All posts by Adam Pagnucco

Adam Pagnucco, Bill Frick, Roger Manno, Western Maryland

Possible CD6 Candidates Gather in Western Maryland

By Adam Pagnucco.

With District 6 Congressman John Delaney telling the Sun he is considering a race for Governor and Delegate Bill Frick (D-16) starting a Congressional campaign account, the chatter around CD6 is picking up.  And that chatter is going to reach a fever pitch at the end of the month.

That’s because the Western Maryland Democratic PAC is holding a “summit” event in Flintstone on April 28 and 29.  The event (which requires registration) is described as “charting a progressive course in Western Maryland.”  And top billing in the email announcement goes to two familiar names: Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz and Total Wine co-owner David Trone.

Kamenetz, of course, is running for Governor.  But what of Trone?  His website says he is considering a run for Montgomery County Executive.  But his attendance at the Western Maryland event (and the money he must have contributed to be listed as a “Presenting Sponsor”) suggests that he is keeping a CD6 option open.  Trone’s self-funding capacity allows him significant timetable flexibility.

But that’s not all.  The solicitation states that Delegate Frick and Senator Roger Manno (D-19) will also be attending.  Manno is a labor favorite and is known to be interested in the CD6 seat.

Congratulations to the Western Maryland Democratic PAC for setting up such a juicy event.  Get your tickets here, folks!

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Adam Pagnucco, campaign finance

Should You Take Public Campaign Financing? Part One

By Adam Pagnucco.

Here’s a question that has come up over and over again with various candidates and potential candidates: should they take public campaign financing if running for county office?  Your author’s typical practice is to demand provision of food and/or liquor in exchange for answering this question.  But in the spirit of recent holidays, we are just going to give away our take right here.  Feel free to send liquor anyway!

First, let’s explore the basic characteristics of the county’s public financing system.  Candidates who wish to participate may opt in, but it is not required.  Candidates in the system must establish new public financing accounts with the State Board of Elections and any money in their old accounts cannot be used for current election expenses.  Contributions may only be accepted from individuals at a maximum of $150 per donor.  Corporate and PAC contributions are forbidden.  Self-financing is limited to $12,000 from the candidate and/or a spouse.  The county will match contributions made by in-county residents on a sliding scale with maximum amounts of $600 per donor for Executive candidates and $450 per donor for council candidates.  But to qualify for matching funds, candidates will have to meet certain thresholds in terms of number of in-county contributors as well as amounts contributed.  These thresholds are shown in the table below.

Now here’s the Big Question: do voters care about who uses public financing?  No one knows because 2018 will be the first cycle in which it will be available.  But while public financing is new, discussion of campaign financing is ancient.  Developer contributions to County Executive and County Council candidates were a huge issue in the 1990s and 2000s.  Citizen groups like Montgomery County Citizens’ PAC for the Future (CITPAC) and Neighbors for a Better Montgomery (NeighborsPAC) tracked and published them.  These groups, which have no successors today, formed a political base for anti-growth candidates who vowed to limit or entirely refuse developer contributions.  The result?  Most of the candidates who won the 1998, 2002 and 2006 elections took developer contributions freely, including Doug Duncan, Ike Leggett, Steve Silverman, Mike Subin, George Leventhal, Nancy Floreen and Mike Knapp.  Phil Andrews and Marc Elrich were the primary exceptions, though Elrich lost four straight times before finally winning in 2006.  If most voters viewed developer money as something that would determine their votes, candidates supported by CITPAC and NeighborsPAC like William O’Neil, Vince Renzi, Ann Somerset, Hugh Bailey, Cary Lamari, Sharon Dooley, Cynthia Rubenstein and Chuck Young would have been elected.  It’s unclear whether the politics around public financing will play out any differently.

And so the appropriate criteria for whether to enter public financing relate to the self-interest of the candidate.  In which system will you be better off?  That depends on your own circumstances and the nature of your race.  We’ll start addressing that in Part Two.

