Notes From After "The Thumpin'"

Several events conspired to keep me from posting until now. First and foremost, I was an election judge in Adelphi Tuesday, which takes up a lot more time than you might think. My Internet connection has also been spotty again -- we'll be switching from cable to DSL soon, thankfully. And there were plenty of school and personal matters to attend to as well.

Anyway, my thoughts on the election: Obviously, the last few days have been a good time to be a Democrat. After years of constantly being shunted to the margins, Democrats finally have some real influence over the direction of cour country. What's more, the Republicans' hubris has finally blown up in their face. Seeing George Bush forced to dump Donald Rumsfeld, a man who has damaged this country's reputation and whose incompetence has led to the deaths of so many Americans and Iraqis, was deeply satisfying. That said, I hope Democrats don't overplay their hand or try to pass too much too soon; the Gingrich Republicans tried that in 1995 and it backfired rather badly for them. As for recommendations, I think Kevin Drum's are pretty good.

In Maryland, despite attempts by Bob Ehrlich and Michael Steele to illicitly swing the vote in Prince George's and Baltimore, they both lost, and deservedly so. Running on a no-agenda agenda, or pretending to be someone you're not, does not merit a popular mandate. Even better, the Maryland GOP was decimated, losing seats in both the Senate and the House of Delegates (MoCo Politics has some details). But the election also exposed some tension within the Maryland Democratic Party over the racial makeup of its leadership, as Howard Dean reminded us today. Yes, we have Anthony Brown and Ike Leggett, as Mike Raia notes, but in a state with the highest (and wealthiest) population of African-Americans outside the South, Maryland Democrats have a responsibility to set an example for the rest of the nation about diversity in public office. So far, we've only made baby steps in that direction.

Let me note a few of the local races that haven't gotten much ink:

• Andrew Duck lost to Roscoe Bartlett by 20 points, unfortunately. This was a wave election, but evidently it didn't come to Western Maryland. The thing is, Bartlett wasn't deeply connected to the Abramoff machine, or the DeLay machine, or any other machine; he's just a kook who carries robes for a cult leader from time to time. So it was harder to hang the hat of corruption on him the way you could on, say, Curt Weldon. Still, Duck did better than Democrats have done in the 6th District in a long time, and he has set himself up well for 2008. Bartlett, after all, will either retire or be dead soon (he's 78, I think). I look forward to more good things from Mr. Duck.
  
• I was quite pleased at the end of the night to see that the precinct I was in had voted for Jim Rosapepe over John Giannetti 2 to 1, which happened to be true across the board. Not only can we say goodbye to a fool and a turncoat, we can welcome some upstanding representatives, from Rosapepe to Joseline Pena-Melnyk.
• In Frederick County, Mike Cady and Jim Lovell, the two pro-developer Republicans on the Board of County Commissioners, were crushed Tuesday, while Jan Gardner, Kai Hagen, Lennie Thompson, and two other Republicans won handily, changing the BOCC from 3-2 in favor of developers to 4-1 against. Now there's a move afoot to change the law so that Gardner, who won the most votes, but for complicated reasons can't become board president. Also, the movement for Frederick County to adopt a charter form of government like Montgomery's or Anne Arundel's appears to be reviving.
• Will absentee ballots give Candy Greenway an upset win over Alex Mooney? Apparently not, but she certainly gave him a tougher race than he expected. Perhaps a rematch in 2010?
• And it looks like Frederick (the city) will be sending an all-Democratic team to the House of Delegates, with Sue Hecht reclaiming her seat from Republican Patrick Hogan, and Galen Clagett holding on to his.

Since I mentioned above my work as an election judge, I should probably say a bit about how the voting machines fared. Despite my (and many others') fears, both the voting machines and the e-poll books did quite well. I worked with a well-trained group of election judges, and I trusted that everyone who voted in the precinct I was in would be counted. That said, we're still a long way away from a reliable voting system. Stephanie Dray points in the right direction, and I hope the General Assembly takes the issue up soon. I tend to vacillate between supporting an Oregonian vote-by-mail system or just having printers attached to the voting machines; at the very least, we should dump Diebold and amend the constitution to allow early voting.

Tags: maryland politics election 2006 democrats martin omalley ben cardin frederick county