Soccer Dad

The asylum that is maryland

When your governor is popular and successful what do you do? You replace him with an average mayor.

I'm not one of those who feels that O'Malley is a poor mayor. But a great mayor he isn't either.

O'Malley took over Baltimore from Kurt Schmoke who was a disaster. But promising improvements and actually implementing them are two separate things.

He promised to cut the murder rate to below 175 and never managed to. I believe he could and should have reduced the murder rate in the city to about 60. (New York City with 10 times the population of Baltimore has a murder rate of 600 - 700 a year. Giuliani brought it down to that range from 2100+ in two or three years.) The problem is that the changes in policing that were necessary for such success would have undermined O'Malley's political support and he was never willing to buck that support.

In his victory speech (as well as his commercials) O'Malley talked of taking Maryland in a new direction. Except most Marylanders were happy under Ehrlich. The economy was doing well. Unemployment is below the national average and the state's population is growing. (The city's population continues to dwindle. Not as fast as it had been; but the city continues to lose population.)

And yet there was a percentage of the electorate that said that it was happy to vote against the governor they liked. It makes no sense.

Michael Steele ran an excellent campaign. Somehow he positioned himself as an outsider and exuded likability. Congressman Cardin who beat him ran an extremely negative campaign. Cardin came accross as bitter and vicious. And yet that was sufficient. Given the relative experience of the two candidates, I suspect a well run campaign would have been a landslide. (I guess that Cardin could still end up 10 points ahead of Steele in the end.) But Cardin got the coronation he thought he deserved even if the road ended up being slightly bumpier than he anticipated.

And in my district, John Sarbanes rode his family name to victory. A typical liberal with no real distinctive ideas, Sarbanes expects to fix all sorts of problems. I've mentioned this before but let him tell you his goofiest idea (or at least the goofiest one that I saw):

I support the creation of an impartial scientific body to assess the effectiveness of expensive new treatments and technologies, to make recommendations to public and private insurance carriers regarding the appropriate use of such technology. A national body to impartially determine the effectiveness of new treatments and drugs would ensure that technology was not stifled but would help prevent technology and its cost from overwhelming the health care system.

He's going to create a commission to determine the best (or only) medical technologies to support. Sounds like central planning to me.

But these are some of the people in charge now. And let's not forget the worst legislature in the country. Three times these legal eagles overrode vetoes signed by Governor Ehrlich only to have their ill-considered bills overridden by the courts - whose judges were mostly appointed by fellow Democrats.

In one case the bill was construed as an attempt to delegitimize Governor Ehrlich's eleciton on the basis of unsubstantiated charges of misconduct by two of my "representatives." (Scroll down to "The Path Trod 41 Years Ago")

Finally we have slots. As a proof that the legislature has absolutely no principles, be ready. One of the first orders of business this upcoming dismal January will be a slots bill that will pass. It will pass because House Speaker Busch's opposition to slots was only based on his interest in obstructing Governor Ehrlich.

So due to the voters of our state; we will have one of the most ideolgical leftist state governments in the Union. We can expect the legislature to revive versions of the Wal Mart bill and other anti-business measures. The inmates have won. The state has lost.

Technorati tags: Election 2006, Maryland Politics.