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Adam Pagnucco, Peter Franchot

A Mug Half Full

By Adam Pagnucco.

A General Assembly compromise passed on Sine Die will allow Diageo’s new brewery in Baltimore County to move forward.  But the amended Bill 1283 is a mug half full, with the state’s craft brewers inevitably seeking more in the future.

A brief refresher.  Diageo, owner of the world-famous Guinness brand, announced plans to open its first U.S. brewery in more than sixty years in Baltimore County a few months ago.  Diageo did not ask for a state subsidy, but it did ask for permission to sell 5,000 barrels per year from the brewery’s taproom, up from the state’s current 500 barrel limit (by far the lowest in the country).  A bill passed by the House of Delegates raised the barrel limit to 2,000 (with another 1,000 allowed if bought from a wholesaler), but it also cut back hours of operations and prohibited off-site contract brewing, a major hit on the industry.  After an outcry from brewers, the Senate amended the bill to allow a limited amount of contract brewing and to grandfather the hours of existing breweries and those in the approval process (including Diageo).  The House passed the amended bill on Sine Die.

The deal allows Diageo to come to Maryland, and that’s a good thing.  But it also contains two counter-productive elements.

The Concession to Wholesalers

Brewery taprooms are now allowed to sell 2,000 barrels directly to customers each year.  (The next-lowest state, North Carolina, allows 25,000 barrels.)  Breweries can sell another 1,000 barrels, but to do so, they have to go  through a wholesaler.  That means loading the beer on a wholesaler’s truck, sending the truck to a warehouse where the beer is offloaded, then bringing it back to the brewery to unload it again.  FOLKS, YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS UP.  The graphic below from the Comptroller’s Office illustrates how absurd this is.

Grandfathering of Hours

Existing breweries and those holding on-site consumpion permits and licenses as of April 1, 2017 are allowed to stay open as late as their local jurisdictions permit them, usually between midnight and 2 AM.  All new breweries must close by 10 PM, slamming the door shut on further growth.

The State of Maryland is effectively telling the craft beer industry the following: We don’t like you.  We will tolerate those of you who are already here, but we don’t want any more of you.

Contrast this with Virginia.  The Commonwealth’s Governor, Terry McAuliffe, is a joyous deal-maker, back-slapper and salesman who loves bringing employers to his state – especially craft breweries.  McAuliffe promotes the industry every chance he gets, including the creation of Stone Brewing’s special beer in honor of Virginia, Give Me Stout or Give Me Death.  His term has seen almost 100 new breweries open in the state.  Perhaps his greatest achievement was a successful four-year campaign to entice Oregon’s Deschutes to open near Roanoke.

Virginia’s Beer Drinker in Chief.  Photo credit: Richmond’s Style Weekly.

Here is McAuliffe bragging about Virginia’s booming beer industry to Hampton Roads’ WAVY TV just last week.

Governor Terry McAuliffe spoke to the National Craft Breweries Association in Washington D.C. Tuesday evening to give his best sales pitch to attract new beer businesses to Virginia.

“We got Stone to move here, and we got Deschutes to move here, we’ve got Ballast Point to move here, Green Flash, I mean, no one has had the success we’ve had the last two years recruiting major known craft breweries,” McAuliffe told 8News Reporter Jonathan Costen, pointing out that the booming beer industry has brought hundreds of jobs to the area. “We have 190-craft breweries in Virginia today. It’s a billion dollar industry for us, so I believe it really helps our tourism.

“Folks come, they love to come to our craft breweries, but in addition to that, these craft breweries are all buying locally produced products, it is great for our farmers. We can’t produce enough hops here, so I tell people go out and start a hop farm here in Virginia,” McAuliffe added.

McAuliffe’s message is the polar opposite of Maryland’s.

