Category Archives: 2014 Governor’s Race

2014 Governor's Race

Gubernatorial Debate Moments

I live tweeted last night’s debate in Takoma Park. This post highlights moments that stood out in my mind. During the fast-paced debate, I did my best to capture what candidates actually said, either as quote or a paraphrase, along with provide analysis along with many typos. Rushern Baker skipped the debate.

Alec Ross Goes Extreme on Immigration

A theme for Alec Ross was his effort to stand out as a different kind of candidate, unafraid to criticize Democrats for being insufficiently progressive. He pejoratively stereotyped ICE workers and called for sending out state troopers to fight them if needed to that end:

Ben Jealous Over Credit Claims?

Ben Jealous and I had an exchange on Twitter during the debate regarding his taking credit for the MD DREAM Act’s passage that paralleled Adam Pagnucco’s past critique:

Jealous’s followers certainly agreed with him on Twitter.

Jealous on Corruption and the NRA

Jealous also stood out for his attack on corruption and call for Baltimore Democrat Sen. Nat Oaks to resign:

He also attacked taking NRA money–very popular based on the retweets:

The problem with Jealous’s severe attacks on any Democrat who takes money from the NRA is that he co-chaired Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. The current anti-gun moment is not ideal for Sanders, who originally won election to Congress with heavy NRA support. While Sanders is no longer the pal of the NRA, he has a past of opposing the Brady Bill and many other pro-gun votes. Awkward.

Said and Unsaid by Krish Vignarajah

Krish Vignarajah is razor sharp and may have been the smartest person on the stage. She had one of the best moments of the debate with her linkage of Hogan’s Amazon package and the lack of funds to heat Baltimore schools.


Sometimes, however, what she left unsaid seemed as loud as the points she was making:
Of course, the doofus who wrote the tweet should have said primary instead of general election. However, District 18 Delegate Candidate Mila Johns was even sharper:

Vignaranjah still has not filed.

Rich Madaleno Relentless on Republicans

Unsurprisingly, all of the candidates weren’t keen on Hogan or Trump. Rich Madaleno’s remarks still stood out.

Along with Kevin Kamenetz, Madaleno made the tough sell in anti-establishment times that we need someone with experience. He contended that he and his running mate, Luwanda Jenkins, had made change and had the experience to do so as governor:

Kevin Kamenetz and Jim Shea

These two guys didn’t have moments. By all rights, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz should be a top contender. He is county executive of a swing county, clearly more knowledgeable than many of his rivals on a lot of issues due to having grappled with them in office, and does his best to link them to personal stories from his own life or time as county exec.

Yet, Kamenetz is simply not a natural debater and seems a bit awkward on the stage despite clearly having worked on honing his pitch. He was at his best when challenged due to his sureness and utter willingness to fight back. But it just didn’t feel like his moment as he didn’t connect with his audience.

Jim Shea seems earnest, well-meaning, smart and steeped in the community. He has been involved in a litany of efforts to improve Baltimore and Maryland for years. He was seated next to Vignarajah and the contrast could not have been greater. He’s an an unexciting and unmemorable speaker who had all of the specific, deep knowledge of Maryland she lacked. They should consider teaming up.

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2014 Governor's Race

Madaleno Announces Running Mate

Luwanda Jenkins and Rich Madaleno

Here is the press release from the Madaleno campaign:

Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Rich Madaleno Selects Baltimore Native, Luwanda Jenkins, as Running Mate

BALTIMORE, Md.—Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sen. Richard Madaleno announced today his selection of Baltimore native Luwanda Walker Jenkins as his running mate.

Jenkins, 55, has a record of results from her extensive work in the public and private sectors to expand opportunity for all Marylanders, especially women and minorities.

“Luwanda and I are committed to making Maryland the state that will be known for its high quality of life, progressive values and wider access to opportunity for all,” Madaleno said. “Luwanda shares my values and sensible vision for Maryland’s future and will strengthen my administration’s ability to achieve my goals, especially in the areas of economic development and expanding small business development for minorities and women.”

The announcement was held at Western High School in Baltimore, the city’s all-girls public high school that she attended. “Western set the foundation for my support for a strong public education system and to do whatever I can to help families achieve the American dream,” Jenkins said.

“I’m thrilled to join Rich. My entire career has been about leveraging opportunity to make a better quality of life for Marylanders. I’m excited to travel across the state and share our ticket’s plan for action and engage Marylanders in how to make our state better,” she said.

Jenkins said she would focus on four main areas: improving K-12 public education, especially for high-poverty communities, and ensuring more college affordability and access; reducing wealth inequities; growing women- and minority-owned small businesses; and ensuring gender equity to increase Maryland’s competitiveness.

