had seen on his.

Stay strong, Governor.

The two major-party candidates for U.S. Senator were also there. Now I missed Democrat Chris Van Hollen – perhaps because I didn’t recognize him walking around – but I did get a glimpse of Kathy Szeliga from the GOP.

Of the people I saw and photographed, she was one of the few I didn’t speak to at least a little bit. I don’t blame her – our paths just didn’t cross but once.

Of course, a few locals managed to be in front of my camera, such as Delegate Mary Beth Carozza, who brought her family and a batch of others from Worcester County.

She was speaking to Duane Keenan from Red Maryland.

The other half of Worcester County must have come with Senator Jim Mathias, who had a number of folks with a matching shirt to his. He was a little peaked by the time I took the moment to thank him for his assistance with the school board election bill.

Yet while we had hot and cold running politicians there, we also had a lot of media asking questions. I noted Duane Keenan above, but here’s Ovetta Wiggins of the Washington Post (right) speaking to Jackie Wellfonder. Jackie made the cut in Ovetta’s story.

I also had the pleasure of meeting Mike Bradley, who hosts WGMD’s morning show out of Lewes, Delaware. Since his station covers a fair amount of the lower Shore in its signal, he was interviewing some of the local players. It’s a very good show that I catch once I cross into Delaware on my way to work.

And it could be that the Tawes event is becoming one for the greater Delmarva area. A delegation of elected officials from the First State included Representative Tim Dukes, who covers the Laurel and Delmar areas in his 40th District.

The reason I’m in the photo on the right: it was taken by Dukes’ fellow representative (and Minority Leader in the Delaware House) Danny Short of Seaford. Since we’re neighbors with Delaware it was nice to see some of their elected officials, too.

In that respect, this coverage was a little lacking because I did a lot of walking and talking to a number of nice folks from around the state. I want to say I overheard Jackie Wellfonder say this, but Tawes really is “like a big ‘ol family reunion.” We don’t often see a lot of politicians travel across the bridge but for attending Tawes, so you have to say hello and speak your piece when you can.

The 61% solution

A recent poll by the Washington Post brought gasps of surprise from Republicans – even in a state where registered Republicans are outnumbered by better than 2-to-1 by their Democratic counterparts, the people of Maryland approve of Larry Hogan’s performance by a margin of 61% to 22% disapproval. Since a similar poll taken shortly after Hogan took office, he has gained 19 points in the approval department by pulling in a large percentage of those who previously had no opinion and even whittling the disapproves from 24% to 22%.

All those are encouraging signs, particularly as the Post points out Hogan is nine points up on Martin O’Malley at a similar juncture and back in the territory Bob Ehrlich enjoyed early on.

Of course, the Democrats retort that a portion of the goodwill is based on Hogan’s ongoing treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, with his last round wrapping up. Hogan’s newly bald head is regularly featured on social media as a constant reminder of his treatment, something which he’s parlayed into a lot of good press coverage.

Insofar as policy goes, though, Hogan has gone pretty much down the center of the road. The incoming governor whose initial act of significance was to pull unpopular phosphorus regulations from being published in the Maryland Register ended up compromising on less stringent measures in order to avoid a veto fight over a legislative version of the O’Malley regulations. Days later, his first budget made some unpopular “cuts” (read: more modest increases in spending than the opposition was conditioned to expect) but still was larger than the previous year’s.

On the transportation front, Hogan pulled the Red Line in Baltimore but decided to keep the Purple Line in the suburbs of Washington provided the local governments paid more for it. He used the money saved from the Red Line to fund needed highway projects and also figured out a way to reduce the tolls in Maryland. Unfortunately, we still have the higher gas taxes passed by Martin O’Malley to pay for the Purple Line and planned Red Line.

In a number of ways, Hogan has achieved his level of popularity to working around the edges. The makeup of the General Assembly is such that Hogan had a number of bills that passed where he allowed them to become law without his signature. It was probably a political calculation of the likelihood of whether his veto would hold and if the hill was vital enough to die on politically. Both sides seemed to be feeling each other out in a cautious session – save the doomed effort to roll back the “rain tax,” Hogan’s legislative agenda had a focus on economic development that was to some extent left over from the O’Malley administration’s half-hearted attempts to address the state’s awful business climate.