One elected official who understands the economic and cultural potential of craft beer is Comptroller Peter Franchot, who aggressively defended the industry during the debate over Bill 1283.  The Comptroller is now convening a task force to study the state’s beer laws from top to bottom with the goal of producing model legislation next year.  An interesting question is whether Governor Larry Hogan will come on board.  The Governor has allied with Franchot on more than one of his ideas in the past, including school air conditioning and starting school after Labor Day.  Craft brewing is a natural issue for Hogan, given its potential for job creation and the Democrats’ near-fumbling of the issue this year.

Just two guys enjoying some great Maryland craft beer.  Photo Credit: Peter Franchot.

Maryland’s iron cartel of manufacturers, wholesalers, licensees and supportive politicians has kept in place a stable, profitable system for a long time.  The just-concluded brewery bill is only the most recent manifestation of their control of Annapolis.  So opening up the beer industry is an uphill battle.  But if Franchot, the craft industry, its customers and maybe Hogan can make this a signature issue in an election year…?  Well, pull up a stool, grab a mug and get ready for the show!

Disclosure: Your author has done campaign-related work for Peter Franchot in the past.  His positions on issues like this one, including Montgomery County’s liquor monopoly, have earned my support.

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Adam Pagnucco, alcohol, Charles Barkley

Barkley Blasts Annapolis

By Adam Pagnucco.

Delegate Charles Barkley (D-39) has just given the most astounding interview by a member of General Assembly leadership ever seen by your author.  In it, he broke the most important rule of Annapolis decorum there is: never throw your superiors under the bus.

Barkley is the Chair of the House Economic Matters Committee’s Alcoholic Beverages Subcommittee.   In theory, that makes him the proximate point person on alcohol bills in the House.  Some think of the alcohol industry as one industry, but in fact it is several, with the manufacturers, distributors, retailers, restaurants and several individual companies hiring their own lobbyists and making tons of political contributions.  That makes for complicated politics which, among many other things, has produced the much-criticized bill punishing craft breweries.  That bill has already caused one potential brewery owner to bail on the state.

The anti-brewery bill passed the House on a 139-0 vote.  One source tells us, “When a bad bill passes on a vote like that, someone f____d up.”  In an incredible interview with Maryland beer blog Naptown Pint, Barkley placed the blame on his superiors, specifically Economic Matters Committee Chair Dereck Davis and Speaker of the House Mike Busch.  The whole interview is a massive scoop and a must-read, but the key passages are this:

“We didn’t know what was in the bill until the day it came in front of our committee for the vote,” Barkley answered. But was that due to the rush of the process, or was it an intentional screen being put up around the bill’s contents?

“I don’t think they were trying to give out too many details,” he commented…

“I honestly thought we were moving in the right direction with Nick Manis [MCA], Steve Wise [MSLBA legal counsel] and [Jack] Milani [MSLBA, Monaghan’s Pub in Baltimore]. We thought we were making progress, and we had the guys talking to us.”

Barkley then paused for a moment.

“All of a sudden, they quit talking to us,” he continued. “And then the [Economic Matters Committee] Chairman [Dereck E. Davis] said, ‘This is what we’re doing.’”…

I asked him his thoughts on some of the statements by House members who voted in favor of HB 1283 that they now know it was a bad bill or that they were misled on the contents ahead of the committee vote that pushed HB 1283 over to the Senate.

“I would say absolutely they were misled. [The House] thought we worked out a compromise and this was it. We hadn’t,” he stated.

“Up until this point, I ran the subcommittee and I kept my chairman [Davis] informed. But this one left my hands. I’ve never had this kind of intervention before, until this year. I thought [Manis, Wise and Milani] were meeting with us. But I think we were getting too close to stuff they didn’t want. So I think they met with the Speaker and got things changed.”

Here is a sub-committee chair describing a major bill as a backroom, secret deal involving lobbyists, a powerful committee chair and the Speaker in cahoots to deceive the full House membership.  Your author has never seen a state legislator entrusted with leadership responsibility go on the record in this way before.  It is an almost certain firing offense.