“Between our shared progressive vision for Maryland, my budget and finance mastery, and Luwanda’s economic development and community relations expertise, we’ve got a winning team,” Madaleno said.

A Madaleno-Jenkins vision for Maryland presents a stark contrast to Gov. Larry Hogan’s agenda.

“Our vision focuses on improving the quality of life for all Marylanders and making sure that people and communities with the most needs actually get the help they need to succeed. We will work to strengthen communities—from urban centers like Baltimore to rural areas on the Eastern Shore and in western Maryland—and make wise budgetary decisions that will make positive change but won’t break the state treasury,” Madaleno said.

Jenkins has wide experience in the public and private sectors. Most recently, Jenkins has been the chief operating officer of the LEADERship program, a Baltimore-based leadership development program. From 2016-17, Jenkins was vice president of community relations and diversity at The Cordish Companies. During her 2012-15 tenure at Coppin State University in Baltimore, she was involved in implementing the “Coppin State University Review Plan” that addressed the university’s performance, fiscal accountability, enrollment and graduation rates to put the university on a course for future growth. As former Gov. Martin O’Malley’s special secretary of the Office of Minority Affairs from 2007-12, Jenkins created programs to provide opportunities for small and minority-owned firms in the state.

As a way to give back to her hometown of Baltimore, Jenkins coordinated the Baltimore Sun’s “Reading by 9” program to help strengthen Baltimore City school children’s reading achievement. The program included community book distributions to low-income children, summer reading programs and grants to non-profit literary organizations. The program won national and local awards.

# # #

Madaleno bio – http://madalenoformaryland.com/meet-rich/

Jenkins bio – http://madalenoformaryland.com/meet-luwanda/

 

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2014 Governor's Race

Why Brown & KKT Lost

Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown did not lose because of poor Democratic turnout. Neither did Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. It is a dangerous myth in our party Montgomery and  Prince George’s Counties, combined with the City of Baltimore, are enough to win a statewide election.

The even more dangerous corollary to his theory is that, if the Big Three jurisdictions are enough to deliver victory statewide, the key is to nominate a candidate capable of driving turnout among the Democratic base voters in those three very progressive bastions. Sadly, this is not the case. Even if turnout in Montgomery, Prince George’s and Baltimore City had been 10 points higher, Larry Hogan would still be the Governor-Elect.

The truth of the matter is that Democrats cannot win a statewide election if they get killed in the Baltimore suburbs. Democrats still need to win some moderates to take the prize. For years, Martin O’Malley appealled to working class Democrats in places like Dundalk and Essex, as well as a certain number of wealthier suburb and exurbanites in places like Bel Air and Towson.

This–in addition to the D next to his name in Baltimore City, MoCo and Prince George’s County–gave him a winning statewide coalition in 2006 and 2010. O’Malley nearly won Baltimore County in 2006 before taking the prize outright in 2010. In 2010, O’Malley received 35% of the vote in Harford County, while Brown barely cracked 20% four years later. Barbara Mikulski frequently wins counties in Western Maryland and on the Eastern Shore.

Interestingly, Mikulski, O’Malley, Brown and Townsend are all center left to progressive Democrats with little policy disagreement of any true substance among them. So, why the difference in performance in these key areas?

As the legendary Virginia operative Mudcat Saunders oft moans, people vote based on culture not the issues. A guitar playing, Catholic school educated Irishmen with a disarming charm like O’Malley went a long way towards making gay marriage and the Dream Act–and progressive taxation–palatable to swing voters from Easton to Essex. A grandmotherly, Polish-American social worker like Mikulski can do the same.

But a stiff, Harvard-educated, former DC lawyer originally from Long Island, who happens to be black, like Anthony Brown has limited appeal outside of the polyglot Washington suburbs and Baltimore City. Likewise, a Kennedy from Greenwich, CT had limited appeal outside of Bethesda and Roland Park in 2002.

Right now, we don’t need someone to drive out mythical hard core progressives, who came out and voted for Anthony Brown anyway. We need someone who is as comfortable at Dundalk’s Fourth of July parade as at Takoma Park’s.

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2014 Governor's Race

New Yorker on Hogan’s Win

The key paragraph from the liberal weekly on the Maryland gubernatorial race stunner:

But there is another, broader story about what happened to Brown, one that should make Democrats even more nervous and Republicans even more cheerful. The backlash against O’Malley and the implosion of Brown show how vulnerable Democrats are, still, to being identified as a party that is insufficiently interested in economic growth and insufficiently allergic to taxes. A popular candidate or a sudden crisis might shift voters’ attention elsewhere, but the issue of taxation doesn’t tend to stay out of the spotlight for too long. Even in deep-blue states, voters have the sense that Democratic politicians don’t hate taxes as much as they do. And sometimes it doesn’t take much—maybe only thirty-nine dollars—to remind them.

