On State YR Issues

Yes, the race for State YR Chairman is still going on. Here's a little more about what my priorities will be as Chairman:

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 05-27-2009

The Five in 33

Surprisingly (at least to me) only five candidates applied to fill the State Senate vacancy created by the resignation of Janet Greenip in District 33. The candidates are:

• Tom Angelis: Baltimore City High School Teacher and Republican Candidate for County Executive in 2002 and 2006
  
• Dave Boschert: Former Delegate, Former County Councilman, Republican Candidate for County Executive in 2006 and Currently the Executive Director of the Maryland Classified Employees Association.
  
• Art Ebersberger: Insurance Broker, Member of the Anne Arundel County School Board Nominating Commission, Anne Arundel Medical Center Trustee and founder of Leadership Anne Arundel.
  
• James King: Current Delegate from District 33 A and owner of the Rockfish & Kaufmann's Tavern.
• Big Ed Reilly: Current County Councilman from District 7 and Insurance Agent

I'm somewhat surprised that County Councilwoman Cathy Vitale took a pass.

A special meeting/public hearing of the Anne Arundel Central Committee will be held on Tuesday, June 2 at 6 pm in room 180 of the Lowe House Office Building in Annapolis. The committee intends to conclucde the process on the 2nd but if necessary, the conclusion of the procedure and recording the vote will occur at the regularly scheduled Central Committee meeting on Wednesday, June 3 meeting at 7 pm at 15 West Street in Annapolis.

The Committee is allowing for public comment until June 1 by US mail to the RSCCAAC, ATTN: Chairman Rzepkowski, PO Box 127, Riva, MD 21140 or by e-mail to arzepkowski@aagop.org.

It will be interesting to see who winds up with the seat. Conventional wisdom says it's between King and Reilly, but I have heard rumblings that Boschert may have support on the Committee as well.

Since none of these five candidates come from the small government/low tax wing of the party, I would expect that there will be a challenger from the right in the 2010 Primary regardless of who gets selected.....

Not All Numbers Mean Something

Adam Pagnucco has spent this week trying to bury the State Republican Party due to changes in the voter registration numbers. The basic premise is that because the total number of registered Democrats in Maryland is increasing at a faster rate than the number of registered Republicans that the Republican Party is doomed.

However, the total number of registered party members in the state or in any particularly jurisdiction is relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

Take a look, for example, at my home district of District 31. In that district, there are 1.6 Democratic registrants for every Republican registrant. Election results speak to any an entirely different set of circumstances. Last year, John McCain and Andy Harris both carried 58% of the vote in this district during the Presidential Election. And in 2006:

• Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele both won about 60% of the vote in the District.
• AG Candidate Scott Rolle and Comptroller Candidate Anne McCarthy both carried 31.
  
• Bryan Simonaire became the first Republican State Senator in the District;
• Don Dwyer, Nic Kipke, and Steve Schuh were elected as Delegates; the first GOP sweep of Distirct 31
• County Councilman Ron Dillon was re-elected without Democratic Opposition.
  

The point of this exercise is to prove that while voter registration numbers are a cute way to try and say a party is or is not dying, they are in no way the be all and end all of the situation. Maryland has had an overwhelming majority of voters registered as Democrats for a long time in a number of districts. But that has not stopped a lot of those districts from elecitng Republicans to serve in the General Assembly, and it hasn't stopped these voters from supporting Republican candidates over Democrats at the statewide level. You talk to a lot of these voters in districts like the 31st, and you find out that these voters are always voting Republican, they just choose not to change their registration for whatever reason.

Bottom line: a lot of these Democrats that Pagnucco likes to use to prove that the Republican Party is dead are actually supporting Republican candidates. With the continued incompetence of Governor O'Malley and Democratic Leadership, I have a feeling that the number of D's voting R is going to increase substantially in 2010....

The Brian Griffiths Minute: 05-14-2009

For more info on this story, click here.

Where have I heard this before?

Let's just say some of us saw this coming....