Barkley has always been something of a maverick.  Once a Vice-President of the county teachers union, he has not always been their best friend in Annapolis.  In 2009, he was famously kicked off the Appropriations Committee and lost a subcommittee chair for defying leadership on the millionaire tax.  In 2012, Barkley was one of a handful of MoCo Delegates to vote against the immensely damaging teacher pension shift, a top priority of Governor Martin O’Malley and the presiding officers.  After losing the first vote, he introduced a floor amendment to the budget which would have cut the shift in half, which also failed.  Considering this record, it’s surprising that Barkley acquired the alcohol subcommittee chair at all.

Barkley’s candor is likely aided by his apparent decision to leave Annapolis and run for County Council.  We don’t know what the future holds, but we will say this: given Barkley’s iconoclastic ways, he would make an interesting County Council Member.

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Adam Pagnucco, Bill Frick, Republicans

Republican Delegates Protect Internet Scammers

By Adam Pagnucco.

After Republicans in Congress voted to allow Internet service providers to sell their customers’ browsing histories and other personal data without their consent, Delegate Bill Frick (D-16) took action to block such practices in Maryland.  But one group was able to prevent the General Assembly from even voting on whether to allow such conduct in the Free State.

You guessed it: Republican state lawmakers.

Bills in Annapolis face deadlines for introduction so that each chamber has adequate time to send them to committees, hold hearings and votes, and reconcile them if different versions pass.  But Congress’s action to legalize Internet providers’ scamming of their customers took place only days ago and Sine Die, the last day of the Maryland General Assembly’s 2017 regular session, is approaching on April 10.  Delegate Frick, who is known for introducing consumer protection bills, had to act fast.  The Maryland Constitution requires two thirds of state legislators to agree to let a bill be introduced in the last 35 days of session.  So Frick quickly drafted a bill to outlaw the scamming that Congress allowed and asked his colleagues in the House of Delegates to allow its introduction.  He needed 94 votes.  He got 90.

Frick posted a partial screenshot of the vote page on Facebook (below).  Delegate Kumar Barve (D-17) posted the full tally.  Every single Delegate who voted against the bill’s introduction was a Republican.  So were all the Members of Congress who voted to roll back federal Internet privacy rules in the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate.

What did the Republican Delegates block from being voted on?  Frick’s bill was a simple one.  It would have made it an unfair or deceptive trade practice in Maryland for Internet service providers to sell or transfer their customers’ names, social security numbers, addresses, IP addresses and browsing histories without their affirmative permission.  It also would have banned them from showing ads derived from browsing histories and denying service to customers who refused to allow their personal information to be shared.  The bill made an exception for information subject to a subpoena, summons, warrant or court order.

One Republican Delegate who voted against introducing Frick’s bill, Nic Kipke of Anne Arundel County, told the Associated Press that Internet privacy is “a national issue, and a Maryland bill would just drag Washington politics into the state.”  Great!  So when millions of Marylanders get scammed by Internet predators, the state legislators who represent them should do nothing.  Nigerian princes, British lottery officials and offshore bank investors rejoice!

GOP politicians have been known for their squabbling in recent years, but on this one thing, they agree: your personal Internet data should be bought and sold without your knowledge or consent.  Remember that in November 2018.

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Adam Pagnucco, Term Limits

Term Limits Vote by Precinct

By Adam Pagnucco.

The precinct results on Montgomery County’s Question B, the charter amendment imposing term limits on the County Executive and County Council, are in.  The message they contain has significant implications for the next election.

First, let’s look at the overall results by type of vote.  Term limits passed overwhelmingly among early voters, election day voters and absentee and provisional voters, though early votes were lower than the other two categories.  As an aside, check out how early votes comprised a third of all votes, reflecting the growing popularity of this type of voting.

Next, let’s examine the distribution of precincts by vote results.  Ninety percent of the county’s 257 precincts passed term limits by at least twenty points.  Only four(!) precincts voted against term limits.  Of those, three were in Takoma Park and the other was in Silver Spring inside the Beltway.

Below are the results for Congressional, state legislative and council districts as well as a cut distinguishing inside vs outside the Beltway.  Again, every single split shows huge support for term limits, with Upcounty areas higher than Downcounty areas.