The question for Maryland Republicans going forward is just how much conservatism they want to push. Those in the party who disapprove of Hogan generally fall into either or both of the two categories of wanting fewer gun restrictions or better leadership on social issues – naturally, the Democrats tried to use both as wedge issues against Hogan and failed.

Maybe a better way to frame this is to question whether the Republican caucus in the General Assembly will create its own legislative agenda for next year or just ride along with Hogan’s. One thing I have noticed over the years is that there are several legislators who introduce bills in the General Assembly but we don’t seem to have a platform we follow – it’s like every man for himself.

Perhaps next session the GOP should pick out eight to ten important, conservative bills and work like hell to get them passed, bypassing the committee if necessary. (For example, had they done that on the original “rain tax” bill, they could have forced a floor vote on sustaining it, putting Democrats on the record as favoring it.) They can even be repeal bills of O’Malley legislation – after all, if Hogan is rolling back O’Malley’s toll hikes and Red Line boondoggle, we should hope he will ditch items like the “septic bill” and PlanMaryland.

If you have 61% of the public behind you, it’s time to grab a bully pulpit and make needed change.

A ‘loophole’ is only bad if the government thinks it’s being stiffed

For what is being described as “financial stakes (that) are small, (yielding) just $3 million to $4 million annually.” the Washington Post sure has its collective panties in a wad over the prospect Larry Hogan may veto the “travel tax.”

When I did my last look at the idea, I didn’t really know how much the difference was to the state. Now that I know it’s only a rounding error in a $40 billion budget. the prospect of Democrats (and, sadly, a handful of Republicans) trying to fill in this supposed budget hole looks to me like a “gotcha” moment set up by General Assembly Democrats who will turn around and bash Hogan for enacting the “travel tax” in four years – after all, if they can perpetrate the fiction that school funding was cut this year (never mind the increase of over $100 million) they can make up anything to tell unsuspecting voters that the sky is falling.

But it’s really funny to me that the Post considers this a “travel agent loophole” and “undeserved windfall” when it’s actually a legal transaction. Even the Post admits it:

Rather than collect sales taxes from the agencies based on the actual prices they charge customers for hotel rooms, most states have accepted a reduced payment based on bargain room prices the agencies manage to negotiate with hotels.

That’s as it should be, so it sounds to me like General Assembly Democrats have some sour grapes. The transaction in question is at a reduced rate – why should the state collect the sales tax on the full rack rate if the place of lodging offers the rooms first to a reseller at a lower price? There is no gun being placed at the proverbial head of the hotel or motel to sell the rooms to an online travel agency; they can go it alone and try to market themselves without a middleman. (Hence, loyalty programs and other perks provided by hotels who prefer to keep bookings in-house.)

But it’s obvious that many hotel chains prefer the assurance of knowing they would get something – a “something” that is about 60 to 70 percent of full rate – for a room which will be paid for many times over before the paint dries on the renovation or new construction based on future reservations already on the books. Chances are your room rate is really paying for the employees who check you in and take care of the rooms moreso than the bricks, mortar, and furnishings in the facility, and that factor can be adjusted easily by management. (To use a local and somewhat extreme example, just drive through Ocean City in January and note how many hotels and motels shut down completely for the winter. No one is there to pay for the bricks and mortar, so no employees save a caretaker and maintenance are needed.) So even getting a reduced rate from a travel agency which reserves the rooms just in case isn’t a bad thing. It’s just a cause for complaint by a state which hasn’t completely given up the attitude that “what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine, too.”

Conversely, to use another traveler analogy, you won’t hear the Post (or any of their liberal allies) tut-tutting if gasoline prices go up and the state collects more sales tax as a result – no one there would consider that an “undeserved windfall” for the state. I’ll explain.

Should the per-gallon tab for gasoline go up another 50 cents (as it has over the course of the last few months, from about $2 locally to north of $2.50) the state will make up the $4 million “lost” by vetoing the “travel tax” in no time. A 50-cent per gallon increase, as we have already had, nets yet an extra half-penny to the state per gallon come July as an additional 1% gasoline sales tax increase takes effect then. Just based on that 50-cent gas price increase alone coupled with the 1% increase (to 3%) – hence, the half-penny – and assuming the state consumes 7 million gallons per day (probably still in the ballpark despite these old statistics), they will make an “extra” $4 million from what they could have anticipated receiving when 2015 dawned in less than two weeks.

