Fresh off GOP gubernatorial election upsets in New Jersey and Virginia, is there hope for a Republican comeback in Maryland?

According to a recent poll, trouble may be brewing for Governor O'Malley in next year's election. The poll, conducted by the nonpartisan Clarus Research Group, interviewed 637 voters in Maryland between October 30 and November 2, 2009.  Perhaps the most troubling sign for Maryland Governor O'Malley was that 48% of voters polled say would they would prefer someone new to win and only 39% say they want to see Gov. O'Malley re-elected.

The front runner for the Republicans would be former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich.  Even though Ehrlich has not committed to running, Clarus included a hypothetical 2010 rematch in their poll with O'Malley leading his former Republican rival by a 47-40 percent margin.

The results of the poll highlighted that O'Malley has a significant advantage over Ehrlich among women and African Americans voters. During the 2006 election, O'Malley defeated incumbent Ehrlich with a nearly 20 point advantage with women voters and a 60 point advantage with African Americans.

From watching Tuesday’s election returns from Virginia and New Jersey, we can see that even in blue states liberalism is failing. Obama talks a great game, and says the right things – such as promoting health care reform through “choice and competition,” – but is unable to produce legislation that matches the rhetoric. And people are wise to the double talk now. We the people know better, and we watch what the politicians do rather than listening to what they say.

Could anyone imagine seeing a Republican take the governorship of deep blue New Jersey? Go back one year and remember how dominant Obama was in Jersey, easily winning the Democrat stronghold, and ask that question again. It is likely that anyone forecasting a Republican taking the governorship just one year later would have been ridiculed and mocked until he moved to a remote island where no-one has televisions, newspapers or internet access. It just seemed impossible. And yet, here we are today, watching more than 50 percent of New Jersey voters reject Jon Corzine and his failed liberal policies.

Watching these two states that went for Obama in ‘08 do such an about face in this short a time should give every Republican in Maryland cause for optimism. If a state like Jersey can elect a Republican to the governorship, and Virginia can support the Republican by a ridiculously large margin of 18 percent, why should we in Maryland not take that as a sign that the Democrats are more vulnerable than ever and move in to capitalize on that vulnerability. As much as Obama has failed on the national stage, Martin O’Malley has failed the State on every level. He promised lower energy costs, but BG&E customers, who thought they had it bad before, saw their rates skyrocket by 85 percent under Martin O! And while talking about the need to lower energy costs for all Marylanders, O’Malley has fought for “Global warming” legislation that will raise energy costs across the board.

One example of this is the $140 million energy tax, which has been passed along straight to Maryland residents. Add in his opposition to allowing a merger between EDF and Constellation to enable the construction of a new nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs, and O’Malley has fought a project necessary just to keep Maryland’s electrical production at current levels. Preventing the production of new energy is not the way to bring costs down.

In addition to his failed energy policy, O’Malley presided over the largest tax increase in Maryland’s history, which had to be conducted in a special session to avoid those pesky constraints imposed on the legislature during the General Assembly. This has helped Maryland ascend to the dubious honor of having the fourth highest tax burden (state and local) in the entire nation. Looking at 2006 data, which precedes the O’Malley tax hikes, Maryland’s individual income tax collections were already the second highest in the nation. All of this does not bode well for the governor of a state neighboring Virginia, which saw the Republican storm into office despite having lower taxes than Maryland..

Given the political winds and the fierce opposition to out of control taxation, government spending and government growth, the Maryland Republican Party is faced with a very favorable environment in 2010. It is now up to the party to turn that advantage into results by giving voters a solid, concrete message to get behind, closing the registration gap (Maryland has approximately one million more registered Democrats than Republicans) and then making sure those Republican voters turn out in force. The opportunity is there, will Maryland seize it?

Late this afternoon Mike Pappas dropped his nearly yearlong bid to become Maryland's next Governor and threw his support behind fellow Republican Larry Hogan.

In his announcement, Pappas noted, "(a)fter considering all the challenges ahead and my personal requirements at home and in my law practice, I have determined that the best interest of my family and business requires that I stop my run for Governor effective immediately." He cited both family reasons and the need to attend to clients of his legal practice as the two key reasons for withdrawing.

Pappas concluded that:

Some may question the timing of this decision given the tremendous victories Republicans won in elections this week.  However, those victories exemplify the kind of results we can achieve as Republicans with good candidates.  Although I believe that I personally make an excellent candidate, the realities of a State-wide race require more time than I can provide at this time, and I will not run such a race at anything less than 100%. 

