Tag Archives: Dream Act

2018 Governor's Race

The Utter Absurdity of Vignarajah’s Claim of Deep Support for LGBT Marylanders

Can Krish Vignarajah’s campaign get any more ridiculous?

The Washington Blade published a puff piece on Vignarajah in which she touts her deep support for LGBT Marylanders. She has a nice laundry list of policy concerns:

Vignarajah said as governor she would support Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh’s decision to challenge the Trump administration’s efforts to ban trans people from the military.

Vignarajah supports the repeal of Maryland’s sodomy law and would seek to eliminate the provision of the state’s trans rights law that exempts religious institutions and private institutions. Vignarajah’s campaign platform also calls for an end to discrimination against LGBT Marylanders in housing, healthcare, employment, education and public services.

Vignarajah has called for the use of additional funding from Maryland’s general fund to combat homelessness among LGBT youth. She would also support legislation “explicitly protecting” adoption rights for same-sex couples.

Vignarajah’s platform also calls upon the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration to make it easier for Marylanders to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses.

Except she chose not to vote in the 2012 referendum on marriage equality. Despite claiming a strong commitment to LGBT Marylanders and that she would be the most pro-LGBT governor ever, she just couldn’t be bothered to drive home to Maryland to vote or request an absentee ballot.

Instead, she voted in DC for “convenience.” By the way, this also means she missed the vote on the Maryland DREAM Act, so perhaps we might also ignore her commitment to “Making Maryland the Most Immigrant-Friendly State in America.”

How stupid does she think we are?

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Immigration

Anti-Immigrant Sentiment and Republican Support

While yesterday’s post looked at the growth of anti-immigrant, radical right populist parties in Europe, today turns back to Maryland. Specifically, just how closely linked is anti-immigrant sentiment to support for Republicans?

The election results from Question 4 from 2012 provide a handy snapshot of the views of voters on immigrants. Question 4 asked voters if they wanted to keep in place the Maryland Dream Act. The pro-immigrant side won a big victory when 58.9% of Marylanders voted in favor of allowing undocumented immigrants to pay in-state college tuition under certain conditions.

The county results on Question 4 turn out to be an excellent predictor of how each county voted in the 2012 presidential election. The scatterplot below shows that the share of a county’s voters that supported Romney or Hogan tended to increase in line with the share who voted no on Question 4.

Q4 & RomneyThis was not a one off, as the same is true for the 2014 gubernatorial election. Support for the Republican Larry Hogan tended to rise with the share who voted no on Question 4.

Q4 & HoganThe correlation between the share who voted no and the share who voted for Romney in each county was a very high .96. (Correlations have a maximum of 1, which would indicate that one factor perfectly predicts the other.) The correlation between the no vote and vote for Hogan was the same .96.

The next part of this series in immigration will compare the strength of immigration to other issues and demographic factors as predictor of election outcomes.

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