Posted on 11/18/2014 6:13:06 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
ANNAPOLIS — Preparing to launch a Republican administration in deep-blue Maryland, Gov.-elect Larry Hogan on Monday introduced a transition team that included some familiar Democratic faces as he moved to avoid some of the partisan confrontations that stymied the state’s last Republican governor.
Mr. Hogan repeatedly promised to lead a bipartisan executive branch that would be staffed with experts, not partisans, to work with the heavily Democratic General Assembly to tackle the state’s severe budget and economic problems.
“We have an enormous challenge ahead of us,” Mr. Hogan told reporters as he introduced six members of his transition team. “I’m looking for the smartest, most capable, most experienced, most talented people we can find, whether they are Democrat or Republican, whether they have business experience or government experience, whether they come from Maryland or from somewhere else.”
The transition team was the latest signal from Mr. Hogan to the Democratic leadership of the General Assembly that he wanted to avoid the bitter partisan feud that engulfed Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who was elected in 2002 as the state’s first Republican governor in 33 years and served one term before being defeated by Democrat Martin O'Malley.
Mr. Ehrlich weathered lawsuits for firing longtime Democratic appointees and suffered criticism for hiring Republicans with questionable credentials, including professional ice dancer Gregory Maddalone for a top job at the Maryland Department of Transportation.
Mr. Hogan won an upset victory over Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, a Democrat who, after serving eight years with Mr. O'Malley, expected to coast to an easy win in a state where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Well, he’s got a bully pulpit. If he can cut down the mad MD tax code, he would do well. They just about tax your breath out there.
I know that, but the base alone in MD can’t get it done. Reach out and find common ground with those Dems from areas where you won and drive a wedge between them and the Dem leadership. Hogan obviously doesn’t want to be another one-termer like Ehrlich.
In hostile areas, you have to drive different plays from those where you have a majority favorable to you. It’s why you can’t apply Texas or Wisconsin or Ohio to Maryland. This is only the 3rd Republican elected Governor there in 56 years (in fact, there has only been 7 GOP Governors there in the state’s history, and only 1 has ever been reelected, Ted McKeldin, and he was a left-winger).
Yep. Still planning to move.
They said all those same things in Wisconsin. You never know until you try.
Perfect! LOL
And that’s the one thing he should focus on, what he can get done.
I can pick you up on the way out. Pencil in May of 2016.
The media says a lot of things. Wisconsin is not Maryland. They’ve not had a state GOP in a perpetual minority. These are two completely different states with different mindsets. If Maryland didn’t have the federal government “cancer” eating into it, it would be a vastly different state today. The same thing is happening in NoVA, enough to tip the state balance there. If the Northern VA counties and PG, Montgomery & Charles on the MD side were merged with DC into their own state, both VA & MD would become securely GOP.
So then, why have any Republicans in the first place?
It IS a deep Red state after all.
In states like MD, the GOP has often been just an afterthought. Even in neighboring WV, where the GOP was a minority from 1930/32 until this election, if you wanted to get elected, you had to run as a Democrat (even if your ideology wasn’t on the left). Hogan’s challenge is picking off about 1/4th of the Dem caucus to get his agenda through. He recognizes this. That’s why it’s largely unhelpful with suggestions that he should fall on his sword and the like. Obviously, enough MD Democrats voted for Hogan that they wanted someone who could get something done, at least with respect to fiscal and tax matters. Get done what you can do and move on to the tougher things.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ on the move.
What does that mean, exactly?
What will get accomplished? There'll be a few dollars less spent on liberal pet projects, but there'll still be liberal pet projects getting funded, just so Hogan can beat his chest and say how conservative he is?
Location is irrelevant.
Just south of us is IL, which is also far from the nation's capital. How did we elect a Republican majority but IL didn't?
It's all about leadership, and standing your ground, and fighting for what you believe in. When you support the goals of your opposition under the false premise of bipartisanship, why even be a Republican?
WI never had a Republican majority in the state legislature up until 2011, and Doyle was the Rat Governor from 2002 - 2010.
Do the math. You need a majority to pass an agenda. The GOP doesn’t have enough votes themselves in Annapolis. Peeling off more reasonable members of the Dem caucus to get to that majority is what Hogan will have to do.
Yes it has. The GOP has generally been the dominant party in WI since its creation in the 1850s. The Dems have had the majority on occasion, of course (it dominated from the early ‘70s to 1995, the only time since the 1850s that it won more than 2 elections in a row in the legislature). After the 2 decade period of Dem dominance, the GOP had the Assembly from 1995 until 2009 and took it back again in 2011. In the Senate, it was the mostly the same: Dem from 1975-1993; GOP from 1993-96; 1998-99; 2003-07 and since 2011.
Contrast it with MD, which has generally had uncontested Dem majorities since before the Civil War, except on two or three separate and brief occasions, the last being over 90 years ago.
As for Diamond Jim Doyle, since 1962, only he and Patrick Lucey (in 1974) were the sole Democrats to win reelection. In 50 years, the GOP has controlled the Governorship for 30 years to the Democrats’ 20.
Maryland, conversely, since 1867, the GOP has only held the Governorship for 26 years out of almost 150.
... Probably because there aren’t enough Maryland Republicans to field a pickup basketball team.
Watch the Maryland assembly put the sleeper-hold on the new guv the way they did to Bob Ehrlich.
Former Gov. Ehrlich, as I recall, adopted your strategy. He was nearly irrelevant for four years, with many of his vetoes being overridden, and leading directly the election of the most liberal governor in Maryland's history, who damaged the state immeasurably.
Maryland's legislature, if push comes to shove, can govern without the new Republican governor. They demonstrated this with Gov. Ehrlich. That's the facts.
Gov.-elect Hogan is a good old boy. He's been involved in local politics since his youth, as his daddy was a locl boy that served in Congress and as the PG County executive. He has friends on both sides of the aisle. There are still a fair number of old-style southern Democrats in this state, and reading their commentary during the election season, it was quite clear that many of them preferred Mr. Hogan to outgoing Lt. Gov. Brown. Stretching out his hand to these folks is the way to get some of them to work with him.
Conversely, if he takes a confrontational approach, these not-as-insane Dems will circle the wagons and vote with the other Dems against every piece of legislation he proposes, and to overturn every veto he makes. And for good measure, just as they did to Gov. Ehrlich, maybe they'll toss in a bogus criminal investigation or two, so they can call him "corrupt" when he runs for re-election.
He's in real estate development, an area where many of our part-time state legislators make a few bucks, and many make a lot more than a few. He has good business relations with many of these folks. Given his stated approach, he will likely be able to peel off a moderate number of not-completely-insane Dems, and be able to accomplish a limited agenda, primarily tied to reducing taxes, moderating spending, and not furthering the social agenda of the liberals.
And that is as good as it's going to get.
sitetest
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