Yet the Post will not throw a pity party for motorists – I guarantee it. Ignore their whining and leave the hotel room rate system be.

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.

Post poll appears to have mixed results

An initial survey from the Washington Post claims that Marylanders are willing to give Larry Hogan a chance. However, his job approval ratings wouldn’t be called stellar as Hogan rests at 42% in the poll – granted, he only has 24% disapproval so the ratio is quite good. If everyone were pressed to give an opinion, chances are Hogan would be in the low 60s for approval and that’s very positive.

One place in which the narrative needs to be shored up, though, is the perception that Maryland is cutting education spending. It may not be the increase those in the field desire to have, but in FY2016 Maryland will spend more on education than it did in FY2015. Numbers don’t lie, but people seem to be operating under the mistaken belief that cuts in education spending were actual reductions – in many cases it’s simply not true. “Cuts to education” is an easy message for Democrats to send, though. (Honestly, I’m not surprised the liberals in Maryland haven’t dubbed Hogan’s idea to cut income taxes for retired first responders as “tax cuts for the rich” given their generous pensions.)

I haven’t taken the time to dig into the Post poll but there are some factors I want to look for. One example is the geographic breakdown on results, since we also have the election results to look back at. One would suspect places which voted heavily for Hogan are willing to give a little more slack.

A question I don’t think was asked (but should have been in the wake of the Democrats’ reaction to Hogan’s State of the State address) would be the approval rating of the General Assembly. Mysteriously, we don’t hear a lot of talk about the need for bipartisanship and cooperation with the state’s chief executive right now – not that we heard much of it with Martin O’Malley, but the reason there was the lack of need for it as Democrats could easily ramrod through all of MOM’s agenda without a single Republican vote.

So let me dig into this poll and see what I find. It’s been a busy week for me and there’s not much sign of a letup. Good thing I added a second contributor.

The polling continues

On Saturday I pointed out the Gonzales Poll Larry Hogan has cited as proof he’s within striking distance in the governor’s race. The news wasn’t quite as good in a more recent Washington Post poll, but it wasn’t as bad as previous polls in that newspaper.

But again it’s a question of turnout, and the Post simply replicated the pattern of registered voters in the state. If Republicans come out to a greater extent than Democrats – many of whom aren’t excited about Brown – that cuts into the Brown lead. Considering the Post poll is of randomly selected adults, I suspect the turnout model they’re using favors Brown in the poll.

So instead of the 15 to 18 points Brown has led by in previous polls, this poll by itself drove the RCP average down from 15 to 12 points.

But the breakdown on issues is interesting. Remember, this is a sample that is probably slightly oversampling Democrats, but the key issue is taxes. Yet on a number of other issues the only ones which reflect closely the partisan breakdown are social issues and public education. It’s hard to believe that fully half prefer Brown on the issue of health care considering how he botched the state’s website, but others like gun laws, job creation, and illegal immigration lean Hogan’s way in comparison to the partisan breakdown of the sample.

Given the crosstabs, though, the best way for Hogan to cut into Brown’s lead is to chip away at the Democrats on the issues that he’s closest to moving ahead on. It’s absolutely essential for Larry to somehow get to about 25 percent of Democrats going his way, with this polling suggesting he’s at about 14 percent. If Democrats get the 62% turnout this poll suggests (with Republicans at 65% and unaffiliated at 48%) that’s the only way he can win.

Somehow the case has to be made to the low-information crowd that a third term of Martin O’Malley is too much for the state to bear. Those of us who have a lick of common sense already know this, but too many people must actually think a poor economy is a good thing.

Polls begin to make primary more clear

Depending on how you slice the data, the June 24 primary would be a Larry Hogan victory, with the only question being the margin.

The two major Maryland media outlets polled the race earlier this month, and a summary of the results had the same approximate order of Larry Hogan, David Craig, Charles Lollar, and Ron George. But it’s worth also pointing out that the sample size between polls conducted by the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun varied widely.

