Larry Hogan for Governor of Maryland

Recently, toward the end of the two-month hiatus in my postings, there was a primary in Maryland. And one consequence of my being a Republican, a distinct minority in this state, is that while the Democrats had many, many contests from Governor down to County Council, I saw one single contest on my ballot: for Governor. For every other partisan position, there were either no candidates at all or exactly as many candidates as positions to fill, so every candidate was running unopposed. (There were contests for Board of Education and one judicial contest, but I never vote in the former and I had no knowledge of the candidates in the latter.)

For Governor, my choice became clear not long after I began investigating my options: first of all, two of the four candidates, Ron George and Charles Lollar, were hardly serious candidates, though I did get one piece of literature from George and none (until one arrived after Primary Day) from Larry Hogan, who was a serious candidate, and in fact the favored one. The real choice was between Hogan and David Craig.

Interestingly, one of the things that convinced me to vote for Hogan was Craig's campaign literature — in fact most of what convinced me to vote for Hogan was what his opponents, Craig and George, and their blogging supporters, said. One piece of Craig's literature began by proclaiming that he had a 100% rating from Right to Life and a high rating from the National Rifle Association — meaning that on both issues he was opposed to my own positions. However, I certainly have no problem voting for pro-gun, “pro-life” Republicans if they don't make these their chief issues, as I understand that I don't agree with any candidate on everything. But in Craig's case, he made these two the cornerstones of his campaign, and immediately lost me.

Other things that Craig, George, or their blogger supporters said turned me off as well, and turned me to a strong Hogan supporter. Hogan was Appointments Secretary in Governor Bob Ehrlich's administration, and he was criticized for daring to put (gasp!) Democrats in some appointed positions. Well, this being a Democratic-majority state, any Republican Governor is going to accomplish nothing if he refuses to accommodate some of the Democrats' wishes. Giving them a role in his administration was a good thing, as long as he generally pushed a Republican program, which he did.

Well, it seems that most Republicans agreed with me (well, not most, but certainly more than there were Craig, George, or Lollar supporters individually), so Larry Hogan is the nominee, and has my support even more strongly for November than in the primary, though in this Democratic state, I realize he is definitely an underdog against Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, the Democratic nominee. Brown won the Democratic primary even more decisively than Hogan did the Republican primary, receiving as many votes as his two significant opponents, Doug Gansler and Heather Mizeur, combined. Of course, Brown has going for him some of the same things that Barack Obama did in getting the Presidency: both are offspring of black fathers and white mothers, raised in white (or at least not black) neighborhoods, who became identified as black when they set up their political bases in black areas. I do have to say, however, that Anthony Brown is better-qualified to be Governor than was Obama to be president in 2008; eight years as Lieutenant Governor probably gave him some ideas of how a Governor can do his job.

My gripe with Brown does not concern his competence, however. He has been Martin O'Malley's Lieutenant Governor, and his entire campaign so far has made it clear that he intends to continue O'Malley's policies, which are in my mind mistaken. For example, one of O'Malley's first moves on becoming Governor was to raise the State sales tax 20%. He has pushed through things like a State version of the DREAM Act; although one of those things he pushed (legalizing gay marriage) I support, most of them are moves in the wrong direction. We need to change, and Hogan is the only candidate who even wants to change things. Thus Larry Hogan is my candidate for Governor.

The State of West Maryland?

This morning I just happened to notice a local newspaper, with a front-page headline telling me that five counties in Western Maryland would secede and form a new state under a proposal that has been made by a resident of that western area. The five counties — Garrett, Allegany, Washington, Frederick, and Carroll — according to the census statistics I have spotted on the Web, have a total population of 653,133, which is a rather small population for a State; Maryland is not considered a very large State, population-wise, and its total population is 5.8 million.

The person spearheading the secession movement says that Maryland is dominated by three jurisdictions — Prince George's and Montgomery Counties and the city of Baltimore; yet this seems natural, as these three jurisdictions have so many more people. Montgomery County (the county in which I live) alone has a population of 971,777, about 1½ times as many as that of the five counties combined that would form the proposed state. So if Western Maryland secedes from the state, how would the people of Garrett County feel? Their 30,097 people would be a negligible part of the whole West Maryland population; would they feel a need to secede to make themselves heard?