One of Maryland's budget-balancing tactics - asking millionaires to pay more money to the state - appears to be backfiring as the number of the highest-earning taxpayers dwindles with the flagging economy....

....But as the state comptroller's office sifts through this year's returns, it is finding that the number of Marylanders with more than $1 million in taxable income who filed by the end of April has fallen by one-third, to about 2,000. Taxes collected from those returns as of last month have declined by roughly $100 million.
- The Baltimore Sun, 5/14/2009

That's because the General Assembly as a whole refuses to act like grown ups and live within their means. Instead of acting responsibly and reducing state spending last year when they had to opportunity, they chose to approval O'Malley's irresponsible tax hikes, and bless his near immoral increase in discretionary state spending. Instead of cutting spending to manageable levels, Democrats railroaded a $2 billion tax increase to cover a $500 million shortfall, and then added $1.5 billion in spending just to break even.

No reasonably intelligent person would think that's a good idea. It's an even worse idea when you considered, as conservatives have noted time and time again, that tax revenues decrease when individuals and businesses change their spending habits or leave the state entirely.
- Brian Griffiths, 9/4/2008

Still, the "substantial decline" in million-dollar earners filing on time was enough for the comptroller's office to announce that it will "be thoroughly analyzing these returns and their implications." And it was enough for opponents of the state's new surcharge to say, in essence, "I told you so."

"I don't think anyone can dispute that some people have left Maryland," said Senate Minority Leader Allan H. Kittleman (R-Howard). "That's what we were trying to explain when we were voting on this."
- Washington Post, 5/14/2009

It's true that the housing and retail sectors being down are going to lead to lower tax revenues. But what the writers do not take into account, naturally, is the decrease in tax revenues due to the increases in taxes. I have noted before that when tax rates are increased, revenues decrease. This is particularly true when you make it a point to pass taxes targeted at those with the means to leave.
- Brian Griffiths, 7/13/2008

"This is not an unexpected development, but it is a very unfortunate development," Schuh said. "It is deja vu all over again."
- The Captial, 5/14/2009

Of course one thing that we noted time and again was the fact that increases in taxes would lead to decrease tax revenues. While a small portion of that can be attributed to the national economy, the bulk of the difference in revenues collected vis-a-vis revenues projected has a lot to do with the impact of this profligate spending and irresponsible tax hikes.
- Brian Griffiths, 7/9/2009

So, we are going to go ahead and try to further fleece those Maryland taxpayers who are simultaneously most able to pay more taxes and able to pick up and move someplace that their tax burden won't be so high? This is what passes for fiscal responsibility in the minds of Maryland Democrats?
- Brian Griffiths, 3/27/2008

Don't Wince.....Act

There is a piece by Dan Balz in the Post today nothing that some Republicans are "wincing" by the statements former Vice-President Dick Cheney has made criticizing the Obama Administration. A lot of the piece goes on to talk about the ever-popular "unnamed Republicans" who believe that Cheney is a distraction to the future of the Republican Party and that his engagement on the issues surrounding the Administration are doing more harm than good.

I would be willing to take a different approach. The fact that Vice-President Cheney is one of the few Republicans who have been willing to stand up and criticize the Administration is more of a condemnation of the Republcian Party than it is anything else. While many Republicans continue to jockey for position within the minority, few prominent Republicans have been willing to stand up in an articulate manner for core conservative principles. The fact that the Vice-President is willing to stand up for this, regardless of public opinion and regardless of those people in the party who have a problem with it, is a positive for the country and for the party, not a negative.

If prominent Republicans truly have a problem with Cheney's prominence on these issues, they need to shut up and talk about issues from a conservative perspective instead of worry about what plays well in Washington. And dumb stuff like the NRSC endorsing Charlie Crist in the Florida Senate race isn't going to help shed the label that D.C. Republicans are indiffermt to the plight of the party and the plight of the conservative movement.

