Republicans have nominated a truly extreme ticket of QAnon insurrectionist Del. Dan Cox for governor. He also tried to impeach Gov. Larry Hogan. His running mate, Queen Anne’s Attorney Gordana Schifanelli gives Cox a run for his money in crazy.
The Wes Moore/Aruna Miller ticket has a comfortable lead as the counting continues on the Democratic side with 37%. However, that share of the vote is lower than the 40% garnered by losing Democratic nominee Ben Jealous in 2018.
Meanwhile, Republicans have nominated neo-Confederate theocrat extremist Michael Peroutka for attorney general. Peroutka was elected to one term on the Anne Arundel County Council before losing the primary in his run for reelection. He’ll face Democratic Rep. Anthony Brown, a former Lt. Governor, in the general election.
Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, the Republican nominee for comptroller, cannot be overjoyed about these outcomes. He faces Democratic Del. Brooke Lierman in the general election.
The big news is former State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey’s trouncing of former Rep. Donna Edwards in the Fourth Congressional District Democratic primary. Right now, Ivey leads Edwards by 51%-35%.
In other interesting races, Heather Mizeur won the nomination in the First District with 69%. She’ll take on Rep. Andy Harris who is now linked to the events of January 6th but remains the favorite in this Republican leaning district.
Over in the Sixth District, Del. Neil Parrott annihilated 25-year old Matthew Foldi by 64%-15%. Foldi, who refuses to say Biden won the 2020 election legitimately, had endorsements from Donald Trump, Jr and Gov. Larry Hogan as well as other prominent national Republicans.
Del. Mike McKay won the Republican nomination for the open First District in far western Maryland. In Frederick, Del. Karen Lewis Young won the open nomination to succeed her husband in District 3. Del. Bill Folden easily won the GOP nomination in neighboring District 4.
In Baltimore County’s District 10, Del. Ben Brooks beat Del. Jay Jalisi by 37% to 30%. The General Assembly will be improved without Jalisi who has been accused of abuse towards staff and his family.
In Montgomery District 18, Democratic Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher turned back a challenge from Max Socol by a convincing 63% to 37%.
Prince George’s Sen. Ron Watson is narrowly defeating a challenge by Board of Education Member Raaheela Ahmed by 42% to 38% in the District 23 Democratic primary. Former conservative Democratic Sen. C. Anthony Muse is narrowly leading Tamara Brown in District 26 by 50.4% to 49.6% in a race that will have to wait for the mail ballots.
In Harford District 34, former Del. Mary-Dulany James beat Del. Mary Lisanti for the Democratic nomination by 65%-35%. She will face Del. Christian Miele in her third bid to win this seat. Incumbent Republican Sen. Jason Gallion garnered only 49% of the vote against two challengers in Cecil and Harford District 35. He’ll face no opposition in the general election.
In Eastern Shore District 37, Del. Johnny Mautz easily beat incumbent Sen. Addie Eckardt for the Republican nomination by 77%-23%. Eckardt was characterized as too moderate and too old.
I’m going to focus on Montgomery County in discussing races for this much larger house of the General Assembly.
In his latest bid to return to elective office, former Del. Saqib Ali lost very badly to the incumbent delegates in District 15 with roughly one-half of the votes on the third-place nominee. No doubt the allegations of abuse towards his family didn’t help and will discourage future runs by this once promising politician.
In District 17, Joe Vogel easily won the third Democratic nomination and will join incumbent Dels. Kumar Barve and Julie Palekovich Carr in the House in this very Democratic district. Aaron Kaufmann, appointed to fill a vacant nomination in District 18, faced no opposition and will also be a new member of the House.
In District 39, all three Democratic incumbents won renomination. Del. Gabe Acevero easily came in second despite the rest of the incumbent legislators slating with challenger Clint Sobratti. A lot of fence mending to do in that district,
Republicans appear to be going the full wingnut.
