Local Election Issues

Thursday, October 16, 2014, 10am to 11:30 in the Meeting Room (behind the fireplace)

I planned to cover Maryland and Howard County election issues on the last week of October, but early voting starts on October 23 and it would make more sense to have a discussion on local elections before then. We will discuss local elections on October 16 and reschedule the ObamaCare discussion  to October 30. We will have a broad discussion on the national election on October 23.

Ken has agreed to lead the discussion and he will surely bring interesting discussion topics, like he did in our primary election meeting in April.. However, we would have a better meeting if you brought your own issues you would like to discuss. If you post your issue to the blog, it would give the rest of us time to prepare. So please do!

----------- Update 10/17/14 -----------

Here is copy of Ken's presentation at the meeting:

The only certain local general election contests that I see are for County Executive, Council District 1, Delegate district 9B, and four seats on the school board.  However, there are possible contest for Senate District 9 and for the third seat in Delegate district 12.

It's over for all of the other four Council seats, where the incumbents (three Democrats and Republican Greg Fox in district 5) will be reelected.  There isn't even any GOP opposition to Terrasa or Sigaty.

Also definitely settled is everything in legislative district 13.  Team 13 for the Democrats did such a good job in the primary of publicizing the newcomer to their slate (delegate candidate Vanessa Atterbeary) that she finished first.  It shouldn't be necessary for them to do the same again.  And Delegate district 9A is so Republican that no Democrat could possibly win it.  Incumbent Warren Miller will be reelected and Trent Kittleman (step-mother of Allan) will join him in Annapolis.

 

I wouldn't want to bet on who's going to win the County Executive race between Democrat Courtney Watson and Republican Allan Kittleman.  Both are strong candidates with long family histories of service to the county.  Courtney's father, Ed Cochran, served one term as the second Howard County Executive.  Allan's late father Bob Kittleman had served in both the House of Delegates and the Senate.  I first met Bob Kittleman as he worked the polls in Savage in 1962 and soon after that in his role as Education chair for the county NAACP, when the push was on for an accelerated pace of school desegregation.  On issues, Allan is very much like Bob: very conservative on economic matters and willing to take a stand against discrimination and for reform.  You can see from his responses to the Sun questionnaire that he's no orthodox Republican.  I expect the main reason why he didn't seek reelection to the Senate was because of mutual discomfort in the party caucus.  He had to give up his role as Senate Minority Leader when he voted for the Marriage Equality bill.  His vote to repeal the death penalty was joined by only one other Senate Republican,  This year, his vote to ban transgender discrimination went against the party rank and file.  But he's definitely with them on such matters as guns and spending.  Courtney Watson has a record as a member of the school board and the Council and she's campaigning, with a ton of money behind her, as at least a moderate liberal.  Howard County has been trending Democratic for some time now, so Kittleman has his work cut out for him in trying at attract registered Democrats and independents.  The only Republican County Executive here (Chuck Ecker) barely squeaked by in 1990 and had it a little easier in 1994.  As I see it, anything can happen in this race.

 

The only Council district that either party could win is Council district 1, which Courtney Watson is leaving.  However, in the redistricting process, Democrats made it a little easier for themselves by adding all of Dorsey's Search (including the precinct south of Rt. 108) to it.  These four precincts could provide a plus of 400 to 500 votes for the Democrats over what they get from the rest of the territory.  It also probably doesn't hurt that their candidate (Jon Weinstein) ran for delegate in most of the District 1 precincts in 2010 and that Republican candidate (Kevin Schmidt) is a relative newcomer to county politics.

 

The most uncertain legislative contest is in LD9B, which mainly consists of south and southeast Ellicott City, between Democrat Tom Coale and Republican Bob Flanagan.  The latter has name recognition as a former delegate and Ehrlich cabinet member and as the narrow loser to Courtney Watson in Council district 1 four years ago.  Coale was a Republican as recently as two years ago, but comes across in the Sun questionnaire and public forums as far more liberal than Flanagan.  Democratic redistricters created 9B in an effort to elect one more of their brand to a seat in Annapolis.  They will be quite upset if Coale loses or if he wins and turns out to be not as liberal as he sounds.