 

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2014 Governor's Race

The Racial Math for a Brown Win

TheMath

I looked at the Gonzales (R) poll to get a sense of what Brown or Hogan would have to do in order to achieve a victory tomorrow. I’ll analyze the electorate from a racial prism because solid black turnout is critical to Anthony Brown’s chances.

Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s 2002 victory rested in large part on unusually low African-American turnout–blacks composed an astonishingly low share of the electorate in that year. In 2006, the CNN exit poll indicates that African Americans were 23% of the electorate, a major increase from 2002.

Gonzales estimates black turnout this year at 25%, at the low end of predictions but not at all out of the realm of possibility in our state where African Americans comprise 28.1% of the voting-age population. Moreover, African Americans have formed a greater part of the electorate in presidential years since at least 2000.

Let’s assume Gonzales is right and blacks form only one-quarter of the electorate. The share of the white vote that Brown needs to reach 50% depends on the the percentage of blacks who support him. Gonzales reports that Brown possesses an 87-5 advantage among African Americans.

Exit polls indicate that Gov. Ehrlich gained 15% of the black vote in 2006, when he lost his bid for reelection. It seems unlikely that Hogan could do as well against Brown, who would be the State’s first African-American governor. If one splits the undecideds in the same 87-5 proportion, Hogan still has just 5% of the black vote. But let’s say Brown’s share could fall in the 5% to 10% range.

If blacks are 25% of the electorate and Brown receives 95% of their votes, then he needs just 35.0% of the (mostly white) non-black vote to win election–this is 10% less than O’Malley won in 2006. If Brown gets 9 in 10 of black voters, however, Brown needs 36.7% of non-black voters to reach 50% of the total vote.

Obviously, Brown’s path becomes easier the higher the turnout among African Americans and the more solidly he is able to consolidate their votes. If black turnout inches up to 27% and Brown wins 95% of their votes, he would need just one-third of the non-black vote to win a majority.

Crucial to Brown is not just the racial composition but which non-blacks vote. In particular, reading the tea leaves of the Gonzales poll, whites in Baltimore City and the DC suburbs seem more likely to support Hogan. If they turn out at low rates, it would be easier for Hogan to reach the very high share of the non-black vote he needs. In contrast, Hogan would likely benefit from higher turnout in the Baltimore suburbs, Western Maryland, and the Eastern Shore.

Although Hogan is winning Republicans solidly, independents lopsidedly, and even a chunk of Democrats, his path remains difficult. Here is the share of the white vote won by a series of  Democrats according to exit polls:

Ben Cardin in 2012: 39%
Barack Obama in 2012: 43%
Barack Obama in 2008: 48%
Martin O’Malley in 2006: 45%
Ben Cardin in 2006: 48%
Barbara Mikulski in 2004: 56%
Townsend in 2002: 34% (estimate)

According to the Gonzales exit poll, Hogan leads Brown among whites by 59% to 31%.  If you divvy up the undecided voters in the same proportions as decided voters, then Brown would have 34.4% of the white vote. The last time Democrats scored this low in a statewide election was when Ehrlich beat Townsend in 2002–and blacks will certainly end up a higher share of the electorate than in that year and probably vote at a higher rate for Brown. Moreover, only the Gonzales survey, which was conducted for Republicans shows Brown with this low level of white support.

Lots to watch for tomorrow night. But if Brown gets at least 37% of the white vote, he is almost certain to win. And the share of the white vote he needs will decline if (1) black turnout goes above 25% and (2) the share of blacks who vote for him exceeds 90%. Another sign to watch is changes in turnout in Montgomery relative to the rest of the State. If Montgomery turnout drops relative to other jurisdictions, that could spell trouble for Brown.

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2014 Governor's Race, Gun Control

Hogan Slammed for NRA Support

In the final days of the gubernatorial campaign, attention is rightly being focused on Republican Nominee Larry Hogan’s refusal to release his responses to the NRA questionnaire on this issue. A good question: candidates should be prepared to share their views not just with special interest groups but the general public.