Cox/Schiffanelli is taking the gubernatorial nomination. No wonder Gov. Larry Hogan decided it was a good night to be in Colorado. Meanwhile, former Anne Arundel Councilmember and League of the South Board Member Michael Peroutka is on track to be the Republican nominee for Attorney General.
Not going to be easy for Republican candidates running in swingy areas to have to deal with these people at the top of the ticket. Disappointing for the those of us who would like to see a non-insurrectionist Republican Party.
On the Democratic side, it is looking like Moore for governor, Lierman for comptroller and Brown for attorney general as I type. Franchot’s gubernatorial campaign’s support absolutely collapsed in Montgomery where he trails with just 11% in his home county. Perez is winning Montgomery easily with 47% but it looks like it will be hard for him to overcome Moore’s leads elsewhere.
In the Fourth Congressional District, former State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey is easily beating former Rep. Donna Edwards in both the Montgomery and Prince George’s parts of the district.
In the First Congressional District, former Del. Heather Mizeur is set to take on Andy Harris as the Democratic nominee.
In the Sixth Congressional District, Neil Parrott is defeating Matthew Foldi quite easily for the Republican nomination despite the numerous high profile endorsements received by the 25-year old.
The Montgomery County Executive race is once again looking insanely close. Right now, David Blair leads Marc Elrich by 74 votes! However, District 39, which I would expect to be good for Blair, still has the most outstanding precincts. Contrary to expectations, Blair won the early vote but appears to be trailing on election day. My guess right now is that we’ll have to wait for the mail ballots on this one.
In District 34, Mary-Dulany James is easily defeating Del. Mary Lisanti to once again become the Democratic nominee for state senator.
In District 18, Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher is handily turning back progressive challenger Max Socol in that district’s state senate race.
In District 39, Del. Gabe Acevero is also easily defeating a challenger despite his fellow delegates slating with the challenger. Those should be fun delegation meetings.
The geographic nature of partisan polarization in Maryland results in radically different distributions of Democratic and Republican primary voters. On Friday, I took a look at the Democrats. Today, it’s the turn of the Republicans.
While only a desultory 7.7% of Democratic primary voters in 2018 lived on either the Eastern Shore or in the Western 3 (Garrett, Allegany and Washington Counties), 19.2% of Republican primary voters lived in the same areas. That looks to increase in 2022 as the share of eligible Republicans in the two regions has grown to 20.8% from 19.4%.
This pattern reflects a continuation of Republican growth in rural areas that characterized shifts generated by Donald Trump’s two White House bids. So does the shift away from Republicans in more urban parts of the state, especially in the educated and racially diverse Washington suburbs. Montgomery was home to 20.0% of Democratic primary voters in 2018 but only 11.2% of Republicans.
That gap looks to grow as the Montgomery’s share of eligible Democrats has grown 0.3% but its share of Republicans has dropped by 1.2%. Differences are even starker in neighboring Prince George’s, which is now home to 20.8% of Democratic eligible voters but only 3.8% of Republicans. Put another way, Prince George’s casts fewer Republican primary votes than Washington County despite being home to six times as many total residents.
Driven by the weight of suburban Republican populations, the Baltimore metro area punches harder in Republican than Democratic primaries. Baltimore County increasingly tilts Democratic but it has a strong Republican presence and Gov. Larry Hogan carried it handily in his two gubernatorial wins. It is home to 14.0% of eligible Republican voters, the highest share in the state.
Anne Arundel is next with 13.2% of all Republicans. Meanwhile, the considerably smaller but ultra Republican exurbs of Carroll and Harford Counties together are home to 14.4% of Republicans. Carroll is the arguably the most right-wing area of the state and Trumper Del. Dan Cox will hope to do well there. Both Cox and his main challenger, Kelly Schulz hail from Frederick, which has 6.8% of Republican voters.
In short, while Democratic candidates will need to spend most of their time camped out in the most densely populated portions of the State, Republicans must get travel more because their voters are far less concentrated. It may also help explain partisan differences in the regional focus of priority transportation projects.