The Post‘s polling data split into two parts: registered voters and likely voters. And while Hogan had a statistically sizable lead among likely voters, it practically melted away among simply registered voters. Likely voters (with a previous Post poll in February as comparison):

  • Larry Hogan – 35% (up from 22%)
  • David Craig – 19% (up from 13%)
  • Charles Lollar – 13% (up from 6%)
  • Ron George – 5% (stayed in place)

Among them, Larry Hogan finally climbed ahead of Mr. Undecided, who’s now at 20%. Out of simply registered voters, though:

  • Larry Hogan – 23% (up from 17%)
  • David Craig – 18% (up from 13%)
  • Charles Lollar – 12% (up from 10%)
  • Ron George – 8% (up from 4%)

Mr. Undecided still leads there with 25%.

What this tells me is that, for anyone but Larry Hogan to win, the campaigns need to push their GOTV effort among supporters. The Post’s sample sizes are exceedingly small – 228 registered Republicans and just 110 likely ones – leading to very high margins of error of 7.5 and 11 points, respectively. And perhaps it’s not coincidental that both Post-endorsed candidates are leading their respective races.

You may also recall that awhile back Larry Hogan touted a poll where he trailed Anthony Brown by single-digits. Unfortunately, the Post did a projected Hogan vs. Brown matchup and it came out 51-33 Brown. It’s a counter-intuitive result when you look deeper into the poll’s questions to find that Democrats want the next governor to lead the state in a different direction from Martin O’Malley by a 58-34 margin. Yet they have given Anthony Brown a significant primary lead and would presumably back him in the general election.

A few days earlier, the Baltimore Sun came out with their poll, which also showed Larry Hogan out in front. They did a similar poll in February as well.

  • Larry Hogan – 27% (up from 13%)
  • David Craig – 12% (up from 7%)
  • Charles Lollar – 12% (up from 5%)
  • Ron George – 6% (stayed in place)

Again, Mr. Undecided was the clear winner with 37%, and in the Sun‘s case both polls are of likely voters with a much more significant sample size of about 500 voters – it makes the margin of error 4.4%. Except for Ron George, who basically had to disappear from the campaign trail while the General Assembly was in session, every one of the contenders essentially doubled their support in three-plus months.

If you take the most recent polls and combine them using the sample sizes, which gives higher weight to the larger Sun poll, you come up with these figures, which I also compare to a post I did in February:

  • Larry Hogan – 26.9% (14.4%)
  • David Craig – 14.5% (9.3%) (-12.4)
  • Charles Lollar – 12.0% (7.5%) (-14.9)
  • Ron George – 6.3% (5.1%) (-20.3)

If the undecideds fall along that line, the results would be:

  • Larry Hogan – 45.1%
  • David Craig – 24.3%
  • Charles Lollar – 20.1%
  • Ron George – 10.6%

I would say there’s a 50-50 chance that Hogan makes it to 50%, given that some who were thinking of voting for one of the bottom-tier candidates (particularly George) may decide to go with the guy leading the most-touted polls. Because Hogan’s already above the 40% mark I think that’s now a prospect, which may help the MDGOP rally behind Hogan as a nominee. Obviously that support wouldn’t be universal, but getting over 50% would be better than just a plurality for unity’s sake.

So it’s apparent that the message of “change,” no matter how vague and shallow – combined with a lot of money out of the candidate’s pocket and a dose of public financing – seems to appeal with Maryland Republicans who, at this juncture, believe Hogan is the best candidate. In order for second-place contender (based on poll average) David Craig to win, supporters of the Charles Lollar and Ron George campaigns would have to abandon that choice to throw their support behind Craig, and that’s a dubious prospect.

Hogan: Anthony Brown ‘intentionally misled thousands’

The burr underneath Martin O’Malley’s saddle must have stuck when the horses were changed because now Larry Hogan and Change Maryland is becoming an irritant to Anthony Brown. In the wake of Brown dodging and ducking the questions of interviewer Jayne Miller of WBAL-TV, Hogan added the following response under the Change Maryland banner:

The O’Malley-Brown Administration has been one of the biggest cheerleaders for the ACA and Lt. Governor Brown is responsible for implementing Maryland’s version of the law. Last night, Anthony Brown admitted that he knew many Marylanders could not keep their insurance despite promises to the contrary. By remaining silent, he intentionally misled thousands of mothers, fathers, and children who depend on health care insurance for the treatment they need.