Now let’s look at results by local area.  Every area in the county passed term limits by at least 20 points except for Takoma Park – the only place that voted against term limits.  Clarksburg, Damascus, Derwood, Laytonsville, North Potomac and Poolesville had support for term limits of 80% or more.

We contrasted the election day results of the term limits votes in 2004 and 2016 to calculate where support for term limits had grown the most.  An important caveat: early voting did not exist in 2004 so that may impact the nature of this presentation.  Overall, support for term limits among election day voters grew from 48% to 72%, a change of 24 points, and most areas had changes in that ballpark.  There are two exceptions.  Takoma Park, where term limits support grew by 17 points, had the least change.  Leisure World, where support grew by 32 points, had the most change.

Below are the results on precinct demographics.  There is very little variation between heavily white, black, Hispanic or Asian precincts, indicating close to uniform support for term limits.

The partisan nature of precincts was an important predictor of term limits voting.  The chart below shows term limit votes by the precinct registration percentages of both major parties.  Precincts that were the least Democratic and the most Republican passed term limits with more than 80% of the vote.  Precincts that were the most Democratic and the least Republican passed term limits with more than 60% of the vote.  The correlation coefficient between these two measures was 0.60, indicating a significant relationship between them.

The big question now is how the term limits vote will affect the 2018 Democratic primary.  Let’s remember that the presidential general electorate and the mid-term Democratic primary electorate are two very different groups of people.  In 2014, Democratic primary voters supported every county-level incumbent running for reelection only to have presidential general voters effectively kick them out two years later.  Nevertheless, there is substantial evidence that many voters who supported term limits will be voting in the 2018 Democratic primary.

  1. At least half of county Democrats voted for term limits. Consider the following.  First, 60% of MoCo presidential general election voters are Democrats.  Second, if all the Republicans and unaffiliated voters supported term limits, that would be 40% of the vote.  However, term limits passed with 70% of the vote.  So that extra 30 points must have come from Democrats and would account for half of them.  If any Republicans or unaffiliated voters did not support term limits, then a slight majority of Democrats would have voted yes.  The point here is that term limits could not have hit 70% support without massive numbers of Democrats favoring them.
  1. Almost all of the Downcounty Democratic strongholds – Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Kensington and Downtown Silver Spring – passed term limits by more than 20 points. Only Takoma Park voted no.  These are the same areas that voted overwhelmingly for Jamie Raskin in the 2016 primary and are responsible for sending him to Congress.  In the 24 precincts where Democrats accounted for 70% or more of registered voters, term limits passed with 62% of the vote.
  1. Nearly two-thirds of regular MoCo Democratic primary voters are age 60 or older. This makes the term limits vote in Leisure World especially noteworthy.  In 2004, 40% of Leisure World voted for term limits, eight points below the county average.  In 2016, 72% of Leisure World voted for term limits, the same as the county average.  That 32-point shift was the biggest of any local area in the county.  The importance of seniors among Democratic voters cannot be overstated and their huge shift in favor of term limits is deeply meaningful.

The term limits vote was the biggest revolt of MoCo voters in at least fifty years.  Everyone running for office in 2018 – incumbents, challengers and open seat candidates alike – must take that into account.

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Adam Pagnucco, Marc Elrich, MCGEO

Gino Stands by His Man

By Adam Pagnucco.

Council Member Marc Elrich held his kickoff event for the County Executive race in Bethesda this past Sunday.  One of his guests was Gino Renne, President of the Municipal and County Government Employees Organization (MCGEO), the largest of MoCo’s non-education county employee unions.  The picture below says it all.

Photo by Kevin Gillogly.  More pictures available on Kevin’s Flickr account.

