Diana Waterman – Page 5

Ten Question Tuesday – April 2, 2013

The other day I had the chance to chat with a fixture of the pro-liberty movement, Andrew Langer. He’s probably best known locally as an activist and internet radio personality, but he also serves as president of the Institute for Liberty. We touched on a lot of these subjects during a fairly lengthy, in-depth conversation.

**********

monoblogue: Let me get my readers up to speed here. You’ve actually been on my blog a few times in various capacities, I’ve noticed that your name has come up quite a few times. But, really the first time I really got to talk to you a great deal was when the TEA Party all got started.

Langer: Sure.

monoblogue: Now, the question I have – and I know you were there at the beginning – you’re actually the president of Institute for Liberty, which was actually around before the TEA Party…

Langer: Yes.

monoblogue: …but was kind of carried along with the TEA Party, but where do you think, in the four years or so the TEA Party has been in existence, where do you think it’s gone and where do you think it’s going to go. Is it dead like some people say?

Langer: Well, no, I mean insofar as the – the movement existed before the TEA Party, and will continue to exist after the TEA Party. Movements are always changing fundamentally; that’s the nature of them. They go a certain distance, and then they stop, and they transform, that’s what happens. So, before the TEA Party movement was the Don’t Go movement, you had the property rights movement, you had the various taxpayers’ movements that have been out there…the TEA Party movement has just been an outpouring of discontent in which things got jelled together very, very easily and lots of different factors came together.

What killed the TEA Party brand was the media itself, which never really understood what the movement was. It never fit into any of their particular boxes, and what the media doesn’t understand the media will work to destroy – especially if that thing they don’t understand is actively working against the things they have advocated for in the past.

So it’s a brand that has been damaged, but the movement goes on – and the movement, as all movements change as I said – different parts of it will focus on different things. (Part of it) will continue to focus on health care and health care reform. You have folks who focus on electoral issues and will continue to focus on electoral issues; a lot of them will focus on state and local races, some focused on Congressional races, some focused on Presidential races.

A lot of – and probably the most positive thing to come out of the movement – was the proliferation of new media, and the raising of the blogosphere as a legitimate force to be reckoned with. That’s certainly going to continue to go on, and obviously there’s been a certain degree of institutionalization of that in things like the Franklin Center and the various Watchdog Wires, and that cannot help but be a good thing.

Between that and the re-connection of people with their government, there is no going back from that, and that’s why, while the movement itself may not be the same thing as it was before, the forces that were at work will continue to be forces that are at work.

monoblogue: Let me back up one second here. You’re President of the Institute for Liberty, and I guess – I guess it would be good to explain what their role is insofar as the entire movement.

Langer: Sure. Well, I mean, and keep in mind I inherited the Institute for Liberty from a friend of mine who has gone off and become a successful author. IFL had been focused on a lot of defense and tech issues – and we still do a little bit of each – we are a nonprofit advocacy organization, which means that we take issues and we advocate on behalf of a particular side from a free-market, limited government perspective.

As it happens, I’ve got a background in mass movement organization. That’s something that I’ve spent a lot of time studying, something that I’ve had some efforts in growing up, and so when the TEA Party movement itself began to form I found I had an expertise that I could lend to that movement, both in themes, organizational structures, and merely offering, as I saw, logistics – you know, how do you organize a rally? What are the elements of a rally? What goes into putting something together? And so, for me, the Institute for Liberty never had the resources of a FreedomWorks or Americans for Prosperity – we didn’t sort of jump on the moniker in a way that TEA Party Patriots or TEA Party Express were able to, but what we could offer was logistical advice and support to people.

In the very real sense in D.C. where we organized – we were part of the first TEA Party rally in February of ’09, to organizing the D.C. Taxpayer TEA Party, to offering our resources for the 9/12 D.C. march…

monoblogue: Which I was at.

Langer: What?

monoblogue: I was there. I was at 9/12.

Langer: Yeah, and I spoke, and it was great. And then at the state level offering up advice to various TEA Party events and also speaking at various TEA Party events in the state, so – it’s one of those things where for us, it’s never been about credit, it’s never been about glory, it’s never about making us center stage. When the Annapolis TEA Party was being put together, we were there at the start, sort of offering up our advice, but it was very clear that guys like Aaron Jones and his brother, they were wanting to head it up and they were wanting to put it together. We’re not interested in turf fights so we said whatever you need from the Institute for Liberty that we can give to you to help you put this together, we’ll do that. Whether it was financial support, or whether it was saying, hey, you need to get these permits or you need to get that, here’s how you want to do a press release, or here’s how you ought to put together the program…but beyond that, we were not folks who needed to be at the top of anyone’s list – that’s just not what we’re about. So we were happy to act in a supporting capacity.

monoblogue: That’s all right; the movement needs that, too. But another thing…

Langer: Michael, let me just say – and this is very, very key – I’m a firm believer in the philosophy that’s it not all about me, and it’s not all about IFL. And I think we need more folks to recognize that it’s not about their own personal glory, this is about getting stuff done and making change. And making change means making not about you.

monoblogue: I was going to ask about something else, but the way you answered that question, I’m going to slide into something else here…

Langer: Sure.

monoblogue: …about the Maryland Republican Party. (laughs) And the game of personalities we seem to have in that party right now.

Langer: Yeah.

monoblogue: I know you had considered running for the (party Chair) post and you had to back out.

Langer: Yes.

monoblogue: Because of…

Langer: Well, I mean, I make no secret about this, it’s one of those things where I almost ran in ’10, and had actually come very close to pulling the trigger. But at that point it was simply one of my donors said that they couldn’t fund IFL, and one of the great problems with the MDGOP Chairman’s position is that it’s an unpaid, full-time volunteer job – and it really would be the equivalent of a full-time job. And with two kids at home – my wife and I have a very equal partnership in child care – I couldn’t take on a full-time volunteer gig and sacrifice the Institute for Liberty at that point; it just couldn’t happen.

In ’12 the circumstances had changed somewhat. But the real problem is that my wife is an active-duty officer in the Air Force and either there’s a strong likelihood we will get transferred this year, and if we don’t get transferred this year there is 100% certainty that we will be transferred by July of 2014. I am not someone who takes on a job like chairman of the Maryland Republican Party without setting some clear goals and working toward those goals – I certainly couldn’t complete any of those goals in the next five months and there was great question in my mind whether I could complete my goals to my satisfaction in seventeen months and at that point we’d be back where we were before.

monoblogue: With an election to run.

Langer: Which is essentially the chaos of a party chairman’s race in which people confuse criticism with infighting, and all the things that go on with that. I’m not talking about the certain specifics of this race right now, but the reasons why I didn’t run are those very clearly. I’m someone who is incredibly optimistic about the Maryland Republican Party; I do not think that all hope is lost. With the amount of disarray and infighting that we have in our state party – I have seen disarray and infighting in other state parties as well, so Maryland is unfortunately not unique, but certainly there are challenges. And as if there are people who are – who want to work toward overcoming those challenges and there are people who are actively working against overcoming those challenges, and there are people who don’t know how to overcome those challenges. But those challenges can be overcome.

I think it starts with that proposition that the Chairman’s job is too big for one person to do, and anybody who thinks that it is a job that can be done by one person – they are either deluding themselves or they’re simply not capable of handling the job.

monoblogue: Well then that actually brings up a little bit of a different question – this will be more effective in a couple years when we select all new officers – should they run as a slate? Should we have a – instead of doing separate elections for each of the (Vice-) Chairs, would it be better to have a particular slate go up and vote for an entire slate rather…

Langer; No, I firmly believe in the freedom of choice, I believe in building coalitions, in the fact that people ought to try to work together. I think part and parcel of that is having individual elections for the different officers. I do, however, believe that more people ought to be involved in the running of the state party. I do believe that we ought to – we might ought to consider looking at – especially if the state party is going to continue to run with having the Chair being an unpaid volunteer position. I think we ought to consider dividing up that Chair’s responsibilities, maybe among co-chairs, I think there ought to be – and this is a conversation that I’ve had with Greg Kline – is that there ought to be more people involved in that operation. Certainly I think if more folks stepped up and were willing to take on more of the chairman’s responsibilities and work with the chairman to take on those responsibilities, I think that you would find more people willing to run for Chair.

A group of my friends and colleagues, we talked to a lot of folks about running for Chair, about who was going to run for Chair, who might run for chair? And by and large, the number one complaint that people has was it is too big of a job for one person to do as a volunteer gig only. In the near term the state party simply does not have the resources to pay someone to be Chairman, especially if they pay an Executive Director, and they shouldn’t. But the point is, so long as it is this haunting huge responsibility for one person, unpaid, the more discouraging it becomes for somebody to run for Chair. Good, qualified people to run for Chair.

And so I had pledged to Greg (Kline) that if he ran I would help him for as long as I could and as much as I could, as long as I’m in Maryland and probably after I leave Maryland I’ll still continue to help Greg because I have every intention of returning to Maryland down the road. Other folks around Greg have pledged to help him and to make sure that his chairmanship is a success. It’s not just voting for Greg, but voting for folks around Greg who are good people and who want to work – and there are a lot of folks who sort of stepped up there and said, yeah, I’ll help out.

It gets to another of my big themes of this Chairman’s race, which is inclusivity vs. exclusivity. And this idea that, in order to build a party, you need to be solicitous of outside opinion and outside help. One of my great criticisms of Diana Waterman – and this is a criticism, it’s not a knock on Diana Waterman’s personality, I think Diana Waterman is a lovely person, she’s a pleasant person. She is someone who avails herself of opportunities to get active. But I will not say that Diana Waterman is someone who’s incredibly solicitous of inclusivity. Case in point is the job that she’s handled, she has demonstrated a record of someone who has not been someone to bring people into the office to work, or bring people into an organization to work. Diana steps in, and she becomes chairman of something, and people are shut out of the process.