As Lieutenant Governor, Anthony Brown has an obligation to serve the best interests of all Marylanders, which means being straightforward about the implementation of this new law. Despite all the promises from the O’Malley-Brown Administration that the state was ready for this roll out, the exchange has been plagued with one problem after another.

Marylanders deserve to know whether or not people are enrolling in the Health Benefit Exchange because ultimately, the success or failure of the program will have a direct impact on their own health insurance. Brown’s failures have given us zero confidence that the state even knows how many people have enrolled.

It’s time for Mr. Brown to come clean with Marylanders, take responsibility for the problems of the state exchange, and personally apologize for misleading the public. Regardless of how anyone feels about the new law, Anthony Brown obviously put partisan politics ahead of the people he was elected to represent. This falls 100% in his lap.

Change Maryland also pointed out a discrepancy in enrollment figures between state and federal reports, numbers which suggest the state may have exaggerated enrollment figures nearly fourfold; federal numbers show Maryland enrolled 1,284 in the first month Obamacare was active while the state claims 4,651. Meanwhile, 73,000 Marylanders were sent cancellation notices, including Sixth District Congressional candidate Dan Bongino, who posted his online. I went to public school, but even I can see that math makes the point that the Affordable Care Act is neither going to be affordable nor caring.

If you look at this through a political lens, however, two things jump out at you.

One is the presumption that Brown will be the Democratic nominee at this early stage, given his commanding poll edge. Granted, Anthony Brown is the one who is touting his healthcare record – particularly the more and more laughable claim that “independent studies show will reduce the number of uninsured in Maryland by 50%” – and running as a continuation of the “success” of the last seven long years. (Brown’s doublespeak extends to other areas of his healthcare record; according to him Maryland expanded Medicaid by “working with stakeholders and placing higher costs on tobacco products.” In English, this was the dollar-a-pack cigarette tax hike, which served as among the most regressive of O’Malley/Brown’s many tax hikes.)

Secondly, it’s a reiteration of a point which those on our side frequently make: have we seen this discrepancy covered in the Baltimore Sun or Washington Post? Looking at the Sun‘s main page today, we find instead the headline touting a 36% hike in enrollments – not a word about the Jayne Miller interview. The Post ignores the story altogether, but joyfully kicks the outgoing McDonnell administration in Virginia with a report on $575,000 in legal bills paid by the taxpayer, in a case where the billing is allowed by law. (Just wait until Terry McAuliffe takes office; he’ll make that $575,000 seem like pocket change.)

On the other hand, this allegation has received scant coverage beyond the original WBAL segment: a reprint of the press release here, a mention of the Jayne Miller interview as part of Maryland Reporter‘s state roundup yesterday, and now my piece. (Needless to say it was also linked on ChangeMaryland’s Facebook page with its 64,000 followers.) Even if this gets picked up by other local bloggers, talk radio, and such, it’s going to be an uphill fight to get the word out on anything like this.

Working twice as hard to accomplish half as much seems to be the norm for us when it comes to media. But I think we’re improving, and can do even better once we convince the campaigns to stay on message.

The life of a blogger

This came in my e-mail the other day and I found it both amusing and enlightening.

Hi Michael,

My name is (redacted) and I am a marketing associate at (a marketing firm). Congrats on being named one of The Fix’s top state political blogs!

We are offering our smart polling widget for your website that comes with free basic analytics. Every week we will send you a report of topline and summary data to create more detailed audience profiles and build a stronger online community.

I was wondering if you had time to talk next Tuesday? I would love to run through our product and how it would be tailored for you.

Thanks,

(redacted)

(Emphasis mine.)

As a matter of fact, I really don’t have time to talk next Tuesday because I’m hustling to make a living. Blogging is great practice for my second career but I have to pursue career number three because it actually pays me. (Career number one went by the wayside thanks to the demise of the local building industry.)

And you can tell I don’t pay attention to the Washington Post, because I had no idea I was on that list. But I am since I was placed on their “extended edition” in March – thanks to whoever nominated me, it’s an honor! My erstwhile associates at Red Maryland have bragged on this for a couple years, so now I can too.

Meanwhile, there’s the aspect of pop-up polls. I don’t know about you, but I ignore them and don’t really want them cluttering up my site. Not sure how annoying pop-ups will build my audience; I choose to do that with good content.

