Conventional Wisdom the Loser in Local Elections

Current County Executive Allan Kittleman and new County Executive
Calvin Ball         Photo: Baltimore Post Examiner

On a chilly Election Day evening, hundreds of Howard County Democratic partisans packed Kahler Hall in Columbia, Md. to do what folks had hoped to do: celebrate victories. National and local returns were projected on screens via cable news programming and a laptop while people huddled around the screens, sat at round tables engaged in high-spirited political conversations, hitting the buffet line, mingling about, or taking selfies as polls were closing in much of the East.  #hocopolitics

The traditional venue for such occasions has been a horror show for Democrats in 2014 and 2016.  This night would be different, many of the Dem supporters hoped and believed.  And they were right.

When the Howard County numbers eventually rolled in with only a handful of precincts remaining on this November 6 night, several deafening roars exploded as it appeared that Dr. Calvin Ball, a three-term member of the County Council, was poised to upset incumbent Allan H. Kittleman as County Executive. Prosecutor Rich Gibson followed with a lusty defeat of Republican Kim Oldham as the new State’s Attorney, and most of the other offices down the ballot followed suit.  The much ballyhooed Blue Wave was indeed washing throughout Howard County.

Click here for all the election results in Maryland.

The biggest loser in these local elections was conventional wisdom, which took a back seat to other dynamics that were in play. Below are examples of how conventional wisdom was shattered:

The top of ticket pulls up lower candidates. Governor Larry Hogan handily defeated his Democratic challenger Ben Jealous by a 56% to 43% margin.  Gov. Hogan, the odds-on favorite and a leader in just about every poll, was supposed to help Republican candidates down the ballot. 

It did not work in Howard County. Mr. Hogan garnered 56.7% to Mr. Jealous’ 42.2% (similar to the overall state vote) yet the Democrat Dr. Ball defeated the Republican Mr. Kittleman 52.4% to 47.5%, and most other Dems in the county won as well.

Results were similar in other central Maryland counties. In Baltimore County, Gov. Hogan handily defeated Mr. Jealous by a 61.7% - 37.3% count in that jurisdiction, but the Democrat John Olszewski, Jr. defeated Republican Al Redmer, Jr. by a 57.5% to 42.4% margin.  In Anne Arundel, the divergence was even greater.  While Gov. Hogan walloped Mr. Jealous 69.1% to 29.8%, Democrat Steuart Pittman outlasted Republican Steve Schuh 52% to 47.9%.

In all three jurisdictions, incumbent County Executive Republicans succumbed to Democratic challengers despite the Governor’s margin of victory.  Clearly, there were no coattails.

Howard Co.	Howard Co.	State
Kittleman     47.5	Hogan      56.7	56.1
Ball              52.4	Jealous     42.2	42.8

Baltimore Co.	Baltimore Co.	State
Redmer      42.4	Hogan      61.7	56.1
Olszewski   57.5	Jealous     37.3	42.8

Anne Arundel	Anne Arundel	State
Schuh          47.9	Hogan     69.1	56.1
Pittman        52.0	Jealous    29.8	42.8

A favored candidate shouldn’t start off campaign attacking opponent.  One of the criticisms of frontrunner Anthony Brown’s ill-fated 2014 gubernatorial bid was that he began his campaign by immediately hitting the relatively unknown Larry Hogan with negative ads thus elevating his profile. Shrugging off that philosophy, in 2018, the Republican Governors Association launched vicious attack ads against Mr. Jealous painting him as “too extreme for Maryland” and one who is guaranteed to raise taxes to fund his programs. Mr. Jealous was slow to respond and never recovered.

It should be noted that although Mr. Kittleman had been favored to be re-elected in Howard County, he did not engage in negative attack ads, and Dr. Ball did not either, resulting in an unusual but refreshing contest.

Endorsements help candidates. Republican candidates throughout the state, sensing an easy victory for Gov. Hogan, did not hesitate to include “Hogan Endorsed” as part of their materials, advertising and signage. By and large, it did not work.  Endorsements are overrated and popularity is not transferable when other more important factors are in play.

Incumbency has an advantage.  The benefits of incumbency are clear. The candidate has name recognition. He or she probably has a residual war chest from the previous campaign to spend in the current campaign, which takes some pressure off of fundraising. The candidate has a record of accomplishments to run on. And the higher level of visibility based on the time in office serves as an additional advantage.

In Howard County, however, Republican incumbents except those whose districts spilled into more conservative terrain in Carroll County lost. Nonetheless, all Howard County Democratic incumbents won.

