Coming attractions

Thank goodness the election is over, notwithstanding events in Georgia and Florida. I even got around to tossing out the political mailings.

So now we get a little break, although there’s one recent piece of interesting Maryland political news: an announcement in the wake of the Fourth Circuit’s edict that Maryland redraw two of its Congressional districts to re-enfranchise Republican voters who were gerrymandered out of the Sixth Congressional District, a district that became much less compact and contiguous because Martin O’Malley and Maryland Democrats wanted to create a Congressional seat for onetime State Senator Rob “Gas Tax” Garagiola. To achieve that goal, they shifted the district southward to cover a large portion of Montgomery County – the fact that it covered Rob’s State Senate district was just a coinkydink, of course – excising Republican-rich swaths of Frederick and Carroll counties from the Sixth District and placing them in the MoCo-dominated Eighth Congressional District. By next March the districts are supposed to be redrawn, presumably back close to their pre-2012 configuration.

Seeing that, an opportunity has arose for my two-time monoblogue Accountability Project Legislator of the Year Neil Parrott to run from cover by forming an exploratory committee, perhaps doubling the mAP LoY delegation in Congress as he would presumably join Andy Harris in the House. Add to that, in an unrelated story, reigning and two-time mAP Top (Blue) Dog Jim Brochin trying to pay off campaign debt with a “bipartisan” fundraiser, and you can tell it’s the silly season of politics.

Aside from those above diversions, politics tends to slow down quite a bit. Sure, there may be an issue or two that emanates from the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress, but for the most part things are buttoned up during the holidays only to be ramped up as we return to normal after the new year.

As it works out, this post-election hiatus provides for me a chance to catch up on a couple other things. One (which is really sort of a navel-gazing set) is contemplating my annual Thanksgiving message for personal thanks and the “state of the blog” anniversary post as monoblogue becomes a teenager this year, with all the moodiness and angst to go with it – although the last couple years have foreshadowed that to a great degree.

The second is updating my Shorebird of the Week Hall of Fame. Fortunately or not, the early Thanksgiving gives me a little extra time to do it as I generally take the page down on that day so I can update it in time for the first Thursday in December, which falls a full two weeks after Thanksgiving this year. I have five players to add, but with a number of trades made I also have some photos to update. I can’t keep using the Zach Britton, Manny Machado, and Jonathan Schoop photos I’ve had for years because they’ve suited up elsewhere.

So I may not be posting much before Thanksgiving, in part because I also want to work on a different website: the one I’m creating for my book. (I’ve had the domain name for a few months now, so it’s time to make it active.) Maybe my anniversary here will also be the debut there.

It’s time for a few mental health days.

Conservative Victory PAC latest to endorse Timmerman

Because this story is relatively short for me on Examiner (just over 250 words) and there’s a long lag in between the time I placed it on that site and here, I’m just going to go ahead and reprise it in full.

Perhaps it’s a symbolic gesture, but the Conservative Victory PAC announced on Tuesday their wholehearted endorsement of Eighth District Congressional hopeful Ken Timmerman.

CVPAC president Chuck Floyd conceded the “massive financial advantage” Van Hollen has in the race – the incumbent has $2.2 million on hand, and has remitted thousands of dollars to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee – but asserted that “Marylanders are just beginning to learn the truth about Van Hollen’s brand of machine politics and crony capitalism that is driving hard working businesses out of state or into bankruptcy.” Floyd spoke at a fundraiser for Timmerman, who indeed has a significant financial disadvantage because he had only around $50,000 on hand through June compared to Van Hollen’s $2.2 million, which is unusually high even for a sitting Congressman.

However, the Eighth District may not be the walkover people think it will be since a significant amount of conservative voters were added during redistricting. And there’s a lot of grassroots organizing experience in the Conservative Victory PAC fold as many of the members of their Board of Directors are veterans of Jim Rutledge’s 2010 Senate campaign. That campaign relied heavily on grassroots support as it was well-outspent by eventual GOP nominee Eric Wargotz yet received 31% of the vote in a crowded Republican field. Apparently this crew knows how to work on a shoestring budget.

So while the fundraiser may not have brought in a lot of money, the backing of the army of Rutledge supporters could turn out to be the most important result of the evening.

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This is the video I included. We’ll see how it works, since I normally use the old embed code.

I had one other thought. Ken Timmerman isn’t someone who has to run for Congress. Come on, the guy is a successful author.

(Actually, I forgot I had this picture. Probably should have used it on Examiner.)

So why would someone of his stature go through the trouble of running for office for the second time? (Ken also ran for U.S. Senate in 2000.) You’d have to ask him (or read his thumbnail bio) but it’s people like that who I think should be elected, as opposed to political hacks who have held elective office for most of their adult lives. (Case in point: his opponent Van Hollen, who started in the Maryland House of Delegates way back in 1991 at the age of 32 and has held some political job since. And that doesn’t count Van Hollen’s previous experience as a political staffer.)

In fact, if you look at those who are on the state GOP ticket this time, there’s an interesting mix of veteran politicians and newcomers to the scene. Admittedly, Nancy Jacobs and Tony O’Donnell are longtime members of the General Assembly, but they didn’t begin their lives in the political arena – Jacobs was first elected at the age of 47 and O’Donnell was 33. Even Roscoe Bartlett and Andy Harris were rather seasoned when first elected to office, winning at the ages of 66 and 41, respectively.

The point is that they experienced life outside politics before running for office, and that’s the way it should be. Ideally, a legislator would be a citizen who becomes successful in life away from (and despite) politics, serves a handful of years, and then departs rather than spend decades in a position. I understand this places me in a precarious position of hypocrisy since I would support Roscoe Bartlett in his race over a political newcomer in John Delaney, but philosophy is important as well and Bartlett won his primary fair and square. Unfortunately, sometimes people go for the familiar name.

Obviously this took me pretty far afield from my original post but sometimes I think of ways to improve things, even after they’re put to bed. So it is with this post.