A secondary election day

I always thought it was the Tuesday after the first Monday, but today was quite the election day on three different fronts.

One election I participated in was a straw poll held at the MDGOP Fall Convention over the weekend, with the results tabulated and announced today. (My analysis comes after the jump.)

The results weren’t all that surprising to me, given the makeup of our state Central Committees:

  1. Mitt Romney – 26%
  2. Newt Gingrich – 20%
  3. Herman Cain – 20%
  4. Ron Paul – 19%
  5. Michele Bachmann – 5%
  6. Rick Perry – 5%
  7. Jon Huntsman – 4%
  8. Gary Johnson – 1%

I don’t think anyone else was on that ballot, so they ignored some of the lesser lights like Rick Santorum or Buddy Roemer.

They also did a U.S. Senate poll:

  1. Dan Bongino – 56%
  2. Rich Douglas – 22%
  3. Robert Broadus – 16%

The other 6 percent were split between various other candidates on the ballot, including 2 percent who pined for Eric Wargotz to change his mind. I’m going to guess there were probably 150 to 200 votes total, since it was only the Central Committee members who had ballots in their convention packages.

In looking at the poll and knowing pretty well the group which responded, it’s not too surprising that we are fairly close to national results. Mitt Romney got his usual 1/4 of the vote, which doesn’t seem to increase no matter how much the establishment wishes it would. Newt Gingrich is beginning to take over as “flavor of the month” since the character assassination of Herman Cain is having its desired effect. And that’s okay with the establishment as well because we’re two decades removed from Newt’s bomb-throwing days as a House backbencher. Meanwhile, Ron Paul always does pretty well in straw polls so being fourth isn’t a big shock.

Between the top four, we’ve covered 85 percent of the vote, which leaves Bachmann, Perry, Huntsman, and Johnson to split a few crumbs. I’ve never gotten the sense that Perry was all that popular here, even when he was polling well nationally, so five percent seems about right.

On the other hand, I think the race in the U.S. Senate is still too young to put a lot of stock into these results. Having said that, though, I’m frankly shocked Robert Broadus got 16 percent given that he has little in the way of money. Certainly Robert is a passionate and articulate defender of the Constitution, but the trick for him will be getting his message out. He was at the convention as part of the Protect Marriage Maryland booth set up so he had a good opportunity to interact with a number of attendees and he must have impressed a few.

In an election where I helped to serve as a primary voter of sorts, it wasn’t close. Local business owner John Hall was unanimously selected to be the new District 4 County Councilman, defeating a field of three other candidates whose names were forwarded by the Republican Central Committee to replace the late Bob Caldwell. Hall will now serve out the remainder of Caldwell’s term once he assumes office December 6.

According to one published report, the reason Hall was picked was his lengthy business experience. WMDT-TV reporter Alyana Gomez quoted County Council President Gail Bartkovich as saying, “The council members thought that he would be a tremendous benefit in this economy particularly, when we start going through the budget and looking at how the county taxpayers’ dollars are spent.”

But the only election open to the public was the one in the town of Delmar, where Carl Anderton was elected mayor overwhelmingly with nearly 75 percent of the vote going his way. Meanwhile, Michael Gibb and Mary Stephanie Ring picked up 56 percent of the vote between them to win the two Commission seats.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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