Moreover, I have spent a considerable amount of time getting to know Larry Hogan since he entered the Governor’s race this Summer.  Larry and I share many of the same beliefs and ideas on how to rescue Maryland from the devastation caused by the failed policies of the Democrats in Annapolis.  Larry brings a great perspective to the race and has the qualities and resources necessary to mount a successful run for Governor.  With my withdrawal, Larry can focus his efforts on winning the general election and build on the momentum that started this week.

Therefore, I am proud to also announce that I am endorsing Larry Hogan for Governor in 2010 and am asking all of my supporters and members of Team Pappas to also support Larry in every way that they can.  I will be working hard for Larry, and I hope you all will do the same. 

I am deeply grateful to every person that joined our team, attended our events, contributed to the campaign, offered a word of encouragement, and challenged me to hold myself to a higher standard as a candidate and a citizen.

As for Hogan, he was pleased to gain the backing of Pappas.

I am honored to have the support of Mike Pappas. As the only candidate for Governor over the last ten months, Mike and his team have worked tirelessly building support across the state. Mike has been a consistent voice and leader for Maryland Republicans. He’s got a great future in politics,” said Hogan. “Mike and I both want to see common sense and fiscal responsibility return to Annapolis. I’m excited to have the Pappas team join my campaign.”

“Governor O'Malley's failed record of lost jobs, higher spending, record tax increases, and broken promises is unacceptable. Maryland families deserve better. I look forward to working with Mike and his outstanding team to give the people of Maryland a real choice for change in November 2010.

So the GOP field is cleared as Pappas is the second wouldbe Republican candidate for Governor to drop out. Charles Lollar of Calvert County had been rumored to throw his hat into the ring, but residency issues interfered with his plans. Instead Lollar is in the race against Steny Hoyer in the Fifth Congressional District.

Lollar and Pappas may not be the only GOP dropouts, though. Hogan has indicated his desire to step aside should former governor Bob Ehrlich decide to make another run at the state's top spot, but Ehrlich has been coy about announcing his intentions. It could be next year before Ehrlich reveals his hand, a wait which distresses some state Republicans (including myself.)

But at least until Ehrlich makes his decision, Hogan can now train his guns on incumbent governor Martin O'Malley and O'Malley has given him plenty to criticize as the state's budgetary woes continue despite plenty of stimulus assistance from Democratic partymate President Barack Obama. With Chris Christie defeating a governor who couldn't keep his promises just up the coast in New Jersey, Maryland Republicans can hope that lightning strikes again in what's presumably the bluest of states outside Massachusetts.

This evening Maryland First Vice-Chair Chris Cavey announced he was dropping out of the race to succeed Dr. Jim Pelura as state party chairman:

Over the past month I have traveled across Maryland speaking to Central Committees and Republican activists about the potential our party has in 2010.  Most folks agree we have an opportunity to make gains electing Republicans and would be negligent to miss our chance by not being unified as a Party.

Last evening I listened as a group of Committee members worked through the trials and tribulations of a new voting method to be considered for the upcoming convention.  It was a wonderful example of what party members should be doing, problem solving, and that made me think about the Chairman’s race.

Roughly fifty-three weeks from today is the 2010 General Election, we need to be unified, in full blown campaign mode and not bickering about the past.   The current race for Chairman is very close and I fear the effects of a close race will only further serve to divide us as a party.

Effective today I am withdrawing from the MDGOP Chairman’s race.  Party unity and winning elections in 2010 is important.  I will pledge to each of you to dedicate my time and effort by helping the next MDGOP Chair re-build and re-unify our party for 2010 wins. 

Thanks to each of you who have worked for my campaign and had faith in my leadership abilities.  Please realize that this was not an easy decision for me to make.  Long-term, however, we will be ahead of the game for our party’s future and we will create more victories by working together… starting from today. (Emphasis in original).

This also dovetails well with a release I received from another contender, Daniel Vovak. He's crying foul about the chairman of the nominating committee, Montgomery County GOP head Mark Uncapher:

Following the resignation of embattled Chairman James Pelura, Daniel "The Whig Man" Vovak has called for the resignation of the chairman of the Republican Nominating Committee, following a lapse in Mark Uncapher's ethics.
 
Uncapher holds two chairmanships within the Maryland Republican Party. Foremost, he is the chairman of the nominating committee for the next chairman. Secondly, he is the chairman of the Montgomery County Central Committee. Uncapher's primary job is to facilitate the process for about 270 central committeemen to elect the next chairman, who will be: Daniel Vovak, Chris Cavey, or Audrey Scott. However, Vovak has alleged that Uncapher is acting unethically by writing a letter of support for Audrey Scott, in spite of being the person who should be neutral in the process. Regardless, he believes Uncapher should continue as Montgomery County Chairman.
 