I also get these appeals on a semi-regular basis; this one came last week:

I am looking to do one-way link building with desgin (sic) and technology sites. We thought you might be interested in this since your site (monoblogue.us) is in this category.

One way links are like this: SITE A -> monoblogue.us -> SITE B

I will link to monoblogue.us from my PR6 SITE A and you link to my SITE B from monoblogue.us in return. As your monoblogue.us is PR4, a link from a PR6 site will improve your pagerank as well as search engine ranking a lot. And both of our sites are in similar category, this brings extra value to both of our audience.

I had some great partners in United States|us and I hope you could be part of this program.

If you are interested or have any questions, please reply to this message for details.

Here is your reply, for the whole world to see.

I do links for one of four reasons: they are paying advertisers like the ones in my far-right sidebar, worthwhile causes like Troopathon, or they are in a story to either advance the narrative by bringing the source of the information to light or by adding context. I link to my own work a lot of the time, but will often link to other blogs or news sources when I use their information to make my arguments. Lastly, I keep a broad list of sites I link to as a show of support for their journalism, something I have done pretty much since day one.

I have been told by those who know a little something about SEO that I am a “natural” PR4; in other words, I didn’t use SEO tricks to build up my rank but its relevance has come over time as people read it and link to my site as a source of information. Just picking random national links off my site, I found American Thinker is a PR5, Legal Insurrection is a PR6, Right Turn (part of the Washington Post) is a PR7, and Twitchy is a PR7. As for state and local peers – such as the ones listed along with me on the WaPo list – Maryland Juice is a PR5, Maryland Reporter is a PR5, and Center Maryland is a PR4. In one year, my cohort Jackie Wellfonder has built up her Raging Against the Rhetoric site to a PR4 as well. (All of these are also linked in my sidebar.)

So without really trying, each of those sources got to their ranking naturally, not by artificially linking back and forth to sites specifically created just to pump up SEO status in a never-ending cycle of linkage, but not adding to the information available to readers.

At some point, the wheat becomes separated from the chaff. I know Google occasionally changes its algorithm in an attempt to clean out these junk SEO sites and attempt to put legitimate sites at the top of the search engines. But I don’t worry about that, since my audience has generally been built up by word of mouth and social media. The extent of my advertising is business cards I occasionally print at home.

Now if you want to consider this a “bleg,” well, I’m always looking for new advertisers (with recently trimmed rates) and don’t mind checks in the mail or deposits to my PayPal account. But I really wanted to get that off my chest because this isn’t as easy as it looks and there are always people out there who want to take advantage of me and try to screw up my formula for success.

I’ve earned everything I’ve achieved here, and the plan is to keep earning it as long as I feasibly can.

WaPo push poll: Maryland favors gun control

The headline screamedWashington Post poll finds support for stricter gun laws in Maryland.” And if you glanced at a poll put out last week by the venerable leftist paper, you might be led to believe our state is home to a bunch of idiots. Well, it is, but somehow it seems the Post found several hundred who answered the phone the weekend before last.

It’s obvious the poll isn’t aimed at the Post readership because they reliably tilt to the left – if you’re a conservative in the Beltway area you probably pick up the Washington Times.  Instead, I think it was aimed at a small group of politicians: Democrats in the House of Delegates who may balk at passing this legislation. Yet they really have nothing to fear, given that the poll was taken from a random sampling of adults in Maryland, mainly on a weekend.

I also found the second question to be a loaded one, as three separate items were tucked into one question very similar to the previous one. Even among Second Amendment enthusiasts, most would agree that a background check is a good idea and that question scored 82 percent in the Post poll. Knowing that, it shouldn’t be a surprise that when background checks are included in the palette of options for the very next question, the answer would be yes. I doubt that nearly as many Marylanders would agree to fingerprints or an eight-hour training course. And it’s not lost on me that the financial cost of O’Malley’s plan to individual gun owners was left on the cutting room floor as a question to be asked.

Personally, I would trust the thousands who attempted to testify against making Maryland’s already-stringent gun laws even more draconian and safely own and handle guns over people who aren’t even gun owners – less than three out of ten who responded to the Post poll were willing to admit they owned a weapon. I daresay they didn’t call a whole lot of NRA members then.

Ignore gun owners at your peril, Maryland General Assembly.

I think this is a good time to remind you about yesterday’s post on the Annapolis bus trip slated for tomorrow.