 

Not quite certain are the Senate seat in LD9 or, some say, the third delegate seat in LD12.  In that LD9 Senate race, the very conservative Republican Delegate Gail Bates should be strongly favored to win it because two-thirds of the territory is extremely Republican and the 9B section seems less extremely Democratic.  But Democratic newcomer Ryan Frederic is putting a lot of money into his campaign and has gotten endorsements from unions and women's rights groups that are unhappy with Bates.  You can see how they stand on issues from their responses to the Sun's questionnaire.

 

In district 12, it seems clear that the two Howard Countians running (Democrats Clarence Lam and Terri Hill) are a lock to win two of the three delegate seats.  That's because most of the voters in the district will be Howard Countians and the other four candidates for these seats reside in Baltimore County.  But the Columbia end of the district is so Democratic that I expect the third Democrat (Eric Ebersole) to join them as winners.  The biggest threat coming from the Republican side is businessman Joe Hooe, who has run for delegate a couple of times already but never in the Columbia territory.  As long as Ebersole doesn't fall too far behind among Baltimore County voters, he should cruise in Columbia.

 

That gets us to school board, where there seems to be some strange nastiness going on.  Six members of the county board voted to condemn fellow member Cindy Vaillancourt for daring to mention the word "condom" in talking with a group of people including some students.  Somebody got all irate and filed an official complaint alleging sexual harassment by her and this is hanging over her head through the election and maybe after (with talk of impeachment and removal).  Of the eight primary winners, Vaillancourt finished first, with 15,851 votes (ahead of fellow incumbent Sandra French, who had 14,688).  Somebody up there in officialdom seems unhappy about that.  Thus, in my opinion, the nastiness.  We'll see whether this whole charade over condoms helps or hurts Vaillancourt, who is one of four teacher's union endorsees, in the election.  I expect someone has shot themselves in the foot and it's not the candidate who finished first in the primary.  The other three teacher's union endorsees, who finished just behind French in the primary, are Professor Bess Altwerger (with 12,733 votes), lawyer Dan Furman (with 11,880 votes), and pediatrician Dr. Zee Beams (with 10,042 votes).  The other three candidates, who finished sixth, seventh, and eighth, are Christine O'Connor, former member Allen Dyer, and lawyer Mike Smith.  They received 8477, 7724, and 6730 votes respectively.  O'Connor seems the best situated of this trio, since she has a base of support in Elkridge and the northeast.  Dyer may get a boost out of the board majority's attack on Vaillancourt, since he may now be more likely to be perceived as a previous victim  of an education establishment vendetta.  But he was indeed a serious boat-rocker and seems determined to remain such.  The makeup of the board majority is at stake in this election.  If Sandra French is reelected, the current majority will remain in power.  If the four union candidates all win, they'll have a 4-3 majority on the board.

(There is a letter from school board chair Ellen Flynn Giles in the Sun on Oct. 14 that defends the board’s position on the anti-Vaillancourt action.)

 

Finally, there are the rather unexciting ballot questions:  two statewide and one local.  Question 1 would make it difficult to move money intended for transportation projects from the state Transportation Trust Fund.  Senate president Mike Miller introduced this constitutional amendment and pushed it to passage.  Question 2 would enable charter counties to fill County Executive vacancies by special election (which they can already do for Council members if they choose).  That would also apply to the Mayor in Baltimore City.

Local Question A would allow the Howard County Council, by two-thirds vote (meaning four of the five members), to extend the deadline for consideration of legislation for a second 30 days.  They can already do that, by the same means, for a single 30 day period.  Without any extension at all, county legislation dies automatically after 65 days.

 

Ken