"Mark Uncapher's job is to find nominees, not to hand-pick them," says Vovak, a movie producer and ghostwriter in Bethesda. "Since Uncapher is in charge of the nominating committee I asked him today to write a letter of nomination for me and he said he will only support Audrey Scott. My position is that Uncapher should support all candidates who want to be chairman or he should support no one. It is absolutely unethical for the chairman of the nominating committee to single out a specific candidate while pretending to be neutral with the others. If Uncapher feels so strongly about Audrey Scott then he needs to resign because he is definitely not a neutral arbitrator."
 
The rules of the Party require a chairman-nominee to provide three nomination letters from committeemen in three different counties to be submitted to the nominating committee for vote by the whole committee. On Tuesday, Vovak asked Uncapher for his nomination letter and was flatly denied it. Uncapher's bias extends to the website for the Montgomery County Republicans, which lists only Audrey Scott as a candidate for chairman, but not Chris Cavey or himself. 
 
"It's issues like this that frustrate me as a Republican," says Vovak. "The next chairman needs to raise funds and stop airing our dirty laundry."

I think Vovak has a legitimate point, but Uncapher can salvage his credibility by bending over backwards to assure anyone nominated with the correct process gets a fair shake.

To refute one point made by Vovak, I also looked at the Montgomery County website and noticed it had omissions for both Larry Hogan and Mike Pappas in the Governor's race (along with missing Cavey in the Chairman race), so Vovak isn't the only one who should be miffed with the process. Then again, we who look for links are only human and I'm sure I haven't found every candidate running locally either.

Returning to Cavey, though, the item I found second most interesting in his release was that he "listened as a group of Committee members worked through the trials and tribulations of a new voting method to be considered for the upcoming convention." Personally, I see no trials or tribulations with scrapping the LCD system previously used and going to a simple "one man, one vote" system. I suppose the participants from counties who were given outsized importance with the LCD voting method may find change objectionable, but I don't!

(In an aside, it so happens that I played secretary at last night's WCRC meeting because our normal secretary was a participant in the call; hopefully he'll have good news for me next time we meet.)

So Cavey is out. Barring a nomination from the floor, it's likely Ehrlich administration official Audrey Scott will serve as the lightning rod for scrutiny and criticism over the next year as an interim party Chair. So the convention may have gotten a lot more dull, but we'll see.

We didn't have our anticipated speaker, who had to bail out at the last minute due to unforseen circumstances, but two fill-in speakers backed up with a fill-in secretary (me) made this month's WCRC meeting work nonetheless.

As usual we had the Lord's Prayer, Pledge of Allegiance, and various reports. Club president Marc Kilmer announced two upcoming events: the November WCRC meeting will be held on the 23rd of November with the speaker being District 37 Senator Rich Colburn and the club's Christmas party upcoming on December 13th. He also thanked those who particpated with the Autumn Wine Fest.

Sean Fahey, administrator for the Lower Shore Young Republicans, gave their report. Next spring will be a repeat of their successful canned food drive inaugurated earlier this year, and they were negotiating to host next summer's state Young Republican convention here in Salisbury and trying to draw a "name" speaker for the event.

Along the same vein, Salisbury University College Republican president Matt Taffeau introduced himself to the club for the first time in a formal setting; however, they had been present at previous events such as the WCRC Crab Feast and fundraiser for District 38B Delegate candidate Mike McDermott. Growing their membership to over two dozen since the start of the school year, they've managed to attract speakers like the aforementioned McDermott, Wicomico County Sheriff Mike Lewis, and state party chair Dr. Jim Pelura. They were also in the early stages of trying to get national party head Michael Steele to come to SU and were "looking forward" to helping out on Campaign 2010.

One of our two pinch-hitting speakers for the evening was County Councilwoman Gail Bartkovich, who cobbled together some news and notes about the budgetary woes facing Wicomico County.

Part 1 of the cuts had already been approved by the County Council when the furlough plan requested by Council and put together by County Executive Rick Pollitt was approved. Part 2 would be the harder part, cutting many of the departments by 15% along with other manuevers to cut about $1.2 million from the budget.

It's worthy to note, Gail reminded us, that the actual deficit was much higher - on the order of $4 million. But taking money from reserve funds and increasing a number of fees helped to at least create an action plan before the public had its say in an upcoming meeting November 10th.

Some of the cuts could be painful, though - everything from $611,000 to the county's funding share for Wor-Wic Community College to eliminating 13 paid crossing guards out of the Sheriff's Department budget. Only the Board of Education and volunteer fire departments were unaffected.