The last time a few counties seceded from a State was during the Civil War, and those counties seceded from Virginia to stay in the USA, so it was a special case. It hardly seems likely that West Maryland would be able to persuade Congress to accept them as the 51^st State.

It is true, however, that they have been treated shabbily, in some cases, by the State. Governor Martin O'Malley pushed a Congressional redistricting recently that divided up Western Maryland into two districts, both with enough Democrats in them to force out long-time Representative Roscoe Bartlett in last November's election. I can sympathize, to some extent, though their secession would leave me in an even bluer State than I'm in now. But I doubt that they have a chance.

The irony of it all!

I received an e-mail message today. It purported to come from our execrable Governor, Martin O'Malley, though I imagine it was actually written and sent by some staff person. The burden of the message was that Chris Christie is a terrible person, and an appeal for funds to support his Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono.

I don't know how I managed to get on that particular mailing list — I presume because I signed a pro-marriage-equality petition — but the irony of this is amazing. First of all, Martin O'Malley's support for any candidate is hardly a positive, in my opinion. Governor O'Malley has done only two things I liked in the term and a half of his administration: supported the so-called “Purple Line” (a mass transit proposal that's been in the works for 25 years) and pushed for marriage equality. I've been against just about everything he's put through, except for those two. Almost the first thing he did on taking office was to raise the sales tax by 20%. He's also pressed to have illegal aliens given resident status in paying tuition at state institutions, and to end the death penalty. So an endorsement by O'Malley is reason for me to go the opposite way anyway. But Christie is a favorite of mine. I want to see him win big this year, so he will be in a good position to win the nomination for the Presidency in 2016. I don't have the money to give to campaigns, but if I did, and if I gave to anyone in the New Jersey election, it would be to Christie, not to his opponent!

That e-mail went, of course, into the trash folder. But I wish I could send something back to whoever put me on that mailing list, laughing in his face. (Hitting "unsubscribe" got me a screen that says “Forbidden.” Could this be a violation of the law?)

Maryland and the death penalty

The state of Maryland, where I currently have my home, is in the process of ending its death penalty. The House of Delegates today voted to do so; the Senate has already acted. Governor O'Malley is a death penalty opponent, so there is no chance he will do anything but sign it into law. And it will not make a practical difference, because Maryland has not executed many people in recent years. What it will say is that nobody's life is worth anything — if someone takes it in an act of murder, he will not be required to pay an equal penalty. My wife — who is against the death penalty — takes the position that if someone is wrongfully convicted and executed, as could have happened to Kirk Bloodsworth, it cannot be reversed. This is so, but if someone is murdered, that cannot be reversed either.

Maryland is making a mistake — but I can't do anything to prevent it. I guess we should change the state motto to “Maryland Welcomes Murderers.”

A stupid, but unsurprising, move

A committee of the Maryland State Senate has approved a bill to repeal the death penalty in the state. And it is expected to pass the full Senate, and given Gov. Martin O'Malley's support, ultimately become law. It makes it clear that in Maryland, anyway, the life of a murder victim is worthless. A killer can take a life in an act of murder, and his own life will be spared.

I must say that I cannot see any justification for the repeal of the death penalty. A murderer who is allowed to live, even if found guilty, has been judged by the state as worth more than his victim, who was deprived of the rest of his life. But death penalty opponents are on a roll. I think they are stupid, but I can't reverse their gains.

An egregious gerrymander

Peter V. R. Franchot is the Comptroller of rhe State of Maryland. He is also a very loyal and partisan Democrat. So I was very surprised that he has come out against the weird gerrymander of Maryland's Congressional districts that was proposed by Governor Martin O'Malley, and urges voters to vote against Question 5 on this year's ballot.