You can talk to folks about the Eastern Shore Republican Alliance, which Diana stepped in there and became Chair, and she had a few folks around her who were regional vice-chairs, and the operation went nowhere quickly because it became bureaucracy. It became another thing for Diana Waterman to become chairman of, and it was very clear that she didn’t want any outside help, and that doesn’t build the party.

monoblogue: But it built her resume.

Langer: Well, it built her resume. And that is something I’ve also talked about, which is an issue of confusing promotion with accomplishment. Which I think is something fundamental – confusing the resume with competence. This gets into the two things that happened last week, which calls into question, and I’ve said this before – anyway, I’m getting too far afield here.

It’s this issue of inclusivity, and I’ll give you a prime example: folks who believe this Chairman’s race is only of interest to Central Committee members, and I’ve heard this from a few people that only Central Committee members ought to be briefed as to what’s going on with the state party and why the Chairman’s race is important. That sends a message to your rank-and-file Republicans, who elect Central Committee members, that their opinions are not needed, that they have no place in advocating who should be Chairman because they’re not Central Committee members, they haven’t been involved to the degree that Central Committee members are. That’s fundamentally the wrong message.

Not only is the Chairman’s race of import to every Republican in Maryland who is trying to vote to bring a different vision of government to the state of Maryland, but it’s important on a national scale, too. Because the Chairman, and what the Chairman can do, has an impact on this rules fight that is going on and is going to happen in the next couple of weeks as the RNC Rules Committee meets. And as you can see by what happened (two weeks ago), the Chairman has an incredible amount of influence as to what happens at that Rules Committee, either by appointing someone who is dedicated to undoing the damage that happened in Tampa over the summer, or by someone who is by all accounts part and parcel of the damage that happened over the summer.

monoblogue: Well, let me – I will say this: in refuting the idea that the race is just of interest to Central Committee members, my readership has just surged as this whole thing has developed. A lot more people come to my website to read about the situation than the 300 Central Committee people.

I am curious about one other thing – this is where I’m going to wrap up. The Red Maryland network and the radio show that you did, how did that all come together? I’ve been kind of curious how that all started.

Langer: I had been wanting to do a podcast for awhile – I experimented with a podcast through a thing called HipCast because a buddy of mine, Phil Kerpen, had said something about doing a HipCast, you could do it by phone. But I didn’t like the audio quality there. And so at CPAC in 2011 I launched LibertyLine, which was an actual semi-slick podcast where I was upping the production values, I got a good microphone, I was doing interviews by phone – and remember, Mark Newgent was, at the time, a neighbor of mine. So Mark came in and sat in with me a couple of times.

(Meanwhile) Greg (Kline) and Brian (Griffiths) had done their Red Maryland show by BlogTalk, and they decided they were going to do – they wanted to create an actual network and they apparently talked to Mark and Mark said, hey neighbor, I know you’re doing this, would you like to instead do a weekly show with me instead of, you’re doing your thing one interview or two interviews three times a week why don’t you change schedules and come on and do this with me? And so that’s how it was born.

Greg and I started doing it, and then he and I started shopping it around – we both had contacts up at (W)BAL, so we’d done some fill-in work on BAL’s ‘1090 At Night’, you know, made inroads to the Mike O’Meara Show, helping out, doing some stuff with those guys – so that’s how it is. Greg and Brian wanted to develop an actual sort of podcast political network, understanding how the whole industry is changing, and that’s what they did. They’ve got programming five out of seven nights now.

monoblogue: Yeah, I really think that’s interesting – now I am not a person that does a lot of radio per se, but I can tell you from just checking around that it’s almost like people are getting into multimedia moreso – I mean I started my blog in 2005 and nobody had ever heard of blogging, let alone internet radio. Now you have people that do video, radio – we’re our own little subculture of media here, and it’s kind of interesting to see where it’s going to go in the future.

Langer: Well, this is what I’m saying – this is one of the great things that’s come out of the TEA Party movement. It is that there’s this proliferation of new media – Mark and I, when we were together before Mark moved back to the Western Shore, when he and I would do our show weekly we would do a radio component and a video component. We would get set up over here because Mark’s house was chaos at night and mine was a little more subdued, and so all the folks that broadcast together on the Red Maryland network, they do a video component so they’re on both BlogTalkRadio and UStream, you could watch or listen. It’s a little bit harder now that Mark and I aren’t in the same place, although I’d like to do that – there’s something that’s lost when we’re not able to give each other visual cues about things, but that’s the nature – the nature of media in the future is going to be narrowcasting, which means you go to a subset of the population, so for us it’s Marylanders and conservative Marylanders that we’ve been wanting to branch out a little bit into a little more pop culture so we can bring in a wider audience, and it is all on demand.

So one of the big debates that we have at Red Maryland radio is BlogTalkRadio the platform to use, is live radio – see, for me, live broadcast is overrated because the bulk of our listenership comes from the downloads. I look at podcasts like the Mike O’Meara Show – I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but Mike was on the radio for almost 25 years. They moved to a podcast format – they get maybe 150-200 listeners who listen or watch live on their live feed, but they get 35,000 downloads a day, because folks like to be able to pick and choose when they will listen to their podcasts. That’s the nature of the future.

And so that is another area where I think Greg has a much superior track record is this embracing of the new media, is this embracing of the blogosphere, in a way that the party simply, for whatever reason, has not done so – not only because they just don’t get it, but also because they confuse criticism with disloyalty. I think Greg knows in the end that some of his biggest critics are going to be his “buddies” at Red Maryland. And we know that guys like Joe Steffen are going to ream him a new one. I don’t think he minds it so much, I think he recognizes – he’s adult enough to recognize that there comes a time when you have to be open to criticism. That maybe one of the other big barriers this party has faced. Dissent is inherently patriotic, and certainly in Maryland it’s a cherished right.

monoblogue: (laughs) Yeah…

Langer: Folks who lead the party have to be more adult about that criticism, and recognize it’s going to come with the territory. And if you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target.

monoblogue: There you go. I mean, I… (laughs) I’m sitting here chuckling because I’m kind of the rabblerouser on that front for several years.

Langer: Yeah!

monoblogue: I know just how – my blog and my political career on the Central Committee started almost the same time, so (laughs) they’re well aware…

Langer: For me, it’s one of those things where I had to step down from my Central Committee for my mental health. I was in a situation in which I had four people on my Central Committee who, if I said the sky was blue, they would swear the sky was pink.

It’s one of those things where at some point you have to make that calculus “is my time going to be better spent doing other things?” For me, it’s my show, obviously, with Mark, and the stuff I do with IFL.

But this Chairman’s race is of import, which is why I’ve gotten involved, and why Greg has my support. I make no bones about that fact.

monoblogue: Well, we appreciate it. That’s going to be a lot to write about.

**********

Indeed it was, as I spent part of my Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday evening transcribing this lengthy interview. Maybe I should look into a podcast.

But I thank Andrew for his time, and look forward to speaking with next week’s guest.

The cause and effect syndrome

Today I have two items which may not seem to be necessarily related, but in my mind make perfect sense as a cause and (future) effect. Let me start with that proverbial itch in Martin O’Malley’s back that he just can’t reach to scratch, Larry Hogan and Change Maryland:

Two outcomes of the Governor’s legislative agenda is (sic) to make gasoline and electricity more expensive. We have now seen 36 consecutive tax, fee and toll increases that will remove $3.1 billion out of the pockets of struggling Marylander’s per year, with these motor fuel taxes and the additional fees required of utility customers to support offshore wind.

Instead of developing a coherent transportation policy, our top elected officials took the easy way out by adding yet more of a tax burden to a state that has faced so many in recent years. They choreographed the proposal’s original announcement, committee hearings and final votes to take place on late Fridays and in the evenings to avoid news coverage in the waning days of this legislative session. This speaks volumes about just how unpopular more taxes are, and this may push Maryland to the tipping point. Taxpayers have finally had enough.

The second piece of the puzzle comes from interim state GOP head Diana Waterman:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Maryland’s unemployment rate has almost doubled since Martin O’Malley became Governor. The Democrats in Annapolis have slowed economic growth by raising taxes over $1,500 per family with more on the way.

Maryland’s budgets have increased nearly 25% from $28.8 billion in 2007 to $36.8 billion in 2014. The Democrats say they are focused on “jobs” but they have not done a single thing to make Maryland more friendly to job creators. That’s why 6,500 small businesses have left our state and there are 8 fewer Fortune 500 Companies located within our borders. It is time for a change in Annapolis so we can get Maryland’s economy moving again!

I’ll set aside my thought that it was Change Maryland which trumpeted the 6,500 figure for lost businesses and concentrate more squarely on a more important theory: more than most other states, Maryland is held captive by a tyranny of the majority.

There are two classes of people who, in varying degrees, are either not affected by or prosper from a larger, more all-consuming government.

One is Maryland’s poor, which tend to congregate in the Democratic stronghold of Baltimore City but can be found in small enclaves all around the state. Billions of dollars’ worth of wealth has been transferred via the state coffers from the producers to the dependent, and although this gasoline tax will affect them adversely to some degree (as may the farebox increases for mass transit), on balance the tax hikes will be to their benefit once the money is transferred over to the General Fund. If you truly believe the majority party isn’t going to participate in this plunder – even with the laughably weak “lockbox” provision included in the gas tax legislation – you probably also believe that offshore wind is cheap and abundant energy.

The second group is all those people who actually work for the government, whether federal or state. Because of them, Maryland is one of the more prosperous states in the nation and by outward appearance she has weathered the recessionary storm better than practically anyone else. But that Potemkin village of prosperity only seems to extend to the outside of the Beltway and along portions of the I-95 corridor where enough voters live that they can combine with the group of poor voters I outlined above and run the remainder of the state into the dust. If you’re living fat and happy off the federal government, it’s really not going to matter all that much if you pay a buck or two more to fill up your Volvo; moreover, chances are that in your cocoon you won’t stop and think about how this will affect all the others who have to also pay this new freight.