Calvin Ball was not predicted to win.  Mr. Kittleman had all the benefits of incumbency (see above) and money plus he enjoyed relatively high job approval and personal popularity. Moreover, a Mason Dixon poll  released merely six weeks before the election indicated Mr. Kittleman should glide to victory as he enjoyed a 16% lead. For Dr. Ball’s part, an internal poll  had forecast a much tighter race.

Dr. Ball benefitted from his own positive personal attributes, a strong ground game and solid messaging including his vision for the county that hit the target especially in the weeks leading up to the election. However, the “Trump effect” played a significant role, not only in the County Executive race but also with others down ballot.

Governor Hogan enjoyed high job approval across the board and pulled in a good chunk Democratic and independent votes. But after that, Democrats were driven to turn out to vote Democratic in part, as a protest to Trumpism and the Republican Party that has enabled it.

Mr. Kittleman, hardly a Trumpster, was caught between a rock and a hard place. With less than a third of the county’s active voters identifying as Republican, Mr. Kittleman needed to pull in Democratic and independent support. His conundrum was that if he railed against President Trump, he would alienate those GOP voters who are ardent Trump supporters.  If he was to be silent concerning the president (he largely was), then Democrats could not see him as a viable antidote to Trump’s policies and bigotry.

In addition, Republican activists charged Mr. Kittleman with trying too hard to get Democrats on board and not paying enough attention to Republican concerns.

Other factors hurt the incumbent as well including the controversial mulch legislation, his opposition to Howard being a sanctuary county and the rebuilding plans following the second Ellicott City flood in three years.

The intensity of enthusiasm benefitted Dr. Ball; the lack of same hurt Mr. Kittleman. The lopsided early voting margin for Democrats conveyed excitement and proved too steep of a hill for Mr. Kittleman to climb. Hoping to eradicate the Dem lead, Mr. Kittleman only managed 142 more votes than Dr. Ball on Election Day.

The County Executive race ended with sportsmanship and civility.

The defeated candidate does not concede in person.  

Finally, as the crowd at Kahler Hall continued to cheer, hug and high-five one another, news swept among the masses remaining in the ballroom that Calvin Ball’s opponent, Allan Kittleman, was in the lobby to personally concede the election and congratulate the victor. In a stunning and classy move, Mr. Kittleman, his wife and three children, clad in their campaign yellow t-shirts, entered the building with the candidates embracing and raising their locked arms as if they both won.

They did. But conventional wisdom lost.

Bold Madaleno Ad is Sheer Genius

Rich Madaleno

Maryland gubernatorial candidate Rich Madaleno shook up the Democratic primary race and threw caution to the wind with an ad that ended with the kissing of his longtime husband Mark Hodge. He preceded the kiss with the comment, “the number one way I piss off Donald Trump and the Republicans” and concludes the ad with the taunt, “Take that, Trump.”

The 30-second campaign ad, "Take That, Trump", will run on Fox and Friends in the D.C. market leading up to the June 26 primary is most likely an attempt, among other things, to goad President Trump to respond.  #hocopolitics

The ad does not mention any of his half dozen primary opponents nor does it mention incumbent Republican Governor Larry Hogan. Instead, he directly takes on Trump in the ad touting his voting record, accomplishments and positions on issues that are anathema to Trump and his Republican cohorts.

Madaleno, Maryland’s first openly gay state Senator and a resident of Silver Spring, Md., was one of the leading forces in winning passage of marriage equality in the Maryland General Assembly.

To me, this ad is pure political genius and the type of in-your-face boldness so frustratingly absent from many Democratic office seekers.  While Trump’s approval may be inching up nationally, there is no evidence that the president’s popularity is anything but low in Maryland and especially in the D.C. area.  Thus, attacking Trump here should not result in much backlash.

Even those who may be put off by the same-sex kiss, there is no reason to believe that such individuals would have voted for Madaleno anyway. Clearly, there was more upside than downside to this endeavor and if nothing else, excited the progressive Democrats in the state in which many had, up to this point, been undecided in the race.

Moreover, the ad has received national and international intention, which will likely generate significant donations from supporters from places far and wide.  From news organizations, such as CNN, Time, USA Today, and the Washington Post to scores of local print and online outlets, the exposure is golden.  

The timing of the ad leading up to early voting in the state form June 14-21 culminating in the primary election on June 26 presents a great opportunity.  

“June is LGBT Pride Month and I couldn’t think of a better time to release this ad,” Madaleno, who will turn 53 on June 16, said in a statement. “Love truly does trump hate.”