The Third District is particularly fantastic, and has been termed the third worst gerrymandered district in the country by a study. But some of the others are still pretty bad, even if not that bad. (My county, Montgomery, is divided among the Sixth and Eighth districts as well as that weird Third. The Sixth District does not look too bad, except that it is a deliberate attempt to end the Congressional career of Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett by putting just enough Democrats into the district to make it elect a Democrat. As a result, the Eighth, the district I'm in, runs from the Washington suburbs to the Pennsylvania line, with some narrow threads of land tying it together. The study actually ranked the Sixth as worse than the Eighth, though the Eighth looks a lot worse to my eyes.)

I plan to vote against Question 5. But I'm sure that even if the gerrymander is overturned, Gov. O'Malley will resubmit almost the same plan.

Two referenda

It appears that there will be two referenda on the Maryland ballot this November on legislation that has been pushed by Governor Martin O'Malley. And while O'Malley has gotten behind both of them, and similar groups are forcing referenda on both, I'm of quite different minds on the two. And I expect to vote one way on one, and the other way on the other.

The first is the “gay marriage” question. I will certainly vote to keep the law as it was passed by the Maryland General Assembly (State legislature) and signed by Gov. O'Malley. What reason the opposition has for wanting to reverse this law I do not understand. I have not seen a single point made in opposition to gay marriage that holds up to scrutiny, and it is clear and simple a bigoted attempt to make things difficult for homosexual Marylanders.

On the other hand, Gov. O'Malley is also pushing a State version of the so-called DREAM Act. It would make illegal aliens living in Maryland — without the legal right to do so! — eligible for in-State tuition reductions at Maryland's public higher education institutions. I cannot see why Marylanders' state taxes should go to help these people get an education in Maryland, while, say, a United States citizen who has his primary residence in one of the other 49 States does not get this break. If Gov. O'Malley wished to eliminate the in-State/out-of-State differential, it might be justified. But to put illegals ahead of, for example, residents of Delaware or Virginia makes no sense to me. They have no business even being in the state, for goodness' sake!

A fight next door

While the Democrats have a cut and dried choice for their Presidential nominee, there is a nasty, bitter fight in the congressional district next to the one I'm in that has led to my Democratic-enrolled wife (who does not live with me) receiving an amazing number of campaign leaflets.

First, some background. The westernmost district of Maryland (the Sixth) has long been represented by a Republican, Roscoe Bartlett. A couple of decades ago, then Governor Parris Glendening, horrified at the fact that Democratic-majority Maryland had a 4-4 division in its Congressional delegation, pushed through a gerrymander which would have made Elbridge Gerry proud. And it worked. Maryland's delegation has been either 6-2 or 7-1 in favor of the Democrats since then. (The one time it went 7-1 was after a bitter Republican intra-party fight in one district that left the incumbent Republican, defeated in the primary, endorsing the Democrat.) But the current Governor, Martin O'Malley, thought he could go Glendening one better. He took Roscoe Bartlett's district and remodeled it so it extends all the way into relatively urbanized Montgomery County, hoping to put in just enough Democrats to defeat Bartlett. The new Sixth District ranges from the very rural western end of the state to the dense Washington suburbs, stopping just a few blocks away from my home.

Some say the new district was drawn especially for State Senator Rob Garagiola, who has decided to move to the federal scene. Certainly, Garagiola figured so. But a serious challenger showed up: John Delaney, a businessman who has never held political office, but who seems, in the eyes of many people, to be a better choice. (The fact that he actually does not live in the Sixth District is no barrier. The Constitution only requires Congressmen to live in the same State that they represent, not the same district. In fact, it does not even require States to divide themselves into districts.) Delaney has the support of many powerful local politicians, including Douglas Duncan, who was the County Executive for years. And even former President Bill Clinton for some reason got into the act. You do not often hear of an ex-President endorsing a candidate in a local race in a State where they do not live, but he has officially endorsed John Delaney.