But there’s the rest of us out here. And even if you’re one of those thinkers who is aware enough of what’s really going on but happen to live among the groups who prosper from the misery of the rest of us, you’re forced to take it in the shorts once again.

There is a day of reckoning that is coming. No, it’s not Election Day 2014, for even if we motivated all the Republicans and thoughtful independents in Maryland to come out to the polls, and even if we can get to what my latest interviewee Bill Campbell alluded – to “control the trajectory that Maryland is going to have economically” by electing a conservative governor and comptroller – we still would have to fight this battle on the federal level with a President who seems determined to ruin this country’s economy and perhaps with a Supreme Court willing to throw aside the words of the Founding Fathers as expressed in the plain language of the Constitution for their vision of a nation which is more “fair.”

Instead, that day comes when, proverbially, Atlas makes the decision to shrug. There’s a new study from the Mercatus Center detailing freedom in the 50 states, and one conclusion they drew was:

The more a state denies people their freedoms, increases their taxes or passes laws that make it hard for businesses to hire and fire, the more likely they are to leave.

Indeed, this is true. But what happens when there’s nowhere else to go?

As a state, Maryland may be the canary in the coal mine. But in the longer-term, we as a nation have a lot of work to do just to simply get pointed in the right direction – let alone reverse course. I know it’s a generational struggle and the other side isn’t going down without a fight.

There has to be an uprising of some sort. Note well that guns do not necessarily have to be involved, for the uprising could also be spiritual in nature, or it could even take form as a restoration of the honesty and work ethic for which Americans used to be known. At one time most of us were too proud to take “relief” but now the (so-called) “independence card” is viewed as an entitlement, if not a badge of honor which has been “earned.”

Whatever the case may be, the time between now and that day is getting shorter, and things are changing at an accelerated pace. Let us use the principles many of us share and the technology we have in this era to better things just as our forefathers did almost a quarter of a millennium ago. Remember, if a rising tide lifts all boats, a falling tide means some will run into the rocks they never saw.

Waterman: Pope will be on RNC Rules Committee

In a move that’s truly not surprising, an e-mail was sent by interim Maryland Republican Chair Diana Waterman to Central Committee members regarding her appointment to the RNC Rules Committee. With the understanding that this can be changed at any time, the RNC validated the Pope appointment yesterday:

I have now heard from all three of you indicating that there are two votes for Louis Pope and one vote for Nicolee Ambrose. Therefore, Louis Pope is the representative of Maryland on the Rules Committee.

In answer to Ms. Ambrose’ questions below:

1. Yes, we are ruling that a state may re-caucus.

2. Yes, that means Maryland could re-caucus at a later time.

This is the text of what Diana sent to Central Committee members:

I wanted to share an update on the situation I wrote to you about concerning the RNC Standing Rules Committee. While those who are issuing their criticisms may continue, the fact is, as confirmed by the RNC, that the committee membership was not considered set or seated until after the March 1st deadline and even beyond that deadline a state’s RNC representatives may caucus and nominate a new member. I am attaching an email issued today by the RNC that clearly states there was no procedural issue with Louis Pope’s re-appointment. We caucused Thursday by email to clarify the nomination of Louis Pope to remain on the Rules Committee.

You have an important decision to make on April 20th. Electing a chairman should be about choosing the person that you feel is best qualified in all aspects of leading the Party. If you believe that the decision on who goes to the rules committee is your number one priority, then you should vote accordingly. If you believe that we need to build our party from the ground up, recruit and train candidates for all offices in all districts, grow the farm team, and expand our donor base to raise much needed funds to provide the resources and tools for our candidates, I ask that you vote for me. I may not always agree with you, but I will always listen and let you know where I stand. Working together is the only way we will make our party a force to be reckoned with.

Of course, these goals aren’t as mutually exclusive as Waterman would make them out to be, and her decision means the same Republican party which has done its best to maintain its part in the Beltway political establishment will continue to get support from Maryland.

Yet those same Ambrose supporters who Waterman dismisses also will most likely be the ones who “build the party from the ground up, recruit and train candidates for all offices in all districts, grow the farm team, and expand our donor base.” Unfortunately, they are the ones turned off by the continual capitulation of national Republicans to the liberal agenda and who feel last summer’s rule changes were symptomatic of a party which no longer seems to care about its grassroots.

Nor would this have come up if the Rules Committee change hadn’t been the first major decision Waterman made as Chair – the ink hadn’t even dried on Alex Mooney’s letter of resignation and here she was changing the appointment. Yes, it was within her right to do so as the head of the party – even if that role is only for 60 days – but the speed in which this was done seems to indicate somebody who is a influential member of the state party got into Diana’s ear really quickly. My money is on Audrey Scott.

Needless to say, opponent Greg Kline wasted little time putting out his response:

As you have seen with the release today from Interim State Party Chairman Diana Waterman, Louis Pope has formally replaced Nicolee Ambrose as Maryland’s representative on the RNC Rules Committee. In Mrs. Waterman’s own words, she notes that she chose to replace Ms. Ambrose with Mr. Pope on February 28th after Ms. Ambrose’s letter of appointment had been received by the RNC on February 19th.

This decision and the subsequent explanation from Mrs. Waterman once again goes to show that the Interim Chair lacks the temperament to lead the party through the difficult challenges we face. It once again goes to show the extraordinary need for transformational leadership that works not to divide the party, but to bring the party together. And as my first act as Chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, I will reappoint Nicolee Ambrose as Maryland’s Representative on the RNC Rules Committee.

As chairman, I would bring a style of leadership that is more inclusive and more transparent to our state party and advocate for such leadership on the national level. As chairman, I would also view criticism as an opportunity to improve and to dialogue and not react to it as a personal attack.

I ask for your support to lead all of our party.

Yet one can ask whether the shoe would simply be on the other foot if Kline wins. I seem to recall the establishment party got a little upset when Jim Pelura wouldn’t act as they wanted him to, and wallets were snapped shut all over the state. Of course, when fundraising dried up the Executive Committee had yet another excuse to hound a good man out of office, and I fear the same may happen with Kline unless a lot of new donors step up to the plate. The party has its share of rainmakers who have helped to carry it in the past, but new sources of income may need to be found.

If it were up to Baltimore County Central Committee member Eugene Craig III, though, Diana would be ousted from the Executive Committee entirely. In reaction to the Ambrose incident, he has circulated an e-mail threatening a removal vote at the party convention; one which accuses Waterman of “one of the most disgraceful actions you can take to limit the influence of true grass roots activist” by replacing Ambrose. Craig goes on to say that “your loyalty does not lie with the Heart and Soul (the grass roots activist) of the Maryland Republican Party, thus you are unfit to serve as chair. In this short time span as interim Chair you have done more damage to our party then the Democrats could do in an entire election cycle.”

I have also asked fellow Waterman opponent Collins Bailey for a reaction, but have not received his take on this yet. However, he is also on record as saying that, should he win, he would restore Ambrose to the Rules Committee.

Ten Question Tuesday: March 26, 2013

I really didn’t intend to have a month-long hiatus in this series, but it now returns with my chat with 2014 state Comptroller hopeful Bill Campbell. Campbell also ran for the job in 2010, and it appears that, should he be successful in the GOP primary, he will have a rematch against incumbent Peter Franchot.

**********

monoblogue: Let me bring my readers up to speed here. You are already in the ring for Comptroller next year, 2014; you ran in 2010, and, assuming you get through the primary – which is not a given, but I would say you’re the odds-on favorite – you’re probably going to have a rematch with Peter Franchot, who thought about running for Governor and decided not to. I guess the first thing I want to know is, since you’ve already ran for the office, do you have any lessons you’re going to move into your 2014 campaign?

Campbell: Absolutely. If there was anybody who was ever a novice, it was Bill Campbell in 2010. I started way too late, I had no organization, I got into the race where the Governor’s race was sucking all of the donations out of the air – it was like there was no oxygen in the room – so when I talked to other candidates who were running for office they said the same thing: they couldn’t raise money because the Ehrlich campaign was basically sucking up all of the money that was available for Republicans, the Republican donors. I started way too late; I started in April or May (of 2010)…

monoblogue: Right.

Campbell: …and I only raised a few thousand dollars, I can’t remember the exact amount.

I spent most of my money in the primary, I think about $11,000 in the primary. Now some of the money I was able to get benefit of in the general election, like my signs, my palm cards, and so forth, but in the general election I only spent $4,000, give or take a few bucks, and I had to make up for that – money’s important, but it’s not the most important thing. The thing I really learned is that people have to know you, they have to like you, and they have to trust you. If you can get those three things, you get their vote.

monoblogue: Well, the question is, you’re running against guy who’s probably got – I don’t know how much Peter Franchot has in the bank, but I’m sure he’s got quite a bit…

Campbell: He’s got a little over $2 million.

monoblogue: …yeah. It’s almost certain, and this is true of almost any Republican in Maryland, practically, that you’re going to be -you’re going to have to work harder and smarter because you’re not going to have the money available to the incumbent.

Campbell: No, and I figured that if Franchot ran for governor I could probably beat somebody who wasn’t an incumbent by only raising about $125,000. I think I have a good shot at Peter if I could raise $250,000. That’s one of the reasons I started early, I’m asking for money, I’m getting donations, it’s not a huge amount right now – at the end of the year when I filed I think I had just a hair under $2,000 – but I had just started asking people for money. So I’m going to get fundraisers this time.

You bring up a good point. Peter raised $1.9 million the last time – and got a million votes – but he spent $1.5 million. I didn’t see where he spent it wisely. Do you remember seeing anything about Peter Franchot except an occasional 4×8 sign?

monoblogue: No. The thing about this race, since it’s an open seat for governor, you’re going to have an all-out war in the primary on both sides.