The ad is seen below.

The OUTIES: the Best (and Worst) of 2014

It’s that time when I once again look through the rear view mirror and award the OUTspoken OUTIES for the past year.  I reviewed the events of this past year in the areas of politics and culture and am presenting an unapologetic, subjective, biased list of winners (and losers) who are deserving of the OUTIES trophy. In no particular order, here are the OUTspoken OUTIES of 2014.

Best Politician: Hands down, it’s Larry Hogan.  The Republican managed to rise from obscurity in a state that is 2 to 1 Democratic and ran a steady race to upset Anthony Brown (see below).  His economic message was focused, and his debates’ searing zingers hit the mark. The Brown strategists’ ineptitude and voter apathy helped.

Worst Politician: Hands down, it’s Anthony Brown.  Having cruised to a primary victory, aided by the Democratic establishment, a solid running mate and outspending his opponent by a 5 to 1margin, Brown went negative too early to lift Hogan’s name recognition giving him a chance at victory and squandered a clear opportunity to be the state’s first African-American governor.

Worst Example of Citizenship: The tens of thousands of voters who sat out the election but undoubtedly will grumble ad nauseam about how bad our elected officials are.

Worst Political Bet: Equality Maryland’s PAC for riding the front runner and endorsing Brown before the primary while alienating Mizeur and Gansler supporters in the process.  With three proven allies for LGBT equality running, EQMD should have remained neutral until the general election.

Most Gratifying Success: The passage of the Fairness for All Marylanders Act (FAMA) resulting in non-discrimination protections for transgender folks without having to deal with referendum drama.  The hyped bathroom scare didn’t work.

More Good Fortune for Trans: Movies, TV shows and a cover story on TIME helped propel more visibility for the transgender community.  Recall how Will & Grace and Real World helped gays to be more accepted.

Worst News for Trans: Two more brutal murders of trans women in Baltimore with little likelihood the cases will be solved.

Doing More With Less: A scaled down Equality Maryland, financially and in staff, managed to be a significant player along with other groups and individuals in getting FAMA enacted.

Best Local LGBT Organization: FreeState Legal Project for providing important pro bono legal assistance to those LGBT folks who can least afford it.

Most Altruistic Organization: Repeat winner Brother Help Thyself, which raises much needed money for non-profit LGBT orgs. Great work and they do it every year!

Most Popular Job: Executive Director at the GLCCB.  Three people have held that (or interim) position during 2014.  Here’s hoping for more stability at the Center.

Least Popular Move: Shifting the Pride block party to the MICA-Mt. Royal-Artscape area from Mount Vernon and eliminating Druid Hill Park met with significant blowback from communities.  The GLCCB is listening.

Best ‘I Got the Message’ Organization: The GLCCB, under fire for a lack of transparency and inclusiveness, has taken a series of concrete steps to help alleviate concerns.  It needs to continue.

Best Eatery to Lunch in Mount Vernon: Tavern on the Hill on Cathedral Street offers up a broad menu, tasty food and friendly service at a reasonable price.

Best Mount Vernon Restaurant for Dinner: The Mount Vernon Stable, an area fixture, provides a nice atmosphere for LGBT folks and serves fine dinners (and brunches and lunches) from a friendly staff.

Sorry to See You Go: The closing of The Quest was a blow to the Highlandtown locals and others who wanted to venture from other LGBT venues.  Its neighborhood feel is hard to duplicate.

Best Gay-Friendly Theater: Basically all local theaters are LGBT-friendly.  But Toby’s of Columbia with its large number of resident gay performers and staff gives it an edge.  Sometimes when visiting it seems like Pride with a buffet.  And the shows are reliably superb.

Best Gay Film: The BBC-produced Pride, which ran at the venerable Charles Theater, was my favorite.  It told a heartwarming story of how blue collar laborers and gays bonded to form a strong and successful alliance during the 1980’s miners’ strike in the U.K.

Best Gay Play: Iron Crow Theatre’s Homo Poe Show wins here. Well directed and acted, Homo Poe Show is a weird play in true Iron Crow tradition that consisted of a series of short pieces in an attempt to present Edgar Allan Poe’s works through a queer lens—forevermore.

Best Gay Musical: Dundalk Community College’s splashy production of one of my all-time favorites La Cage Aux Folles wins.  Given that there were gay main characters, the music and lyrics were penned by a gay composer Jerry Herman and the book written by Harvey Fierstein who is also gay, there is no question it deserves the OUTIES trophy.  Moreover, La Cage gives us the unofficial gay anthem “I Am What I Am.”