Each of the two (there are actually three other candidates in that primary, but nobody bothers to talk about any of the other three) has been slinging as much mud as you could imagine at the other. Garagiola brought up a six-year-old article in Forbes Magazine talking about how Delaney's business practices were heartless, and Delaney was termed a “loan shark” in Garagiola's campaign material. Delaney, in turn, points to Garagiola's work as a paid lobbyist for organizations ranging from banks to labor unions, something that Garagiola has tried to hide. Local newspapers have come out for Delaney. So, although the district may have been drawn up for Garagiola, Delaney seems to be the candidate of everyone who might be called “establishment,” or at least the “Democratic establishment.”

Obviously, I'm not going to favor either of one — first of all, I'm not in the district; second of all, I hope that whoever wins the primary loses to Bartlett in November — but Delaney seems the more honorable candidate (even if he's far too much of a liberal Democrat for me to like him, and even if he has the endorsement of Bill Clinton, whom I despise!) But it will be interesting to see who wins, and whether the supporters of the loser can back the winner, or whether the beneficiary of all this infighting will be Roscoe Bartlett.

Maryland's gay marriage vote

And now, on this Friday, the Maryland House of Delegates (the lower house of the State legislature) voted to permit gay marriage. Last time, it passed the Senate but failed in the House, so (since no Senator has voiced any intention to change his vote) it will pass the Senate and be signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, who this year has gotten behind the bill as he did not last time. The forces of bigotry will try to put it up for a referendum, and I don't know how successful they will be, but since they will at least try, it will probably hold up the effective date of the law. But there is a good chance Maryland will be the next state to permit it.

This time, what got the bill through the House was two Republican Delegates' changing their votes — a good thing, because it means that what I consider my party is moving toward the right side of this question. The Democrats have far more delegates than they need to pass any legislation, but in this case there are a substantial number of African-American members who seem to believe, as I mentioned recently, that discrimination is only discrimination if it's directed against African-Americans. They should be ashamed about themselves, but until they understand that anti-gay discrimination is as bad as anti-black discrimination, it is necessary to make progress within the Republicans who are not Religious Right fanatics. And some progress has been made, as shown by this vote.

Gregory Kane, gay marriage, and religious freedom

A column appeared by Gregory Kane in today's Washington Examiner entitled “No reason to trust Maryland liberals on marriage.” In it, Kane seems to think that even though Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley has promised clergymen who would not preside over same-sex weddings that they would not have to, they will have to in the end. He says:

I have the sneaking suspicion that the forces hankering to legalize same-sex marriage won't rest until pastors like Hickman and Coates are compelled, by law, to perform same-sex marriages in their churches. Here's the plan I see developing.

The CMPA passes. Within a year, maybe two, maybe three, a same-sex couple or couples challenges that portion of the law that lets pastors like Hickman and Coates decide if they want to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies or not. That part of the law will be challenged because it's "unconstitutional."

The lawsuit winds its way through Maryland's courts, where it would take only one activist judge to rule for the plaintiffs, nullify the clause protecting churches that choose not to perform same-sex marriages and thus compel them to do so.

And yes, call me a cynic, but I do believe that the same-sex couple or couples who will make the challenge have already been selected.

But Kane is having unnecessary nightmares. There are clergymen now, this very day, who will not conduct certain kinds of marriages sanctioned by law: rabbis who will not conduct a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew, Catholic priests who will not officiate at a marriage where one of the parties involved is divorced, etc. And if Kane has one example he can demonstrate that a clergyman has been forced by a court to conduct a marriage that he will not sanction for religious reasons, I will accept his argument. But I believe I am safe in saying that this has never happened — in Maryland or any other State. So why is Gregory Kane worried?