Campbell: Right.

monoblogue: You’re going to have, most likely, a very competitive race as far as the general election goes, but it’s going to be a little bit like Question 7 was last year. I think it’s going to take up a lot of the available airtime, so you may be right – you may not have to raise a lot of money. Peter Franchot may have a lot left over at the end of this campaign because he’ll have nowhere to spend the money except maybe consultants and what-have-you, the professional political class that we have in Maryland.

Campbell: I like to say that he’s a twice-elected incumbent Democrat. He presently has $2 million in the bank, he beat me once – I have him right where I want him. He’s overconfident.

monoblogue: Yeah, I noticed when Franchot dropped out of the governor’s race, you said ‘good, I don’t have to face the junior varsity now.’ Obviously you knew what you were going to be up against.

Campbell: I was always – I plan on the worst-case scenario. If I didn’t think I had a fair chance – I’m not in this to make a point. I’m not in this to posture or try to get myself well-known for some higher office later on – I’m a pragmatist. I think that it’s very difficult to win as a Republican any time. But I got a lot of non-Republican votes the last time, and Mr. Franchot didn’t get very many non-Democratic votes – I think he got about 10,000 votes that weren’t Democratic. I can’t swear to it because it’s been two years since I looked at it, but I got well over 100,000 votes that weren’t Republican.

So, for one, his name recognition I don’t think is terribly good. He didn’t do a good job spending his money the last time, he’s fighting with people in his own caucus – you know, there are bills in the General Assembly right now to take some of his functions away. He doesn’t seem to be allied with either Mr. Gansler or Lt. Gov. Brown, so I think that he is more vulnerable than the other candidates that we’re going to have to put nominees up against.

And, to be perfectly honest with you, I think that our chickens are about to come home to roost. The reason I ran the last time I got in was the deficit in our state employee and teacher pension fund, and the retiree health care. It has gotten worse. We’ve gone from being funded about 64% to around 60%, and the deficit on the pension has gone from $18.5 billion to $20.5 billion. The retiree health care fund is still around $16 billion in the hole.

So I think that a lot of things are going to come home to roost, I think that the public may be numb after eight years of constant tax increases, taking the budget from about $29 billion – it will be well over 40 (billion dollars) by the time these clowns are finished. And I think that the realization that the Affordable Care Act is neither affordable nor does it provide good care – I think people, even in Maryland, may be at the point where they’re willing to try something different, and by that elect more Republican elected officials.

monoblogue: Well, in Franchot’s case, he’s always tried to portray himself as a fiscal conservative, but in this case – it’s kind of the opposite of the old saying where Republicans can’t win if they try to be liberal because there’s already a liberal party out there. Democrats who try to be conservative, maybe they can’t win because there’s already a conservative in the race and his name is Bill Campbell.

Campbell: Right, and the thing with Franchot – I like Peter, I’d like to have him as a brother-in-law, or a neighbor, or a lodge brother, or something – but he’s not a good Comptroller. He doesn’t have a grasp of the financial issues. And we’re going to need somebody who has an excellent grasp of the financial issues to help get us through.

Part of that is, we’re probably, in my lifetime, going to have a Democratic-majority General Assembly. Thankfully, in Maryland, because of the way it’s constituted, to control the state you only need two offices: you need the Governor and you need the Comptroller so that you can control the Board of Public Works.

monoblogue: Right.

Campbell: If you control the Board of Public Works, then you can control the spending, and you can control the priorities, and you can control the trajectory that Maryland is going to have economically. So whoever our nominee is for Governor, I am going to try to work as closely with them and try to come across as a tag-team that will improve Marylanders’ economic future, the future for their children and their grandchildren.

I think we can have, if we have a good gubernatorial candidate, I think I have more than a fair chance.

monoblogue: Yeah. The other thing that I actually – as I was listening to you, is that, we also need a strong (Republican) party, and it kind of brings me to the next area I wanted to get into. Now I know you ran for state party Chair…in 2010 – you didn’t win, you were third, I think, in the first ballot and then withdrew…

Campbell: Yes.

monoblogue: …Obviously you’re not going to do it this time because you’ve already announced for the Comptroller’s race and you can’t do both at once, but what’s your take on the candidates who are in it so far?

Campbell: You mean for party chair?

monoblogue: Yes.

Campbell: The only one I know who’s really been announced is Diana Waterman. Is there another one?

monoblogue: There are actually two: one is Greg Kline, who’s…

Campbell: Oh, I’m sorry, I did see Greg Kline. I don’t know an awful lot about Greg. I know that he’s been really active in – I read something that was posted, he had a position paper?

monoblogue: Right.

Campbell: When I ran, the reason I ran was, after campaigning statewide, I had been in every jurisdiction at least four times. I talked to people on all ends of the spectrum from the Republican party, and I was very concerned because I thought at the time we needed to replace an establishment figure, Audrey Scott, with somebody who was not in any one camp but could reach across the boundaries between the camps and make a cohesive, unified party. I’m afraid – I liked all of the people who ran before, I liked Alex, I liked Sam Hale, but I’m afraid that if you have somebody who is identified only with one faction, the other factions are going to withdraw and we’re not going to be very successful.

That was why I ran, but if somebody had come to me and said – and I had talked to Alex when he ran, and I am 99% sure he assured me he would stay for four years. That was one of the reasons I thought, well, okay, and then I saw where he was raising money, he was using the party imprimatur of the chairman to raise money for a potential run for Roscoe Bartlett’s seat, which I thought was improper.

monoblogue: Right. (laughs) Go ahead, I keep interrupting you.

Campbell: When I ran, I was going to make it a non-paid full-time job, because I think whoever our chair is, until we start to get on a roll, we need to have somebody who is going to work full time, who is going to reach outside the party to constituencies like the businessmen in Baltimore City who have property that’s being adversely affected by the Maryland State Center project – we need to go in and proselytize people that we don’t normally talk to. Whoever is going to run and be our Chair needs to do that, in my opinion.

monoblogue: Well, actually you’ve answered the next question I was going to ask. The other gentleman, by the way, who’s in the race is Collins Bailey – I think he’s out of Charles County.

Campbell: Oh, I know – I know Collins Bailey. I met Collins when he was running against Charles Lollar to be our nominee for the Fifth Congressional District. I like Collins, he’s a nice guy, he’s conservative, I don’t know what kind of support he has among the Central Committees, because as far as I know he’s just widely known in southern Maryland.

monoblogue: Yeah, that’s my impression of him, too. I mean, I know who he is, I’ve probably talked to him once or twice, but – any of those candidates, and I know Diana, too, has actually done this and Greg Kline is in the process of doing this – they need to get out and get to all 23 counties if they can before the race. That’s the key.

Campbell: I think – isn’t there going to be in Montgomery County…isn’t there going to be a panel discussion with all of them?

monoblogue: There could be, I’m not sure. I know, for example, Greg Kline is coming to our Lincoln Day Dinner Saturday – I think Collins Bailey is trying to get there too. Diana Waterman will be there too, I’m sure, because she’s from the Eastern Shore. So I think – I don’t think anyone else is going to get in, I would be surprised if they did now. And you kind of answered my next question, I was going to ask what advice you had for the winner, but you’ve already kind of given that, so let me turn to one other thing real quick: I wanted to talk about – and I know you have a little expertise on federal matters because you used to run Amtrak, and you probably have a little bit of insight into the budget process…

Campbell: Yes, I had 30 years in the federal government, 19 as a career senior executive, and two years as a Presidential appointee as an assistant secretary for management at the VA. So I know a lot about the federal government.

monoblogue: So what do you think about all this talk about – obviously we started with sequestration, and now we’re talking about the possibility of some shutdown or other, and getting a budget out because they have to – they have to get a budget out or they don’t get paid. If you wave a magic wand, what does Bill Campbell do about this whole deal?

Campbell: Well, here’s the thing you have to remember. I’ve been looking at it through the lens of ‘how is this going to affect Maryland?’ I want to run for Maryland office, and – if I succeed and I win – I’m responsible for the finances of the state. And I look at it – Maryland, over the past four decades, has become a ward of the federal legislature. We get approximately 40% of our state revenue to run our government directly and indirectly from the feds. We get 27% directly, and then we get about another 13% indirectly through income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes from federal employees, federal retirees, and federal contractors and military retirees, and to some extent property tax from perhaps military – active-duty military.

So regardless of whether you call it sequestration, the fiscal cliff: no matter what you do any – any – reduction in federal spending will adversely affect Maryland. That said, we desperately need to cut back on the spending. That’s going to be painful, but if we don’t do with everybody, even the liberals agree that our spending is on an unsustainable path.

We are borrowing 42 cents on every dollar that we spend at present, and we – the debt service right now is, I believe 200 or 300 billion dollars and we are paying historically low rates on that debt. In a couple of years, when the fed stops doing quantitative easing, even Bernanke has admitted by about 2015 the interest rates that we are going to be paying – which are all pegged to the 10-year Treasury note – are going to jump up to the historic value of about 4 or 5 percent. What that means is that the largest single budget item to the federal government will be debt service. That will crowd out spending we need for infrastructure, defense, clean air, safe food, safe drinking water, public health – everything will become secondary so that we have to cut the spending.

And there are smart ways to do it and dumb ways to do it. Sequestration, when you look at it, isn’t that bad, particularly if you put, as they are right now, flexibility for the federal agencies in there. The Department of Defense’s budget this year is $711 billion – you think, oh my God, under sequestration we’re going to go to 522 (billion dollars.) Well, 522 might be absolutely fine because the difference between 521 and 711 is fighting two wars. As we get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and we avoid going into places like Iran and Syria, and Africa – then we can absorb that reduction well.