Best TV Show with a Gay Character: Move over Modern Family and make room for the Boston-based The McCarthys.  Ronny, the gay character played by Tyler Ritter (who is straight), is a hoot as is the rest of his snarky, loveable, sports-obsessed Irish-American family.

Best Kiss Since Al and Tipper Gore: Michael Sam locking lips with his sculpted abs boyfriend Vito Cammisano on ESPN upon learning that Sam was the first openly gay player to be drafted in the NFL.  Sadly, he failed to make a team—yet.

Seeing Red: The Dems and the Election Bloodbath

Typically, the color red signals danger, such as a red light at an intersection or a red flag.  In other cases, red has a negative connotation like in red-handed, red tape, redneck, red herring and an undesirable ink color on a balance sheet.

To Democrats, by the time midnight rolled around on Election Night, the nation in general and Maryland in particular had been soaked by a splash of red as if a bucket of pigs’ blood was emptied from above like in the horror film Carrie.

 Republicans, who are associated with the color red as in red states, counties, etc., pulled off a stunning string of victories from the U.S. Senate to council offices down the ballot that painted the map a sea of red.

This phenomenon is not unusual as the party not occupying the White House in the sixth year of a second term of a presidency historically makes gains—sometimes substantial and transformative as one we just experienced.  It was expected that the prevailing mood of national discontent with President Obama for reasons still beyond my comprehension would result in a changing of the guard in the Senate and an increase in the ever-growing conservative gerrymandered district-rigging of the House of Representatives.  #hocopolitics

Democratic candidates treated Obama like he was kryptonite with some even blaming him for the Ebola outbreak that consisted of one death here.  That the nation’s voters would ignore the fact that unemployment is down to 5.8 percent and the 214,000 added jobs in October means that employers have added at least 200,000 jobs for nine straight months, the longest such stretch since 1995 is pathetic.  

The stock market has reached new heights.  Gasoline is at relatively low levels. Obamacare, so reviled by those who didn’t have a clue what was inside the law, now allows uninsured citizens access to health care.  Oh, and Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive (even if some of their drivers aren’t).  Nonetheless, the Dems ran away from all that—a sure-fire losing strategy.

Yet, Democratic voters and candidates also seem to have forgotten how the Republican Party with the lowest approval ratings on record, shut down the government, nearly allowed the U.S. to default on its obligations, and stifled reform on immigration, sensible gun control and any job package the President sent up the Hill. 

It makes me see red. 

Not that the results would have been much different but Democratic candidates virtually conceded the election to the GOP by distancing themselves from Obama.  It wasn’t just a surge of anti-Obama folks that descended on the polls that shaped the outcome; reliable Dem voters stayed home.  That’s how you lose if you’re a Democrat.

In Maryland it was a similar playbook for the Republicans: tap the electorate’s perceived discontent and hope that the Democrats field less than stellar candidates so Dem voters, too, would pass on this off-year election.  That formula worked in the Governor’s race.

Lt. Governor Anthony Brown, the heir apparent to Governor Martin O’Malley, skated through the primary to defeat two other LGBT equality advocates, former delegate Heather Mizeur a lesbian, and Attorney General Douglas Gansler.  The LGBT community was divided among them but Mizeur garnered the most enthusiasm.  Dissension spiked when the Equality Maryland PAC made a curious and controversial endorsement of Brown so early in the process.

It wasn’t just a surge of anti-Obama folks that descended on the polls that shaped the outcome; reliable Dem voters stayed home.

Brown avoided specifics during the primaries—a deficiency that would later haunt him in the general election—and squashed his two rivals by depending on the formidable O’Malley “machine” that attracted huge amounts of cash, paid worker bees, numerous volunteers, union support  and a host of other endorsements.  Don’t knock that machine, however; we wouldn’t have achieved marriage equality without it being cranked up at the right time when the Question 6 campaign was floundering in the early stages.

In the Brown vs. Hogan match-up, Brown failed to present any kind of vision for the future and instead trusted his “campaign strategists” by attacking Hogan as a bogeyman thus raising the profile of the relatively unknown former appointments secretary in the single-term Ehrlich administration.

Larry Hogan was far more effective in face-to-face debates, staying on message about the multitude of tax hikes under the O’Malley administration and the disastrous rollout of the state’s new health care exchange of which Brown had been assigned the lead.  Armed with witty quips and zingers, Hogan scored big during these contests and Brown’s failure to defend the administration or Maryland’s economic posture for that matter helped seal the deal.