Postmortems - Part 2 (Maryland/California/New York)

A local weekly newspaper in this area printed a headline, following the election, saying "GOP Wave misses Maryland." Yes, it certainly did. As I said in yesterday's post, the most important observation to take from Tuesday's election is that every State is different. Maryland is sandwiched between Pennsylvania and Virginia, both of which were great states for the GOP this year. (Virginia was already so red that there was not much to go redder, but the GOP took 3, or possibly 4, House seats away from the Democrats there. I'll say more about Pennsylvania in a subsequent post.) But in Maryland, as I said in my October 12, 2010 post, the GOP made hardly a dent in the blueness of the State. One House seat, which should have been Republican anyway, but which went to Democrat Frank Kratovil in 2008 because of an internecine split in the local GOP, came back home. A few more seats in the lower house of the State's legislature went red, but in the upper house, a couple went the other way. And a good former Governor, Bob Ehrlich, certainly not a bizarre "Tea Party" type, lost by 10 percentage points to the sitting Governor, Martin O'Malley. In the Senate, one of the most liberal members of the chamber, Barbara Mikulski, had no trouble winning by a much larger margin, over a pretty uninspiring Eric Wargotz, who was pretty much unknown outside his home county. As I said in that post on Oct. 12, it seemed strange to see the GOP winning all over the place, while seeing nothing but blue here at home. It may be because so many Marylanders are Federal Government employees, and thus unsympathetic to a "smaller Government" GOP, and rather sympathetic to a President Barack Obama who the rest of the country was rejecting. As I said earlier, O'Malley even invited Obama into the State to campaign for him, something most Democrats were certainly not doing. Pretty dispiriting, though I'm happy for the rest of the country.

New York didn't look much better. As a native of that State, I tried to follow it; the GOP didn't help their cause very much by nominating a lame excuse for a gubernatorial candidate, Carl Paladino. They elected a Democratic Governor and two Democratic Senators; most of the time you don't see two Senate seats filled in the same election in a State, but here there was one term expiring and the other seat vacant because Hillary Clinton had left to become Secretary of State, with Kirsten Gillebrand only appointed to an interim position. Both Gillebrand and Chuck Schumer easily won re-election, and Andrew Cuomo, son of a previous Governor, won the gubernatorial office.

While New York State elected the son of a governor from the 1980s and 1990s, California was restoring a governor who had served even earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jerry Brown. Like New York and Maryland, California seemed to be bypassed by the GOP wave. And this one was even stranger, because in California, the GOP had some excellent candidates. Meg Whitman, running for Governor, and Carly Fiorina, running for the Senate, were well qualified, very desirable candidates, and both put millions of dollars of their own money into their campaigns. But Jerry Brown beat Whitman, and Barbara Boxer gained reelection to the Senate over Fiorina. I guess California voters just couldn't see what was best for them, but that's how democracy works sometimes.

Mixed emotions

The results of Tuesday's elections leave me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, Nancy Pelosi gets to hand her gavel over to John Boehner, which is absolutely great, and the Republicans gained a significant number of seats in the Senate (though not a majority, but nobody really expected that) and a bunch of Governorships as well. These are the positives. But it seems that none of the specific elections I really cared about went right, except perhaps in Alaska where the results are not too clear yet.

In the State I live in, Maryland, it seems that Martin O'Malley won by a rather big margin over Bob Ehrlich. Certainly this was not a big surprise, but Ehrlich seemed to have a real chance, and so this result was a major disappointment. In California, there was an even bigger disappointment: both Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina seemed to have good chances to win, but neither one could pull it off. And in my original home state of New York, only one of the third party candidates got the 50,000 votes needed to keep his party on the ballot, and that was the Green Party candidate, the one I liked least. (The Libertarian, Warren Redlich, came very close: nearly 45,000, but close is not enough to do it. And the other third party candidates got no more that 20,000-30,000 each.)

Florida is another state I was looking at. That one was not too bad — I was very pleased to see the Democrat, Kendrick Meek, finish third! And while I would have preferred Charlie Crist to the actual winner, Marco Rubio, I think Rubio would be a reasonably good choice from what I've seen.

The worst of the results this Tuesday was in Nevada. I really thought that Harry Reid could be defeated. But this was not to be. Apparently, by nominating Sharron Angle, just like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, The Tea Partiers threw away a good chance to help throw the Democratic rascals out!

It's bizarre!