So I’m not afraid the sky is going to fall, I think what has happened is that the Obama administration has tried to make sequestration as painful as possible – you know, letting 2,000 illegal aliens loose that were in custody, closing down tours of the White House – they are doing everything humanly possible to make this appear a big problem. Well, I just came back from Florida and, you know, except for an occasional little mention of sequestration it’s not on anybody’s radar outside the Beltway, and it doesn’t seem to be having much of an effect because, rather than a cliff, it’s kind of a slow, gentle slope with the cutbacks and spending and you probably won’t really see it until next year and next year is when the Affordable Care Act costs are going to start to really hammer people, so I think 2014, because of these things, is going to be a decent year for Republicans, even in Maryland.

monoblogue: Well, that’s a good place to wrap it up. So I appreciate the time, Bill.

**********

We actually talked a little bit more regarding the 2014 race, but for the purpose of this exercise I’ll keep that off the record. One thing I will share is his opinion that “Maryland’s finances are terribly broken.” Seems to me that’s a good reason to get into the race, and I wish Bill the best of luck in his uphill fight.

I should also note that I recorded this interview on Friday, so I had the opportunity to speak with all three Chair candidates at our Lincoln Day Dinner subsequent to recording this post.

Next week’s guest will be another Maryland political figure, with the question being which one of the two records his interview first.

The Waterman side

In an e-mail to Central Committee members, interim MDGOP Chair Diana Waterman explained her recent actions on two controversial topics: the David Ferguson trip to South Carolina and the Nicolee Ambrose incident. I’m posting it just as the e-mail was received, which means it really is in somewhat breathless, long paragraphs.

Dear Central Committee Member:

In the past few days you may have received an email or saw a story about me concerning two decisions I have made since becoming Interim Chair. Some of you have contacted me to ask me about them. But most of you have not. To clear up any confusion, I wanted to share the details with you.

1) On Friday, our Executive Director, David Ferguson, participated in a joint Press Conference with the South Carolina GOP concerning Gov. O’Malley’s appearance at a South Carolina Democrat Issues Conference. This was a joint effort between the Republican Governor’s Association, the RNC, the SCGOP, and the MDGOP. It has received widespread press coverage, and showed Maryland Democrats that the MDGOP is on the offensive now. While in South Carolina, David met with staff members of the State’s leading political leaders to invite them to Maryland for future MDGOP events and for Lincoln Day Dinners. For the past year or so, we have been providing opposition research, media briefing kits, and support to Republican State Parties across the United States wherever MOM has travelled. We will continue to highlight the destruction that has been done to our State by our Governor with the support of the Democrat–controlled Senate and House as we target those very legislators in next year’s election. This trip did not cost the Party anything additional – David worked the whole time he was away plus you may not know this but David works 6 days a week most weeks (sometimes all 7 days), and often until 10 or 11 at night. He is definitely not a 9 to 5 employee. Note – we are not planning to follow O’Malley across the United States in person, however, we will make sure that everywhere he goes, his record of failed leadership will precede him so that GOP Leaders can point it out while he is there! Also, there was some concern that we rescheduled the Pathfinders Training scheduled for March 23rd so that David could go to South Carolina. This is incorrect. The training was rescheduled because Del. Ready could not be there.

2) Over the weekend, there was some internet discussion concerning the Maryland representative on the RNC Standing Rules Committee. The three RNC members are supposed to caucus and choose which one of them will serve on the RNC Rules Committee. Both Louis and Nicolee requested to hold the Maryland seat on the Rules Committee. Before he resigned, Alex chose to sign Nicolee’s application for the Rules Committee (it takes two out of the three RNC members to make a majority on the form). He (Alex) told me he signed her form because Louis had the Northeast Chair position and she had nothing (on the RNC). Alex also told me that as the form was not due until March 1st, according to what he was told by the RNC legal department, that we could submit a second form if I thought that Louis should remain on the committee. (Nicolee was never on the Rules Committee so the discussion that somehow I removed her is incorrect.) Louis has served on this committee for 8 years, he is the Senior member of our delegation, was re-elected with 83% of the vote last year, was re-elected unanimously (and unopposed) as the RNC Vice Chair of the Northeast Region, and is well-respected and well-known on the RNC – I did not see any reason to remove him from this committee as Maryland’s representative. I did reach out to Nicolee to talk with her but she did not get back to me before the March 1st deadline. I thought that Louis’ experience and relationships with other RNC members made him a better choice for this committee. I knew that this decision was not going to be popular with some people – obviously, the politically expedient choice would have been to do nothing. But I made the decision knowing the potential cost because I thought it was the right decision for the Party locally and nationally. I do believe Nicolee has a great future at the RNC and in our State and will enthusiastically support her for any other committee nationally and hope that she will take a lead role in our State and nationally, especially in the areas of grassroots organization, outreach, communications, and technology where she excels.

My goal has always been and continues to be to try to make Maryland a two party state – I don’t have any political aspirations, I just want to serve the Party as best I can. If my years of service and hard work are negated by these decisions, so be it. I had to do what I thought best as you have to do what you think best.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Diana

Now here’s my take on her explanation.

There is something to be said for how hard David Ferguson works, but we all know he can read a paper and on March 7 it was revealed in the Washington Post that O’Malley was heading south. Here in Wicomico County we did not receive word about the postponement of the Pathfinders event until noontime March 13. But even if Ready was unavailable, certainly a suitable replacement could have been found – and who says Justin will be available April 6, in the midst of the General Assembly session’s final weekend? I smell a rat.

The point is that this explanation should have come to us much sooner. Literally, though, it was a one-line announcement of the change tucked into the main trumpeting of the Maryland Matters program, and unless our county Chair Dave Parker has a deeper stated reason he’s withholding (I seriously doubt that) this is another case of poor communication from the state. That, though, may not necessarily be all on Diana.

Here in Salisbury we are acutely aware of how plans have to change, given the trials and tribulations presented to us by this year’s Lincoln Day Dinner and its ever-changing roster of speakers, but we did our best to communicate why things occurred as they did. That communication was lacking here, and it turned out to both create a headache for both our local party and provide fodder for well-deserved criticism of how the state party uses its meager resources. If it was about getting South Carolina people to speak at Lincoln Day dinners, I think we in Wicomico are owed a Jim DeMint, or at least a Nikki Haley or Joe “You lie!” Wilson.

As for the Ambrose incident, there is something which troubles me, a he said-she said of epic proportions.

Diana is saying that she reached out to speak with Nicolee, but Ambrose never got back to her by the March 1st deadline; meanwhile Ambrose contends she didn’t learn about the decision until March 21. Someone is not telling the truth here. I will say that Diana’s statement here is reasonably close to what she explained to me at our Lincoln Day Dinner, as in this case I was going more or less from memory when I wrote down my notes of our conversation.

But Diana also had to know that Nicolee was spearheading the effort to change the rules passed at last year’s national convention – the obvious reason she wanted to serve. Apparently the 83% re-election and the 8 years served on the committee before weren’t good enough reasons for Alex Mooney to keep Louis there, but Diana obviously felt differently. In truth, I would say the only reason Louis received 83% of the vote in the Spring 2012 convention, though, was that Scott Shaffer didn’t work as hard to gain the National Committeeman seat as Nicolee did to secure the National Committeewoman’s post. If that vote had occurred in the fall, after Louis played right along with making the questionable rules changes at the national convention, I daresay we may have elected a new National Committeeman. Yes, there are a LOT of people still angry about the rule changes and the way they were passed.

And whether Diana had until March 1st or not, the question remains whether the original form is superseded by a subsequent one. That may be a legal matter for the RNC to sort out.

I also give you this thought. You may recall that Diana was a strong supporter of Audrey Scott last year for National Committeewoman, and it was a bitterly contested race. It’s obvious the two are still close, since they attended our January WCRC meeting together. What better way to stick a knife in the back of your friend’s biggest rival than to deny her something she wants? I’m sure Diana would deny this theory until she’s blue in the face, but I would be surprised if Audrey’s fingerprints aren’t somewhere on this one. I know this incident has made for some strange (proverbial) bedfellows but that thought seems to me not so far-fetched.

I still believe these are unforced errors on the part of Diana Waterman, with the Ambrose situation perhaps having a ripple effect over the months leading up to next year’s election. Yet this brings up another aspect of the Chair race which could affect the party going forward.

Let’s say Greg Kline wins the Chair race – and I use him as the example because he’s been, by far, the more critical of the two Waterman opponents thus far. (Collins Bailey ~~hasn’t even weighed in on this insofar as I know~~. He has now, see update #2 below.) How far would we go if the Chair and First Vice-Chair emerge from this contested race on the worst of terms? You may recall the last time this situation played out, then-First Vice-Chair Chris Cavey originally emerged as a front-runner for the position but then stepped aside because some believed he orchestrated the no-confidence vote leading to Jim Pelura’s resignation.

If Waterman wins, I also think we have to look outside the two current contenders for the First Vice-Chair opening. I’ve heard one person is interested in it, but I have another person in mind as well. More as needed in due course.

Update: Via Purple Elephant Politics, there is a copy of the letter sent by former Chair Alex Mooney and Nicolee Ambrose to the RNC, dated February 18. I believe Mooney’s resignation became official a day or two later, so it was one of his final acts as Chair.

Remember, Waterman contends she had until March 1 to act so someone got to her pretty quickly and convinced her to make the change.

Update #2: Chair candidate Collins Bailey filed his reaction. An excerpt:

We shouldn’t penalize people in our Party for advocating for conservative principles, we should embrace them and encourage them.

I firmly believe that the rules changes were not in the best interest of the Republican Party and were a major cause of the disastrous 2012 election results.

Nicolee’s hard work at the RNC demonstrates that she is the right person to represent ALL of us on the Rules Committee of the RNC.

Decisions that are this important and this far reaching must be done openly. Our state party representatives owe it to us to keep us in the loop as events occur, not after the fact.

I’m sure there will be more feedback from other pro-Ambrose camps as well.