Judd Legum: On $ale Now

Well, if you had any preconceived notion that Judd Legum's campaign for the Maryland House of Delegates was about serving the people of District 30, you can forget about that. Looks like the truth-impaired Clintonista needs to go out of state to raise his money. Legum's ActBlue page (curiously and seemingly illegally still lacking an authority line) notes that his campaign is having his next fundraiser in Washington, DC, and it is being headlined by former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta.

The "host committee" contains a number of national Clintonistas, including Howard Wolfson and Patti Solis Doyle, plus former MoveOn.org Director Tom Mattize.

So, what we have here is a candidate for the Maryland House of Delegates who is more interested in hobnobbing with Washington Insiders and raising the money from Washington Special Interest Groups than in the people of District 30. Obvious, Judd Legum's political compass is pretty far askew if he thinks that the people of District 30 will be well served by his raising of dirty money from Washington lobbyists (funny considering he claims to be eschewing money from Maryland lobbyists).

Let's face it: Judd Legum is a joke and an embarrassment to the Maryland Democratic Party. The number of Democrats who have privately told me that they wish he would just go away is impressive. And anybody who thinks that the people of District 30 will be well served by a candidate bought and paid for by Washington lobbyists is seriously deluding themselves....

Shameless Plug

Myself and the rest of the Anne Arundel Young Republicans are doing the Relay for Life at Anne Arundel Community College this week.

Please consider visiting my participant page and dropping a few bucks to help fight cancer...

Now it gets Interesting

For a long time I was discussing the likelihood that Comptroller Peter Franchot would challenge Governor O'Malley in next year's Democratic primary. Well, it looks like the Governor is going to get a challenge.....not from the left, but from the right according to the Sun:

George W. Owings III, a former Democratic delegate and party leader from Calvert County, is “actively considering a challenge” to Gov. Martin O’Malley in next year’s election, the former majority leader told The Baltimore Sun.

The 64-year-old Vietnam war hero from Dunkirk, who served on Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s cabinet, said he was “45 to 60 days” away from deciding whether to challenge O’Malley in the 2010 Democratic primary. He acknowledged that the odds of anyone unseating the incumbent governor “are very long.”.....

....After serving in the House of Delegates from 1988 to 2004, Owings was Ehrlich’s secretary of the Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs. A conservative Democrat, Owings said he believes the state party has “strayed from its working class roots” under O’Malley’s leadership.

The former mortgage banker said he began mulling a challenge after the governor pushed unpopular tax hikes through the General Assembly in 2007 in order to confront the massive structural budget deficit he inherited.

“I see a lot of good, solid working-class Democrats with serious concerns about the direction we are taking,” Owings said. He said he has “the mechanics in place” for an organized campaign, including “some guarantees of operating money” from a “loosely knit financing committee.”

This is the best piece of news that opponents of Governor O'Malley could possibly hear. A bruising Democratic primary means there is a pretty good chance that O'Malley will need to waste financial and political capital running against a fellow Democrat, while the Republican candidate will be able to criss-cross the state introducing themselves to voters and stay above the fray......assuming we united behind one candidate (which is an altogether separate problem with all of the competing interests amount the Bob Ehrlich, Charles Lollar, and Mike Pappas camps).

And Owings isn't the only one contemplating a challenge. Former Prince George's County Executive Wayne Curry may jump into the fray too. Even usually reliable Democratic quote machine Matthew Crenson even concedes the following to the Sun:

“Even if they’re not true, the fact that there are so many rumors suggests that O’Malley is perceived as vulnerable,” Crenson said.

This is a good sign, but let's not bet the ranch that this is the be all and end all of the 2010 Election, either. Sure, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend may have been morally wounded when she gave up 20-percent of the priamry vote to grocery store clerk Raymond Fustero in 2002, but remember that incumbent Governor Parris Glendening bowled right through then Harford County Executive Eileen Rehrmann and former Redskin Ray Schoenke in the primary in his 1998 re-election campaign.

This is a positive development that O'Malley is drawing potential primary challengers, but there is a lot of work for Republicans to do over the next 18 months for us to be able to draw any benefit from it...