Elrich is a beloved figure by many in the local labor movement.  He has had support from almost all of the area’s major labor organizations in his recent runs for office.  His lead sponsorship of two minimum wage bills has strengthened those relationships.  Of specific importance to MCGEO, Elrich was the only Council Member to vote against cutting the union’s negotiated 8 percent raise in the last budget, which also included a 9 percent property tax hike.  Additionally, Elrich is a strong defender of the county liquor monopoly, famously accusing anti-monopoly restaurant owners of stealing and whining and then getting banned by one of them.  Protecting the monopoly is one of MCGEO’s highest priorities.

Gino’s thumbs-up is not an official endorsement.  The union has to go through its process, including candidate interviews and questionnaires.  But the symbolism of the picture above is hard to miss.  Elrich could very well be labor’s pick for Executive.

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Adam Pagnucco, alcohol

Is Maryland Trying to Punish Craft Breweries?

By Adam Pagnucco.

Craft breweries have been growing rapidly in Maryland and elsewhere, forever changing the beer business.  Maryland scored a huge win a couple months ago when Diageo announced their intention to open a $50 million Guinness brewery in Baltimore County, creating a tourist attraction and dozens of jobs.  Best of all, unlike many employers, Diageo is not asking for one thin dime of public subsidy to come to the state.  But instead of welcoming the new facility with open arms, the House of Delegates reacted by making it harder for Diageo to do business here, as well as many other breweries in Maryland.

The debacle began when Diageo asked for a change in state law to allow them to sell 5,000 barrels of beer at a restaurant and tap room on the brewery site.  (Maryland’s current limit of 500 barrels is by far the lowest in the nation; the second-lowest state, North Carolina, has a limit of 25,000 barrels.)  Other brewers sought a limit of 4,000 barrels in on-site sales for their own operations and five different bills followed.  HB 1283 was the one that passed the House of Delegates and did three main things.

  1. It increased the on-site sales limit to 2,000 barrels. Breweries could apply to the Comptroller for permission to sell another 1,000 barrels on-site, but they would have to go through a distributor to do so.  That means the brewery would have to brew its own beer, then turn it over to a distributor, then receive it back from that distributor and of course pay the distributor a fee for its service.  Guess who ultimately pays that fee?  That’s right, you the customer!
  1. It established closing times for tap rooms of 9 PM during the week and 10 PM on weekends, down from local closing times ranging from midnight to 2 AM.
  1. It limited tap room sales to beer brewed on-site only. This repeals a long-standing practice in which brewery tap rooms supplement their own products with contract beer brewed for them by other breweries.  Such contract beer sales are major sources of revenue for some craft brewers and make tap rooms more attractive to customers.

Brewers characterized the combination of changes as “one step forward and two steps back” and predicted layoffs and business losses.  Why would the House pass such a bill?

One of the biggest opponents of liberalizing rules on craft breweries is the Maryland State Licensed Beverage Association, which represents restaurants and small alcohol retailers.  The group is particularly influential in Annapolis as its PAC has contributed over $180,000 to state politicians since 2005.  The association sees craft brewers as competition for its members.  From a zero-sum perspective, every pint purchased in a brewery tap room is a pint not purchased in a restaurant or package store.  But that view doesn’t recognize the synergies between these types of establishments as well as their differences.  Diageo’s brewery has the potential to be a major tourist facility, bolstering the entire local economy.  And if a consumer purchases a new product at the Diageo site and likes it, he or she will be motivated to buy that same product at restaurants and stores.  That means more business for everyone.

Some brewers would prefer that HB 1283 simply die in the Senate because of the problems it would cause, but it’s not so simple.  If the bill dies, the state’s current on-site sales limit of 500 barrels would stay in place.  That could cause Diageo to cancel its project, costing Baltimore County a $50 million tourist attraction that other states would kill to get.  Think of the impact that would have on the industry’s perception of Maryland.  If we lose Diageo, what other major brewer would ever relocate here?

Maryland has a number of anti-competitive laws on alcohol, including the much-loathed prohibitions on sales in most grocery stores and Montgomery County’s dysfunctional liquor monopoly.  The last thing we need is even more of these laws, especially if it causes us to lose a major employer and gives us a national black eye.  HB 1283 must be fixed.  Cheers to the State Senate if they can get it done.