Here I am, reading the headlines showing a major Republican year, and I'm sitting in a state that obstinately refuses to go along. The Real Clear Politics poll summary shows the GOP picking up enough seats to move from behind 59-41 to a 50-50 tie, with Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas possibly setting a new record for worst defeat of an incumbent Senator, and yet, Barbara Mikulski is winning polls by a nearly 20 percent margin over Eric Wargotz. It's just bizarre.

What gives in this state? As dissatisfied as the whole country is with President Obama's performance, here the Governor, Martin O'Malley, actually brought him in to campaign for him. This is really curious. O'Malley must be just about the only Democrat that isn't running away from the Obama link as fast as possible.

I feel I've gotten stuck in a bizarre caricature of a body politic.

Common sense vs. ideological purity

There have been some primaries this year that have made it seem as if ideological purity has trumped common sense. That Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter had to leave the Republican Party — Crist to run as an independent, Specter becoming a Democrat but ending up rejected in their primary — speaks to the problem of ideological purists taking over both parties.

But we can score some points for common sense. All the polls in Arizona indicate a big win for John McCain in the primary there against J. D. Hayworth, despite the conservative radio talk show hosts' strong backing of ideologically pure Hayworth. This will be a good thing if the polls hold up.

In Arizona, at least, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin stayed true to the man who picked her for VP nominee, McCain. That at least was good. But in my own state of Maryland, where there will be a gubernatorial primary a month from now, she has come out for another ideologically pure conservative, Brian Murphy. Everyone must know that Maryland is a state where Democrats have an edge. But Bob Ehrlich has shown he can get the votes of people who normally vote Democratic. Based on polls, Ehrlich has a chance of winning in November. Murphy would lose to the incumbent, Martin O'Malley, in a walkover. No question that Ehrlich, who still has a lot of support based on his previous term in the governorship, is the more electable candidate. If you are conservative, even if you feel Ehrlich is insufficiently conservative, you should be able to accept him as better than O'Malley. And a vote for Murphy is perhaps not exactly a vote for O'Malley, but that is the likely consequence. I'm sorry, Gov. Palin, but common sense should trump ideological purity here.

Now of course people will say that I should keep quiet, call me a RINO or such, and that my supporting Bob Ehrlich is because I'm too liberal. Well, part of this may be true. I'd rather see an Ehrlich-type moderate than a far-right conservative. But in fact, for me it's more important to get someone else in O'Malley's place. I promise that if Murphy gets nominated, I'll vote for him in November. But I guarantee that he'll lose to O'Malley.

Which is better, O'Malley getting four more years, or a moderate beating him in the vote that counts, this November?

A frustrating dilemma

While the issues and candidates I'm discussing in this post are local, the basic nature of the dilemma I'm discussing are not. So I apologize to people in other parts of the country, and even outside, to whom these issues do not mean anything. But it is a serious dilemma, which I need to vent about.



Part 1.



Since the mid-1970s, I have been living in the metropolitan area of Washington, D. C. And since 1984, I have lived in the State of Maryland, specifically Montgomery County, directly north of Washington, D. C. Now if you don't know, Maryland is a rather strongly Democratic state, and most of the time I've been here, the Governor has been a Democrat. However, from 2003 to 2007, we had a Republican Governor, Bob Ehrlich. He gave up a seat in Congress to run for the Governorship, and beat a member of the Kennedy family, in fact, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, which shows you how popular he was. And I think he was, in general, a good Governor. (But see below.) However, in 2006, the state reverted to its normal Democratic allegiance, and though Ehrlich was favorably viewed by a large proportion of Marylanders, he was defeated in his attempt at re-election by the then Mayor of Baltimore, Martin O'Malley.



It should not surprise anyone, knowing me from this blog, that I say that O'Malley has been a much worse Governor than Ehrlich, and I will certainly oppose his attempt to be re-elected this November. And it will be very likely that his opponent will be Bob Ehrlich again. (This is not certain. Ehrlich still has to win his primary. And the likes of Sarah Palin have come out against him in the primary campaign. But the opponent that Palin has endorsed is virtually unknown, and Ehrlich still has a lot of popular support, so I believe that Ehrlich will easily win the nomination.) So I fully expect to be a strong supporter of Bob Ehrlich for Governor against Martin O'Malley.