2013 Wicomico County Lincoln Day Dinner in pictures and text

Certainly it wasn’t quite a full house, but after a series of false starts with our list of speakers, the 2013 Wicomico County Lincoln Day Dinner still drew around 80 people last night.

Billed as an event focusing on the Second Amendment, it was that and more. For one, it was an opportunity for all three aspirants for the state party Chair race to meet the most active Republicans in Wicomico County. While I have Greg Kilne (right) in the photo below with fellow Red Maryland writer Brian Griffiths (left) flanking Andy Harris’ local liaison Bill Reddish (in the center), Collins Bailey and current interim Chair Diana Waterman were present as well.

It’s worthy of noting that Kline and Bailey were there well before the event began, while Waterman arrived closer to time. Perhaps she wasn’t thrilled about being questioned right out of the gate, but I don’t believed she stayed long after the event to mingle, while Bailey was among the last to leave.

While one of the two featured speakers, Charles Lollar, is being mentioned as a possible candidate for governor – more on that in due course – another prospective candidate for Maryland’s top job was making his rounds as well.

Craig was being introduced around the room by local supporter Ann Suthowski. He also stopped to greet Lollar and his lovely wife Rosha.

But the bulk of the time was taken up by our featured speakers, including the President in question himself.

Art North has made somewhat of a cottage industry out of his admiration for our 16th President, since he now regularly appears at other local Lincoln Day dinners. For ours, he had two re-enactors posing as Civil War troops and his photographer, Matthew Brady.

Hopefully none of these men consider a run for Congress, because re-enactors tend to attract unwanted attention.

But Lincoln’s message was one more tailored for the modern day. He made the point that to give up on the fact man can make himself in a free society like ours would be to give up on prosperity. “In your era,” he continued, Saul Alinsky camouflaged his intent with deception “foisted upon the general population.”

In his day, though, the tendency for class warfare was kept in check by the knowledge that hard work, diligent study, and striving for success were possible in America. A shoemaker’s son didn’t have to follow in his father’s footsteps, said Lincoln.

Honest Abe also decried the evolution of our educational system from the dictate of the Northwest Ordinance, which led to the introduction of state control of schooling in the affected states (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota) to the modern “massive federal control of our education system.”

Who knew Lincoln was such a political animal?

Bill Reddish was called to the microphone to make an announcement about the townhall meeting called by Sheriff Mike Lewis and attended by Congressman Andy Harris tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at the Wicomico Youth and Civic Center.

He commented that a similar event in Worcester County split about 80-20 toward a pro-Second Amendment crowd. Originally they expected 75, but 250 attended that event so one would expect the WYCC to be similarly crowded.

(As an aside, we will hold a very brief, almost pro forma Wicomico County Republican Club meeting tomorrow so those attendees can get to the townhall meeting and speak if they desire.)

Because Charles Lollar needed to return to the Washington area to do his job, we allowed him to speak first.

It was a long day for Lollar, who had spoken to a men’s conference early in the morning in Baltimore, at the New Antioch Baptist Church; an event at which he was “well received.” They “embraced” his strong Second Amendment stand, Charles added.

“I am convinced our greatest days are in front of us,” he noted, but pointed out we are at a “pivotal crossroads” in our history. Referring to the state of Maryland, Charles warned “we can’t afford our lifestyle,” claiming that $9.2 billion of a $35 billion state budget comes from various federal grants and stimulus money. We bring in only $26 billion of a $35 billion expense tab, said Lollar.

And he made the case that “sequestration is taking its toll, one step at a time” because Congress isn’t doing its job.

He laid out a stark choice for our nation: either a “national revival of our Constitution and Declaration of Independence” or the “beginning of the end of a great nation.” He was heartened, though, by the 5,000 Marylanders who showed up at the pro-Second Amendment rallies, and when it was mentioned by one observer that he didn’t know there were 5,000 Republicans in Maryland Lollar pointed out “these aren’t just Republicans.”

“The biggest fight is for our dollars and our amendments,” said Charles, who believed as well that “losing our freedoms” wasn’t just a Maryland problem, but a national malady. Working for a dollar and only getting fifty cents from it thanks to taxes was “a form of slavery,” opined Lollar.

But it wasn’t just financial issues for Lollar. There’s a danger “when you start messing with the base of the stool” that our nation was built on: morality, ethics, and God. Charles pointed out that, over our nation’s history, it’s been responsible for more evangelicals than all other nations combined.

It’s that moral foundation which makes it necessary to defend freedom “by any means possible,” and the Second Amendment “is the lifeline of your freedom.”

Charles also reacted to the concept that he takes things so seriously. He grew up in a home which stressed taking responsibility for his actions, he explained, which led him to plead that we “stop playing (political) games with each other in 2013.” “Take some things seriously,” he continued. “My concern is for my country and my concern is for my state.”

Lollar went on. “There are nations salivating for our demise.” He urged us to be like the signers of the Declaration of Independence and “put your name on the document.”

Charles was even serious enough to remark on the standing ovation he received at the end of his remarks, “I haven’t earned that yet.”

Lollar has always had a gift for public speaking, though, and while he hasn’t yet tasted electoral success he’s been in the trenches with his New Day MD PAC and past leadership of AFP Maryland.

I also spoke with Karen Winterling, who’s been pushing the “Draft Lollar” movement. I learned that, due to the Hatch Act, Charles couldn’t make an official announcement on the 2014 governor’s race until June. But Winterling already had an army of 250 volunteers around the state and was hoping for “another 30 tonight.”

Someone else who could get thirty volunteers in a heartbeat was the evening’s final formal speaker.

Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis has emerged as a leader in opposing Governor Martin O’Malley’s draconian gun law proposals.

“I don’t work for Martin O’Malley,” explained Sheriff Lewis. “I work for the 100,000 people of Wicomico County.” He clearly stated that the county sheriff is the “first and last line of defense against tyranny,” and pointed out a number of his counterparts from around the state will be present for Monday night’s townhall meeting here in Wicomico County.

He also made the case for the right to bear arms. “Who am I to tell a citizen they can’t defend themselves?” Lewis asked. He also expressed his admiration for America’s most famous sheriff, promising that “Sheriff Joe (Arpaio) will be here when I run for re-election in 2014.”

And not only did Lewis take a lead role in the fight to preserve the Second Amendment, he stood in opposition to doing away with the death penalty as well. There’s a framed picture of Sarah Foxwell in his office to remind his deputies of why they do their job.

But Lewis saved most of his remarks for his defense of the Second Amendment. “We’re going to fight hard” against the gun bill, said Lewis, but if it passes “I will not allow any deputies to go into any law-abiding citizens’ houses (to confiscate guns),” Lewis promised.

This legislation will “do nothing” to stem crime in Maryland, Mike continued. It’s our “right, duty, and responsibility” to protect ourselves. Lewis also warned that the Obama administration is “trying to disarm Americans,” and vowed on Monday “we will show everyone the real Obama administration.”

After Delegate Addie Eckardt closed us out with a rendition of “God Bless America,” the formal portion of the event concluded and people had the chance to speak one-on-one with various attendees. I took some additional time to speak with my tablemates from Strategic Victory Consulting, who had come down for the day, and also further renewed acquaintances with my “partner in crime” Heather Olsen of Prince George’s County. (The below photo was taken by Dwight Patel.)

Heather Olsen and Brian Griffiths and I

So the Maryland YRs were well-represented, too. It seemed like we had as many or more people from outside Wicomico County as we did locals.

Still, it was interesting to have the attention of the state party on our little corner of Maryland for a day. We may only make up 1/60 of the state in terms of population, but I daresay we make more than our share of political headlines and intrigue. Must be that thriving blogosphere.

Another Maryland Republican misfire

I don’t know how many times I have heard a phrase along these lines uttered: “The Maryland Republican Party would do a lot better if they stopped shooting themselves in the foot.” The other variation on that theme involves the phrase “circular firing squad.”

I understand dealing with perpetual underfunding, legislators for whom getting all of them to be a competent opposition party makes herding cats look like child’s play, and those party leaders who have outsized egos. Me, I’m just a cog in the big machine who sits on my Central Committee, takes a lot of notes, and occasionally offers the helpful suggestions and opinions. I don’t have any aspirations for leadership because I’ve found out through experience I work best in the role I’ve chosen.

But this past week has been one of unforced errors, and I couldn’t sit idly by without making my feelings known.

First of all, people speak about the Wicomico County Pathfinders program cancellation in the abstract, but those of us who actually live down here and were trying to talk up the event for would-be candidates and campaign workers might just feel a little bit let down that the state party decided the wild goose chase of Martin O’Malley – who at least can’t hurt the state all that badly when he’s off in South Carolina – took precedence over our event. Yes, I realize it’s only a two-week delay but what if something pressing occurs in the last days of our General Assembly session? Will the state party push us off again?

And then we have the Nicolee Ambrose incident, where she was unceremoniously dumped off the RNC Rules Committee just in time for an upcoming meeting – by whose behest is not clear. I have asked Diana Waterman to give her side of the story in the face of considerable criticism, which I will get to in due course. So far she has not responded, but Nicolee Ambrose has been kind enough to share her side of the events:

I can relay the basic facts of the situation:

On February 18th, Chairman Alex Mooney and I submitted our “Standing Committee on Rules Submission” to the RNC, in which I was elected Maryland’s representative. On February 19th RNC Legal confirmed it was received and in order. After that in late February, Maryland Interim Chairman Diana Waterman signed a form appointing Louis Pope instead.

Per RNC Rule 10(a)(1), I understand I hold this Rules Committee position until the 2016 Convention. We shall see how this works out.

Nicolee added that she wasn’t told about this change by Waterman until this past Thursday, March 21. It appears, though, that it’s a move of dubious legality as well as one unpopular with the reformer wing of the party – the side sick of losing here in Maryland.