But Gail also pointed out that many of the "cuts" were simply shifting salaries around to departments with enterprise funding, particularly solid waste. A question was asked whether these positions would be eventually restored to their original departments (particularly the roads department, which was hard hit by state funding cuts) or if the relatively lucrative solid waste department would continue to carry these positions having little to do with that area. Councilwoman Bartkovich decried the lack of a "long term game plan" to deal with the county's finances.

Then we turned to the state level as District 38A Delegate Page Elmore was kind enough to lend his expertise. As we all know, the state of Maryland has the second-worst tax burden in the country behind only California and continually has needed to maintain its balanced budget with mid-fiscal year cuts totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

While the tax and spending increases passed at the 2007 Special Session take a share of the blame, Elmore pointed to two other factors hurting the state - the court order dictating education spending be held at increasing levels (which led to the Thornton Commission and its budgetary impact) and a 10% income tax cut enacted as an election year measure by former governor Parris Glendening in 1998.

But Page revealed that the Spending Affordability Committee estimated next year's structural deficit will range between $2.5 and $3 billion. Democrats on a committee to reform business taxes in Maryland (which would be all but him) and their allies believe the best solution would be to change to a system of combined reporting for corporate entities, a move business interests despise because of the increased accounting burden. Elmore predicted that Democrats "probably won't pass" combined reporting in 2010, but they may try to.

Two questions drew interesting responses from Elmore. One asked about the chances of saving construction money for new schools by repealing the "prevailing wage" and dropping expensive "green" building requirements. With just 37 votes in the House, Republicans couldn't do much. (Personally, I think it's a great place to start if we have to build all these schools rather than the comparatively puny savings Governor O'Malley thinks standardizing plans would create.)

The other questioner brought up the environmentally-induced moratorium on building new chicken houses in Maryland. One thing I didn't know is that while Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia labor under restrictions on runoff, these restrictions don't exist in nearby states like North and South Carolina. Delaware has been proactive in allowing chicken houses to be built as restrictions are still pending but Maryland has dragged its feet. Those upcoming restrictions expected in 2010 are expected to dramatically reduce the allowable discharge from chicken houses to perhaps unrealistic levels. That's okay, the Eastern Shore doesn't need industry anyway.

Closing out the speaking trioka, Dr. John Bartkovich gave a fairly upbeat Central Committee report. Asking why the GOP was successful in 1980 and 1994 and why it failed in 2008, essentially he opined the important factor was a good message in bad economic times. These principles could win again in 2010 and 2012. We just needed a message of hope and change along with a plan to bring them about through fiscal conservatism and Republican principles.

What we thought would be a fairly short meeting turned out to be a long one, but it was informative. As I stated above, State Senator Richard Colburn will speak at our November meeting on Monday, November 23rd.

Got this the other day from the fine folks who run my county government.

County Executive Richard M. Pollitt, Jr. announced (Tuesday) that the county has received $407,928 in grant monies from the Neighborhood Conservation Initiative. The funds are for buyers of foreclosed properties to make down payments, cover closing costs and perform necessary repairs.

(snip)

Mr. Pollitt also announced that the county has received $256,775 in grant funds from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DCHD). Mr. Pollitt explained that, “These funds will assist in rehabilitating housing for low and moderate income families and to also make renovations to the building owned and operated by the Maryland Food Bank.”

Obviously the state is swimming in money to grant Wicomico County this kind of funding, right? Well, it's not all the state's doing.

I looked up the "Neighborhood Conservation Initiative" and found that the grant money is going to come with just a few strings attached. One just can't walk in and be eligible for the grant which, by the way, is also passed through the same Department of Housing and Community Development that's handling the second grant.

The biggest concern I have with the program is that perhaps it's placing recipients into the same situation which ran the foreclosure rate up in the first place, convincing them they can afford a larger house than is prudent. If you're making just above poverty level wages at a job the chances are pretty good that you're not skilled labor and aren't going to have a lot of job security. Personally I don't see this as the wisest use of tax dollars because I don't agree with such targeting to a population segment that needs the incentive to depend less on government handouts, not depend more on them.

I'm also curious to know why the Maryland Food Bank needs taxpayers to fund their building renovation when there are a long list of private-sector entities which fund its parent organization, Feeding America. No doubt the Maryland Food Bank needs to upgrade its facilities because of these dire economic straits (if you ask me, brought about by poor government decisions on economic policy over the last three years or so) but once again, placing them on the hook of the taxpayer sets (or continues) a poor precedent.

It's my belief that government can do some things well, but charity is not one of them. Obviously Wicomico County is under the illusion that if they didn't grab the grant money someone else would, but just because the money is there doesn't mean it needs to be spent - particularly when government at all levels struggles to live within some sort of means without bankrupting the producers of our nation. It's a battle that isn't being fought well and few have suggested starving the beast.

I think it's time to listen to those who do, though.