Moms Demand Action

Jennifer Coulter of Moms Demand Action is asking exactly what did Larry Hogan do to receive an A- rating from the NRA and this robocall funded by the NRA in support of his campaign:

Maryland Democrats are also pressing hard on Hogan’s unwillingness to share with the public what he promised the NRA in exchange for their support:

MDP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sunday, November 2nd, 2014
Contact:  443-221-4779
JSmith@mddems.org

BREAKING: NRA Robocalling Marylanders to Prop Up Larry Hogan

Payback – Gun Lobbyists Spending for Hogan After He Put Secret Promises in Writing to Earn NRA’s Endorsement

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Last night, reports across the state confirmed that the National Rifle Association is opening up their wallet to defend their endorsed candidate for Governor, Republican Larry Hogan. The robocall says that “there’s only one candidate in the race for governor of Maryland who has stood strong against the Obama Bloomberg gun control agenda, that candidate is Larry Hogan.” It goes on to attack Lt. Governor Brown because he “helped to enact one of the largest gun bans in the history of Maryland” – the ban on the sale of assault rifles contained in SB 281.

Larry Hogan, who filled out the NRA’s questionnaire, earned an A- rating, and was recently endorsed by the NRA, has continually refused to release the promises he put in writing to gun lobbyists.

“Larry Hogan opposed common sense background checks to prevent criminals from getting handguns and opposed banning the sale of assault rifles and high capacity magazines, so it’s no surprise that the gun lobbyists at the NRA are spending money to prop up his campaign,” said Jared Smith, Maryland Democratic Party Spokesman. “Larry Hogan has refused to release the questionnaire that earned him the NRA’s endorsement because he knows that Maryland families don’t support his dangerous pro-gun agenda.”

You can listen to the NRA’s pro-Hogan robocall by clicking here.

“Hello, this is the NRA calling from 703-267-1200 with an important election alert. There’s only one candidate in the race for governor of Maryland who has stood strong against the Obama Bloomberg gun control agenda, that candidate is Larry Hogan. His opponent, Anthony Brown helped to enact one of the largest gun bans in the history of Maryland last year. That extreme anti-gun legislation, Senate Bill 281 was enacted over the objections of thousands of Marylanders who voiced their strong opposition. Anthony Brown would expand the Obama Bloomberg gun control agenda as governor and further restrict the rights of Maryland’s law abiding gun owners. This race could be decided by just a handful of votes so your vote could make the difference. Please vote Larry Hogan for governor on November 4th and encourage your family and friends to do the same. Thank you”

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2014 Governor's Race, polls

Nate Silver Gives Brown 93% Chance of Victory

FiveThirtyEight has released its gubernatorial forecasts. They say Brown will win by 9.7%–an outcome that would thrill Democrats in an increasingly hot contest.

Nate Silver’s forecast of a solid Brown win is squarely at odds with Charlie Cook’s forecast of a very tight race with an edge for Brown. It’s a great face off between people often regarded as the nation’s top polling aggregator and top political analyst.

We’ll find out who is closer to being right on Tuesday.

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2014 Governor's Race

Cook Report: Governor’s Race Rating Now a Toss Up

From the Cook Political Report:

Maryland: Both parties acknowledge that this contest between Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown and GOP businessman Larry Hogan has gotten very close in this very blue state. Neither side thought they would be spending seven figures here, particularly this late in the race. Democrats believe that they caught Hogan’s surge, and have had enough time to define their own candidate. We tend to agree and believe that Brown enjoys a slight advantage, but polling and the barrage of television ads from both sides suggest that this belongs in Toss Up.

The Cook Political Report is an extremely highly regarded source of political analysis. His team has had their ear to the ground for decades and is scrupulously nonpartisan. I’m also pleased that Charlie Cook and his family have been longtime residents of the Town of Chevy Chase here in Montgomery County.

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2014 Governor's Race, Republicans, voter fraud

Republicans Claim Voter Fraud

In an eerie reflection of a past Simpsons Halloween special, Republicans are claiming that the Democrats are trying to steal the election in Maryland:

fraudclaim

This sort of claim fits in with the Republican meme (and form of denial) that there is no way Democrats could win elections honestly, even in deep blue Maryland.

Here is why the fraud claim doesn’t make sense to me:

(1) Brian Frosh doesn’t need to steal an election. He is going to win. Easily. And unlike Nixon, he’s not paranoid enough to do it anyway.

(2) If one was going to program the machines to commit fraud, it makes no sense to show it on the final overview ballot page.

(3) But let’s imagine this is how it occurred anyway. Even if only 1 in 5 voters noticed the fraud on the overview page, there would be numerous reports of the problem.

(4) Democrats want to replace the machines. Let’s hope we can get a bipartisan consensus to spend the money in the next General Assembly.

I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories from either party. If something went wrong with this machine or this ballot, I look forward to it being investigated. But the cries from the GOP of fraud have consistently been far louder than their commentary when such claims are debunked.

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