Part 2.



Now to another point, at first unrelated, but as I proceed you will see what the connection is. Shortly after moving to Maryland I became aware of a movement to establish a light rail transit line which would (at first) run from Silver Spring (right near where I then lived) to Bethesda. (The plan has been vastly extended, and now they are talking about a line, now called the Purple Line, from New Carrollton to Bethesda, passing through Silver Spring, three or more times as long as the original plan.) I immediately became a strong enthusiast for this proposal, and have remained so even though I no longer live that close to the proposed route. But it has taken 25 years, and the line is still only a proposal. There is strong support for it, but opposition comes from two sources: a golf course whose property the line would traverse, and a few property owners who apparently do not want anyone that they consider riff-raff passing so close to their property.



Part 3.



Now here comes the dilemma: Martin O'Malley, as bad as he has been on every other issue that matters to me, has been a supporter of the Purple Line. And Bob Ehrlich, for all I like about him on other issues, opposes it — he worked against it as Governor, and he has made negative statements about it this year. (One reason seems to be that he likes to play golf, so the golf course has a strong call on him.) Just yesterday, at a meeting of the organization that has been pushing the Purple Line and its predecessor plans for the past 25 years, I mentioned I intended to vote for Ehrlich in the primary and general election, if I get the chance. And the (perfectly reasonable) response was "Even with his position on the Purple Line?" I had to say that I am not a one-issue voter, and on many other issues (just about everything except the Purple Line) I find Ehrlich vastly preferable to O'Malley. And at least one bystander understood, and said something like "You always have to make compromises."



Conclusion.



But this is the problem. How do you work for a candidate you believe in, and for a cause you believe in, simultaneously, when the candidate is so opposed to the cause? Comments are very welcome.

O'Malley and other death penalty opponents

Recently, Maryland's governor, Martin O'Malley, tried unsuccessfully to get the legislators in Maryland's General Assembly (what they call the state legislature in this state) to abolish the death penalty. Fortunately he did not get his way; the legislators made it more difficult to levy (with an eye toward preventing executions on insufficient proof of guilt) but defeated total abolition of the death penalty. (See this article.)



Frankly, I cannot understand death penalty opponents. Allowing murderers to live says to the world that the life of the murderer is more valuable than the lives of murder victims. The murderer did nothing to spare the victims' lives; why should he be considered worthy of living, when he gave no such considerations to their lives?



Martin O'Malley is a Roman Catholic, of course, and he echoes his church's position on the death penalty. But just as I oppose having the Government follow the teachings of the Catholic Church (or any other religious group) on such topics as abortion, I must take O'Malley to task for trying to install Catholic Church opinion on the death penalty as State law.



And death penalty opponents who base their opposition on moral grounds, rather than on the teachings of one or another religious denomination, simply cannot explain in any way that will convince me why they consider, as I said earlier in this post, the murderer's life more valuable than the lives of his victims.

Civil unions and gay marriage

In the state of Maryland, where I live, both the Governor, Martin O'Malley, and the speaker of the House of Delegates, Michael Busch, have come out in favor of civil unions, so I think that Maryland will join Vermont and Connecticut. And though I generally do not like anything associated with O'Malley, I think he is probably right. Civil unions are the best compromise between the religious right (who want to preserve "traditional marriage") and the gay friendly part of the public (who want equal rights).

Frankly, I see no harm in gay marriage. I cannot see how it even affects the people who are so opposed to it; if same-sex couples can get married, it certainly doesn't prevent opposite-sex couples from doing so. But if some people object to it being called a "marriage," then certainly giving them all the rights of a married couple without the word seems a good compromise.

Of course, the problem is that some people are (based on religious background) simply opposed to homosexuality. You can't show me anything that is not based on religion, and in fact on a specific religious belief, that makes homosexuality per se undesirable. And because we have a Constitution that forbids an "establishment of religion," no religious argument can hold water as a basis for our law.

So for once, I think O'Malley is right.