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Adam Pagnucco, George Leventhal, Negative Campaigning

Leventhal Trolls Trone

By Adam Pagnucco.

Council Member George Leventhal, who is running for County Executive, is running the ad below on Facebook.  While ostensibly directed at President Donald Trump, it’s an obvious shot at a possible campaign opponent, Total Wine co-owner David Trone.

Leventhal has gone after Trone before, blasting him for illegal campaign signs and corporate contributions.  The latter charge is ironic considering Leventhal’s taking of more than $300,000 in corporate contributions over the last three cycles.

Negative campaigning has a long, LONG history in Montgomery County.  But it’s a bit unusual to target a person who is not yet officially running.  In any event, it is now crystal clear that if David Trone does run for Executive, George Leventhal will be ready.

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Adam Pagnucco, Larry Hogan, polls

Washington Post Poll Shows Hogan Vulnerability

By Adam Pagnucco.

Governor Larry Hogan loves to discuss his high approval ratings in polls, which have usually been in the range of 60-70%.  But a new Washington Post poll that examines his reelection prospects shows that they are well below his approval numbers and provides hope to Maryland Democrats.

The Post poll of March 16-19 has sample sizes of 914 adults and 841 registered voters.  The margin of error for those two groups is 4 points, growing to 5.5 points for a half-sample and 6.5 points for the 317 respondents who live in Maryland’s D.C. suburbs.  These margins of error must be kept in mind when reading the poll –  effectively, only large gaps are meaningful for small sub-groups.

With that significant caveat in mind, let’s examine data on Hogan’s reelection prospects.  The Post asked respondents the following question: “Thinking about Maryland’s Governor’s race in 2018… if Larry Hogan ran for re-election as governor, do you think you would vote for him OR for the candidate nominated by the Democratic Party?”  Among adults, 39% said they would vote for Hogan and 36% said they would vote for the Democratic nominee, an advantage of 3 points for the Governor.  Among registered voters, 41% said they would vote for Hogan and 37% said they would vote for the Democrat, a margin of plus 4.  So far, this looks very much like Hogan’s 4-point victory in 2014.

But the sub-group results are more interesting.  We compiled the Post’s sub-group data on this question in the presentation below.

Let’s recall the margin of error estimates above.  Margins of 10-15 points or less for small sub-groups are probably not very meaningful.  That said, many of the Governor’s strengths are predictable.  He does well with Republicans, Conservatives, Whites and rural residents.  He is weak among Democrats, liberals, African Americans and Prince George’s residents.  One item that stands out is his strength with seniors, with whom he has a 17-point advantage.  Seniors are among the most reliable voters in any election.

Now let’s compare the geographic results of this poll with how the Governor actually performed in 2014.

The Governor appears stronger in the poll in Baltimore and the Washington suburbs, but weaker elsewhere than in 2014.  This could be statistical noise due to large margins of error.  But it could also be the result of tax fatigue in some Democratic strongholds, like Montgomery (where voters recently passed term limits by 40 points) and Prince George’s (where the County Executive proposed a 15% increase in property taxes two years ago).  It’s hard to believe that the Governor is actually weaker in Anne Arundel and Howard, both of which have Republican Executives who are strongly favored for reelection.  (And a random question: what pollster combines Baltimore City and County in one estimate?  C’Mon, Man!)

The big takeaway from the poll is this: Larry Hogan will not be coasting to reelection.  Maryland is simply not wired that way.  It has too many Democrats, African Americans, liberals, immigrants and people who are either employed by or do business with government at some level to give any GOP statewide incumbent a blowout win.  From a purely political perspective, the Governor deserves credit for his focused message of tax cuts, job growth and reform (like redistricting) while trying his best to avoid distractions from the right, the left and Washington D.C.  His approach gives him a path to victory in a rather blue state.  But if the Democrats begin preparing now, play smart and field a good candidate for Governor, Larry Hogan can be defeated.

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