Once again, they have fired back against a group they consider the establishment: Richard Cross at Cross Purposes, Jackie Wellfonder at Raging Against the Rhetoric, and Dan Bongino (via Anthropocon) have all blasted the Ambrose move. Waterman’s opponent Greg Kline made a lengthy statement regarding these recent incidents, from which I excerpt:

Interim Chairwoman Diana Waterman’s decision to remove National Committeewoman Nicolee Ambrose from her position on the RNC rules committee was wrong. Nicolee has worked tirelessly for our party. She has built bridges to our activist base, and reached out voters not traditionally aligned with our party.

Furthermore, the decision, and the particular way it was handled, is emblematic of the opaque, insider brand of politics practiced by current party leadership. The decision to remove Nicolee only serves to widen the internal divisions in our party, at the very time we need to be united.

This is the very thing I am running against in my campaign for state party chair.

Once again, we seem to be heading into our state Spring Convention in a contentious mode, divided again at a time when the General Assembly session is reaching its climax. This is shaping up a lot like last spring’s National Committeewoman contest between Ambrose and Audrey Scott, with some of the same battle lines being drawn between various factions and subsets of the party. Waterman was a Scott supporter last spring while many in the reformer wing (including this writer) supported Ambrose for the post. In this spring’s race, though, loyalties on the “outsider” side may be split between two contenders, Greg Kine and Collins Bailey.

Meanwhile, as we chase Martin O’Malley around the country, House Democrats pass yet another of MOM’s pet tax increases – without a single GOP vote, by the way. As we discuss the election of the chair and the future of the party, an interim chair makes a decision of dubious legality at a time when the person in question was making an attempt to reform the national party and restore the power of the grassroots to the national level.

In my original version of this post, I noted I had not yet spoken with Diana Waterman; however, I did speak to her briefly and candidly earlier tonight at the Wicomico County Lincoln Day Dinner.

In essence, Waterman told me the reasons she selected Louis Pope to be on the Rules Committee were simple: his experience in the national party on that committee and the length of tenure. It was a matter of “continuity,” Diana said. From what I gathered, she wanted Nicolee to focus on other aspects in the state party.

While I can understand the reasoning behind the decision, it doesn’t mean I agree with it and I told her as much. Others who I spoke with about the situation felt that Diana was pushed by people at the national level to make the change, since one of Alex Mooney’s final acts was to place Nicolee on the Rules Committee. This confusion and abrupt change could also lead to a problem with credentials at the upcoming RNC meeting, with other states becoming involved.

My thought is that someone doesn’t like the idea of revisiting the rules adopted at last summer’s convention, an effort spearheaded by Ambrose. There is supposed to be discussion about these rules next month at the RNC spring meeting, and who better to keep the status quo than Louis Pope?

A cast of followers

Originally my plans for this Saturday were pretty much set: get up early (by my standards) and go to the Pathfinders seminar here in Salisbury, then scoot on over to Salisbury University for the Wicomico County Lincoln Day Dinner. Both of these have changed over the last few days, though.

I was surprised to find out last Wednesday that the Pathfinders seminar in Salisbury had been postponed to April 6, with the Maryland GOP not giving us a specific reason for the postponement. I understand things happen and plans can change, but the reason for the delay that I’m hearing now has me scratching my head. This is from Brian Griffiths at Red Maryland:

I had to do a doubletake when I read about this totally insane plan coming from the Maryland Republican Party today:

David Ferguson, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party, vowed Tuesday that he or someone else affiliated with the state GOP will show up each time O’Malley attends an out-of-state event, starting this weekend in South Carolina.

O’Malley, frequently mentioned as a potential 2016 presidential contender, is planning to make an appearance Saturday at an “issues conference” in Charleston at the invitation of South Carolina state Sen. Vincent Sheheen (D), a 2014 gubernatorial hopeful.

Ferguson said he will counter with a press conference with GOP leaders in Columbia on Friday and be at the event site Saturday in Charleston.

“Anytime O’Malley goes and makes a stop on his presidential parade, we’re going to follow him and let people know who the real Martin O’Malley is,” said Ferguson.

Ferguson said the effort — dubbed the “No Left Turn Tour” — is an outgrowth of previous work to arm Republicans in other states with background material on O’Malley, the former chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, when he visits.

This is really nothing new; in fact the lunch speaker at our Fall Convention last year was Brent Littlefield, who helped to orchestrate a Twitter takeover of a Maine Democratic Party event O’Malley was attending. But that was done by local people who didn’t follow Martin O’Malley wherever he went, and the reason Wicomico’s Pathfinders session was bumped is because O’Malley’s trip is on Saturday.

Griffiths makes a good argument: instead of building up the state party, we’re chasing Martin O’Malley around. He can’t run for office in Maryland anymore anyway and if South Carolina has a conservative new media worth its salt they will take care of making sure the right people get access to a video of Martin O’Malley’s appearance there.

In turn, this brings up another sound point, one which was brought up during a conference call I participated in tonight featuring MDGOP Chair hopeful Greg Kline. In that call, Kline stressed that there’s been no systemic effort to coordinate with the new media in Maryland. He sensed a “lack of trust” from the state party toward an outlet which is growing in both reach and influence.

Blogger Hillary Pennington brought up the South Carolina affair, and Kline agreed with Griffiths’ assessment in Red Maryland that the excursion to track O’Malley was “disappointing” and “sends the wrong message.”

Obviously one can take this whole line of inquiry as a campaign stunt by Kline and his allies at Red Maryland; Griffiths concludes in his piece that:

At the end of the day, this is Diana Waterman’s plan. She gave the go to execute it, and I believe Republicans across Maryland are owed an explanation as to why money is being spent on a plan that won’t help elect a single Republican next year.

Personally I’m not so sure Diana had all that much to do with it aside from saying yes; it’s unclear who came up with the idea in the first place. In my dealings with Diana, she impresses me as a leader only in the sense of doing things within a certain comfort zone and this would be a little bit outside of that range. To put it in another way, I see her as closer to a Bob Michel than a Newt Gingrich – that may be fine for some, but I’m not sure this situation dictates that laid-back style of leadership.

I noted at the top there was a change in both March 23 events. While our Lincoln Day Dinner goes on, we learned a few days ago that Dan Bongino regretfully had to withdraw. In his place we’d like to welcome another dynamic speaker in former Congressional candidate, possible 2014 gubernatorial hopeful, and AFP Maryland head Charles Lollar. He may not be as well known locally as Bongino is, but I can assure you he will be a fine Lincoln Day speaker when combined with Sheriff Mike Lewis.

Our focus will remain squarely on the Second Amendment issue, and there’s still a short window to secure reservations by contacting Bob Laun at (410) 543-2116. We’d like to have a count for the venue as soon as possible, so time is of the essence.

Update: Maybe Legal Insurrection is subconsciously in the Kline camp after blasting the RNC 2012 postmortem. There’s something missing there…

Splitting the vote

As I work on my CPAC recap for this evening, here’s some news on the Maryland GOP front.

Yesterday the odds-on favorite, Diana Waterman, received a huge break when Collins Bailey of Charles County decided to enter the fray. As Bailey states on his website:

I am running for this position because I want to grow and strengthen the Republican Party in Maryland. I want to elect more local, state, and national Republican candidates.

My campaign platform revolves around one number: 2014. We need to pick up Republican seats around the state of Maryland at every level in 2014.

As your Chairman, it is my job to immediately prepare the way for big Republican victories in 2014. I am ready and excited to do that.

If the name Collins Bailey sounds familiar, it’s because he’s been on a regional ballot twice. Collins has run for Congress in the Fifth District, losing to Charles Lollar in the 2010 primary but securing the 2008 nomination and losing to Steny Hoyer in the general with just 24% of the vote.

Yet the reason I applied the title to this post is that, if you consider Diana Waterman the “establishment” candidate since she’s running as the incumbent First Vice-Chair and has allegedly secured the blessing of most of her peers on the Executive Committee, the remaining vote will now be split into two smaller factions: the more libertarian pro-liberty movement, which would seem to coalesce around Bailey as their champion, and the reformer movement, typified by the cast of Red Maryland which Chair candidate Greg Kline represents, and having their own subset of voters. (Kline has also made his own unsuccessful bid for office, running for Delegate some years back.)

If neither budges from the race, or if more participants decide to enter, the odds of Waterman winning become even greater. If I were into conspiracy theories, I would think that it was almost as if someone was worried about Kline winning enough to convince Bailey to enter the race, perhaps with the promise of support for being First Vice-Chair – insofar as I’m aware, no one has officially thrown their hat into that ring because the First Vice-Chair vacancy only occurs if Waterman wins. Obviously Facebook campaign page ‘likes’ are a poor proxy for regular votes, but I find it interesting that Waterman only has 110 as of this writing, Kline right behind with 102, and Bailey 58 in less than 24 hours – surely some (like myself) ‘like’ all the pages since they want to hear from all three.

The last time the party had a similar situation in 2009, there was the consensus establishment candidate in Audrey Scott and just one alternate choice in the offbeat but earnest Daniel Vovak – Scott won in a landslide and carried all but one county (ours.) Perhaps it’s a sign that the party is more diverse after the TEA Party-influenced 2010 election, but the fact there are now three people interested in what will be more than a full term henceforth – in 2010 we changed our bylaws to allow state party Chairs only two-year terms beginning in 2014, to match the national party – may be a sign that the winner will have to herd cats as best he or she can before the 2014 campaign gets much farther along.

The path will be found later

First the bad news: the Pathfinders program scheduled by the Maryland Republican Party for Wicomico County for Saturday, March 23 has been rescheduled for two Saturdays later, April 6. Conservatives who would like to learn more about the process of running for office will have to wait two more weeks for this valuable training.

