You Don't Say

Who didn't see this coming?

A liberal lobbying group has given its former director its highest rating on a legislative scorecard that generally favored Democrats.

Progressive Maryland's scorecard — covering the General Assembly's 2007 special session and the 2008 legislative session — gave Del. Tom Hucker a 99 out of 100 in its rankings. Twenty percent of the score came from a subjective ''leadership" evaluation in which Hucker received a 19 out of 20.

Sean Dobson, Progressive Maryland's executive director, saw nothing unusual in Hucker's ranking.

''He's a lifetime advocate for working families, so it's not surprising at all," Dobson said.

Of course, this isn't the first time that Progressive Maryland has covered for Delegate Hucker. Back in May, Hucker was outed as being wined and dined by lobbyists in direct contradiction to Progressive Maryland's stances, and not at peep was heard out of the group. The Hucker/Progressive Maryland lovefest is so bad, even the left is tired of it. FSP poster "lefty" (hardly a friend of our side) had this to say about it:

(1) Progressive Maryland has turned into Tom Hucker, Inc., (2) Tom Hucker supported the bill calling for the slots referendum, and (3) Tom Hucker doesn't want the public to know about (2), it's not really surprising to see PM "sitting this one out." Yes, the union/activist divide probably had something to do with it, too, but unfortunately the interests of Tom Hucker have overridden pretty much everything else at Tom Hucker, Inc.

So for Progressive Maryland to design a survey that makes Tom Hucker look good is, shall we say, a bit unsurprising.

The real star of this story, however, is House Minority Leader Tony O'Donnell

Republicans received low scores, which pleased House Minority Leader Anthony J. O'Donnell, who received a 3.

''I am actually happy of my very low score with that organization, and actually disappointed that I scored three points. I'm going to have to work harder to reduce it," said O'Donnell (R-Dist. 29C) of Lusby.

He called Progressive Maryland a socialist front.

‘‘I don’t say that rhetorically. These are the political socialists who have rebranded themselves as quote-unquote progressives to fool Marylanders and American citizens,” he said. ‘‘They have not been able to get a political foothold under their previous banner of the Socialist Party of America, so they’ve rebranded themselves.”

Thanks goodness that the Minority Leader is willing to call a spade a spade here. I wish Progressive Maryland and Delegate Hucker could be as honest...