Though Republican voters in the state sniffed a huge upset, the ultimate outcome was not decided by them but the tens of thousands of eligible Democrat voters who rode this one out.  Call it voter self-suppression.  Baltimore City, an anticipated boon to the Brown election map, had a 35 percent turnout.  Ouch.

Fortunately, marriage equality and transgender protections were achieved in Maryland before this election.  Hogan, although he promised not to try to turn back these settled issues, probably would not have signed a same-sex marriage bill into law, let alone fight for it like O’Malley did.  He said he has since “evolved” on marriage equality (sound familiar?) but stated he opposed the transgender non-discrimination bill—the Fairness for All Marylanders Act.

Nationally, the more conservative entrenched Congress will not act on finally passing the Employment Nondiscrimination Act or ENDA, which has been languishing in Congress for decades.  As has been the experience in the past, the GOP will probably misinterpret the election results as a mandate, and will hamper their being a national party when its leadership will revert to appealing to their shrinking base of white, male, older, rural, Protestant and heterosexual Americans, believing there is no need to reach out to LGBT folks.

The next two years will be seen as a pause in our struggle for progress on many levels.  If we can wait it out, perhaps all that the red will turn into a rainbow.

LGBT Support Split in Howard County Executive Race

Riding the red wave that splashed across the country and Maryland on November 4, former GOP State Senator Allan Kittleman stunned Democrat councilwoman Courtney Watson and her supporters in the race to succeed term-limited Ken Ulman as Howard County Executive. In doing so, Kittleman became only the second Republican to be elected to that office in the county’s history. 

Allan Kittleman with Carrie Evans during a fundraiser at Pride

Ulman lost his chance to be Lieutenant Governor as part of Anthony Brown’s failed bid to be Maryland’s first African-American governor. The 51.3 % to 48.6 % margin in the Kittleman-Watson contest was closer than the Larry Hogan margin over Brown in the county suggesting that Brown’s poor performance was a drag on Watson’s quest to be the county’s executive.

The race in Howard was distinguished by the fact that two strong LGBT advocates faced off against one another.  Although marriage equality and transgender non-discrimination were settled issues and were not the focus of the campaigns, each side tried to woo LGBT voters by touting their respective records. 

Watson’s campaign, for instance, held at least two LGBT-specific events.  Kittleman enlisted the support of Carrie Evans, executive director of Equality Maryland, to boost his campaign.  Evans recorded a video extolling Kittleman’s accomplishments for LGBT equality.

Kittleman had been a vocal supporter of marriage equality in Maryland’s Senate the last two years the bill came up for votes.  He also vigorously campaigned to protect the law that was signed by Governor Martin O’Malley in 2012 when it was petitioned to referendum.   

In addition, Kittleman supported and voted for this year’s successful passage of the Fairness for All Marylanders Act (FAMA) that provided anti-discrimination protections in employment, housing, public accommodations and credit based on gender identity. Those actions, which cost Kittleman his position as the Senate’s Minority Leader because they bucked party dogma, did not go unnoticed by the LGBT community.

For her part, Watson, as councilwoman, played a significant role in getting a similar transgender non-discrimination measure passed in Howard County.  She took that success to Baltimore County to persuade wavering lawmakers, and it passed just a couple of months later.  Watson went to Annapolis two years in a row and testified on the statewide bill’s behalf during House committee hearings.

Through the years, both candidates had regularly appeared at PFLAG-Howard County events to demonstrate support for the county’s LGBT citizens. Most notable of these was a joint appearance at a PFLAG-sponsored forum in July.   In October both candidates addressed the crowd during a celebration held by PFLAG and Gender Rights Maryland on the effective date of FAMA.

Though no data are available as to how LGBT folks and allies voted during the election, it is clear that each camp can claim support from key LGBT leaders. 

“Allan Kittleman was a champion for LGBT issues over the last few years in the General Assembly, and I know that he will continue fighting for fairness and equality in his new role,” said Equality Maryland’s Carrie Evans.   #hocopolitics

Watson had a staunch advocate as well. “We’re concerned about ensuring continued improvement in our quality of life as well as bullying in schools, affordable housing, and public health,” said Byron Macfarlane, the county’s Register of Wills and the first open LGBT person to hold elective office in Howard. “I hope now that the election is over, the vagaries and generalities of the Kittleman campaign will give way to concrete plans to address these very real concerns. I congratulate him on his victory and hope that the LGBT community and the new county executive will have a productive working relationship in the years ahead.”