This news, however, came as a minor annoyance on a day when the Maryland GOP was embarking on a new initiative. This from interim Chair Diana Waterman:

As Interim Chair of the Maryland Republican Party, it’s no question that Maryland matters to me, and if you’re reading this note it matters to you too. That doesn’t mean Maryland has been at its best lately. Between 2007 and 2010, 31,000 Marylanders have left the Free State thanks to the burdensome taxes–which get worse every year. These tax increases have gone hand-in-hand with a 30% increase in spending and growth in state debt payments of 50%.

In short, to make the Free State free again, we must get off this unsustainable path.

To make sure we play a critical role in Maryland’s turnaround, we are proud to launch our “Maryland Matters” campaign.

The initiative is a survey, which greeted me with the message that my input was “critical to the future of the Maryland Republican Party.” Well, I certainly hope so, since I went through a contested election to secure my position for the next 18 months or so.

So I filled my copy out, which took a few minutes and definitely gave them my two cents; in fact, I think I approached a quarter.

I can tell you what I thought the number one priority was in my eyes: candidate recruitment. Let me give you an example from 2010.

In that year, we had two Republican candidates for Governor, three for Comptroller, eleven for United States Senator, and 28 would-be Congressman (the actual number for each district varied from one to five.) But we didn’t manage to have an Attorney General candidate and we left nearly 50 General Assembly seats unopposed.

Now I understand there are people out there who believe they would be the perfect person to move from citizen to Congress or to the governor’s chair. I’ll grant it’s somewhat possible, and God bless people like Brian Murphy, Dan Bongino and Jim Rutledge for making their first try for elective office a statewide bid.

But there is something to be said about building a farm team, which is how the Democrats have managed to corner the market in this state. It really doesn’t matter if three or four of their local officeholders are defeated in a primary for a higher position, such as the situation which may develop in their primary for Governor between a sitting Lieutenant Governor, sitting Attorney General, sitting County Executive, and sitting Delegate – there are several more than willing to move up from local and small-district positions to take their place. In turn, there are those local campaign workers and volunteers being groomed to take the positions vacated at the bottom.

While I disagree with the words of some who think we have no shot in a statewide race, I do agree with the aspect of working on local races. In Wicomico County we have the majority of officeholders, but we allowed too many Democrats to slide by without a contest last time. Granted, here in Wicomico we had very few primaries for Republican nominations – while we had to run a primary in 2010, it was only necessary to eliminate one would-be aspirant in Council District 3 and one for the at-large Council seats. On the other hand, 13 of us ran for 9 Central Committee seats.

If we can get some good young candidates to run in seats where we need people willing to be the state leaders of the future after getting some valuable experience in the trenches, we can build up our own farm team. That’s not to say we don’t want those who have reached a certain age to run for positions where experience is desired (such as Orphans’ Court, Register of Wills, Clerk of the Court, and the like) but generally political futures are built on the legislative end of the spectrum.

Just to use myself as an example, the fact is I’m 48 years old and the second-youngest on my Central Committee – all of us have seen 40 come and go. I realize where my political future is and it’s not in the legislative arena – win or lose, I’ve decided the 2014 election is my last as an officeseeker. (I figure 12 to 16 years on Central Committees between two states is plenty, since I served four years in Ohio before moving here and was elected to my current post in 2006.) But those who would like to build up a political resume may be well-served by serving a term on the Central Committee.

So when Pathfinders training comes around, I encourage you to take advantage. Nearly 60 years ago President Dwight Eisenhower said:

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.

For most of the past two decades, politics has been my part-time profession and I think it’s made me a better person. Conservatives and pro-liberty freedom fighters: if you’ve been on the sidelines, it’s time to step out onto the field.

WCRC meeting – February 2013

My coverage this month is going to depart from the norm because our guest speaker was someone of statewide importance. And just as we rearranged our agenda to allow him to speak after the welcoming and introductory remarks from club President Larry Dodd, I’m going to submit the highlights of what Blaine Young had to say to an expanded audience through Watchdog Wire later this week. It’s not often that we can make news in this corner of the state so I want to take advantage.

Still, we had a lot go on in this month’s meeting from more regular participants, including some surprising changes in club leadership occurring next month. Once Blaine finished with his remarks, passed out some literature and cards, and embarked on his return to Frederick, I went through the January minutes and we received the Treasurer’s Report from Deb Okerblom, who volunteered for the task in Tom Hughes’s absence.

Dave Parker gave the Central Committee report, noting that the House gun bill (HB294) will have its hearing this Friday. He told us to ignore the pro-gun control rally in Lawyer’s Mall (which, in my opinion, will get 1/5 the participation as the pro-Second Amendment rally held earlier this month but five times the media coverage) and sign up to testify – “this is serious stuff,” he warned. “Without the Second Amendment, we have no other rights.”

Other egregious bills being heard this week were ones on Election Day voter registration – “talk about voter fraud,” Parker opined.

In other news, Dave talked up the Dorchester County Lincoln Day Dinner this Saturday and hinted that our version may or may not occur March 23 because we have the opportunity to secure a prime speaker. “You better get your tickets fast” if this speaker indeed comes, said Dave. (And no, I honestly don’t know who it is. Trust me: I want that scoop!)

Dave also shared that Alex Mooney had resigned, for those in the room who didn’t know, and that Diana Waterman was both acting as interim Chair and running for the position herself. Parker also revealed that the other two Vice-Chairs would retain their positions, meaning that there would be no more than two elections at the convention, for Chair and for First Vice-Chair should Waterman prevail. (As for that race, Red Maryland has a statement dated Monday from Andrew Langer announcing his intention not to run, but advocating support for Anne Arundel County attorney Greg Kline instead.)

Once again, Shawn Jester and Bill Reddish tag-teamed on the Andy Harris report, noting he had been named to the Appropriations Committee and that we were “very fortunate” to have him there. They also called the recent Second Amendment town hall meeting “very successful,” although one allegedly foul-mouthed participant begged to differ.

Ann Suthowski interjected to praise a letter to the Daily Times penned by Joe Ollinger. I wholeheartedly agree.

Woody Willing noted in his Board of Elections report that the number of unaffiliated voters continues to increase at the expense of Republicans and (moreso) Democrats.

The main event – besides Young’s remarks – was nigh, as we finally got around to nominating a slate of officers for 2013. Due to assorted mishaps and misfortunes, we could not do our usual process of choosing leadership so this year’s crop was nominated from the floor. Since only one person was nominated for each post, the election was conducted shortly thereafter by voice vote. Here are your 2013 WCRC officers:

President: Jackie Wellfonder
First Vice-President: Marc Kilmer*
Second Vice-President: Larry Dodd
Third Vice-President: Sean Fahey
Fourth Vice-President: Cathy Keim
Secretary: Michael Swartz*
Treasurer: Deb Okerblom

(*denotes a holdover in the position. Also, Dodd was President in 2012, Okerblom was Fourth Vice-President.)

It was much less momentous, but we also resolved as a group to participate in the Salisbury Festival once again.

Finally, County Council member John Hall spoke briefly about the Tier Map hearing, the situation at the Wicomico County Airport with the upcoming sequestration – “we’ll do what we have to do,” but won’t lose flight service – and announced that FY2013 revenues for the county came in $7 million better than projected thanks to additional income tax collections, which will hopefully soften the blow from a loss in assessed property base.

But the meeting couldn’t have been bad – I won the 50-50 drawing.

The next chapter in WCRC history will begin to be written March 25. Be there or be square.

Mooney officially resigns MDGOP post

It was announced a couple weeks ago, but the notice of resignation from being Chair of the Maryland Republican Party was officially given by Alex Mooney to the state party yesterday. First Vice-Chair Diana Waterman will run the party as the interim Chair until the next state convention April 20 in Timonium. By delaying his official resignation to Thursday, Mooney eliminated the possibility of having a second meeting simply to elect a chair, as party bylaws stipulate a new permanent Chair must be selected within 60 days of a vacancy in the post.

In a brief statement released by the party, Mooney stated he was “humbled and honored” to have served as Chair for the past 26 months; meanwhile Waterman vowed to “work hard to ensure a smooth transition process…we look forward to continuing our aggressive approach and challenging the Democrats at every turn.”

With Mooney’s resignation, the party finds itself in a somewhat similar position as it did in 2009 when then-Chair Jim Pelura opted to leave after he lost the support of his Executive Committee over personnel issues and a lack of fundraising prowess. However, one big difference is that Mooney’s successor will have a longer time period remaining in the unexpired term, which will run just beyond the 2014 election. The 2009 Chair election only featured two candidates – eventual winner Audrey Scott and the late Daniel “The Wig Man” Vovak – in a race which had practically no suspense once Scott announced her intentions and interim Chair Chris Cavey (who was then First Vice-Chair) decided not to seek the remainder of Pelura’s term.

Scott’s brief tenure was a mixed bag of financial success but opportunities left on the table in some statewide races; it also featured the Rule 11 controversy.

At this early juncture, it’s not been made clear who will step forward to attempt to win the vacant Chair position, although Diana Waterman is – according to blogger Joe Steffen – the establishment choice. Steffen provides a laundry list of other possibilities, but for now Waterman is the only game in town, bruised feelings aside. While the interview was intended to serve as her platform for First Vice-Chair, readers may find this Red Maryland piece by Mark Newgent instructive on Diana’s intentions.

Yet given the length of the term, it’s not unexpected that others may jump into the fray, if only to benefit from the shuffling of the leadership deck atop the state party as a leadership post opens up. (For the record, the other two Vice-Chairs are Larry Helminiak of Carroll County and Eric Grannon of Anne Arundel County.)

Still, I think the timing on this is rather unfortunate – while the House of Delegates leadership was able to iron out its differences long enough to get through the session, Mooney’s resignation comes at a critical juncture. We would have been better served if Alex had held on for another couple months, while making his resignation effective the same date. It wouldn’t have appreciably changed his future plans but would have insured leadership through the General Assembly session. Otherwise, those who called for his head prior to the last convention may have had a point.

Once again, though, this race will make the upcoming convention a focal point in a way the Democrats rarely have to endure.