By Adam Pagnucco.
Governor Larry Hogan may be running away from President Donald Trump as fast as he can, but his base is happy to embrace both of them. Here is the Montgomery County Republican Party’s display from the Gaithersburg Labor Day Parade. (Photo credit: Gretchen Zekiel, Deputy Chair, Bill Conway for County Council.)
By Adam Pagnucco.
Bill Conway, Potomac
Many readers have encountered Diana Conway, one of MoCo’s most tenacious and effective environmental activists. As she is someone who has long been involved in local elections, your author had long assumed that a Conway might someday appear on the ballot. Well, we were half-right – the Conway who is running is her husband, Bill.
Bill Conway is a recently retired energy lawyer who is a nationally recognized expert on the electric power industry. He once worked as a U.S. Senate staffer and played a key role in designing wholesale electricity deregulation in the early 1990s. He’s a heavy hitter and with a profile like that, one might assume that Conway would come across as a know-it-all. But then you meet him.
Conway’s intelligence is as obvious as his immense likability. But his greatest asset is his curiosity. Your author has interviewed dozens of candidates over the years. Most of them are reluctant to admit ignorance on anything for fear of coming across as unready for elected service. Not Conway. While he certainly has plenty of knowledge and opinions – he is just as animated in discussing social justice as he is about the need to grow the economy – he is comfortable enough in his own skin to ask questions. LOTS of questions. Your author has never met a candidate who took such deep dives on policy issues right off the bat – for HOURS – as Conway.
Intellectual curiosity may be the single most underrated trait in great elected officials. Their job is to deal with a tremendous variety of issues that demand attention and expertise, often many in the same day. The best of them learn quickly and love to learn. Bill Conway has a lot going for him but he has that trait in spades. It will serve him and his constituents well if he gets elected.
PS – Right now, no at-large candidate is working harder than Conway on the campaign trail. Here’s the proof.
Gabe Albornoz, Kensington
Imagine working your way up the ladder quickly and landing a dream job. Everything is great, yeah? And then less than two years later, the cuts begin. By the time it’s all over, your budget is down 23% and your employees’ work years are down 22%. Is it still a dream job?
Gabe Albornoz would say yes even though that actually happened to him. As the county’s Director of Recreation, his department took those cuts between Fiscal Years 2008 and 2012, some of the biggest cuts to any part of the government. Albornoz had to look people in the eye and let them go, something almost all managers hate to do. But he got through it by concentrating reductions in force at the middle management level and empowering front-line employees to make more decisions. No recreation centers were closed and Albornoz recruited non-profits and community groups to help fill the gap. That’s one reason why Albornoz is considered one of the best managers in county government.
But that’s not all he is. Albornoz is also the former Chair of the Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee and steered the party through some difficult conflicts with labor. Many new candidates have to spend time building relationships with players across the county – and it’s a BIG county. Albornoz already has those relationships – with elected officials, civic associations, community groups, faith groups and everyone else he has worked with in county government over the last decade. Unusually, he seems to be almost devoid of enemies. (Explain how you do that to this blog author, Gabe!) It’s a large network that could pay big dividends.
The knock on many people in legislative positions is that they know nothing about running a government, or a large organization of any kind. No one could say that about Gabe Albornoz. He is among the best prepared people to ever run for Montgomery County Council.
More to come in Part Three.
By Adam Pagnucco.
Next Saturday, freshman Delegate Cory McCray (D-45) is holding a campaign event in which he is expected to announce a challenge to long-time Baltimore City Senator Nathaniel McFadden. It’s a gutsy move that will be one of the marquee races in the city. The Baltimore Sun and Maryland Matters have both covered the impending race. We reprint McCray’s announcement below.
*****
Special Announcement about the 2018 Elections
What: Friends, family, and neighbors across Baltimore’s 45th Legislative District will gather for a special announcement from Delegate Cory McCray
When: Saturday, September 16, 2017 @ 10:00 A.M.
Where: Clifton Park – 2555 Harford Road, Baltimore, MD 21218 (Across From Fairmount Harford High School)
Who: Lifelong Baltimore resident and member of the House of Delegates, Delegate Cory McCray
Why: Baltimore is a strong community filled with potential, and we deserve political leadership who will help turn that potential into a reality.
Growing up in Baltimore, Cory could have easily become a statistic. He changed his life when he found an opportunity to do better. He wants to provide those same opportunities to the residents in the 45th district. Though the challenges Baltimore faces are significant, Cory is prepared to deal with those challenges head on. Baltimore is a town that has passion and determination to push through these difficult times. September 16th, Cory will make an announcement regarding his plans to fight for the community that raised him. The 45th district deserves a leader who will listen and provide services to improve the quality of life, where the community are partners in progress.
Cory McCray, is a husband, father of four, union electrician and, he’s willing to make the hard choices necessary to begin the healing in Baltimore.
Cory V. McCray
corymccray@gmail.com
Facebook – http://on.fb.me/gAIEJ0
Twitter – @corymccray
“Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
By Adam Pagnucco.
The combination of County Executive Ike Leggett’s retirement, public campaign financing and term limits is producing an unprecedented flood of candidates running for the County Council’s four at-large seats. By the time of the filing deadline next February, thirty or more people could be in the race. Your author has previously written about those who may be running who have prior electoral experience. Starting today, we will be sharing first impressions of seven new at-large candidates, all of whom have been subjected to withering, multi-hour interrogations by your author. We are pleased to report that all seven survived these encounters and any damage is hopefully temporary.
The at-large council race is a fascinating and historic affair. Since the current council configuration was established in 1990, there have never been three at-large vacancies. Normally, your author considers the past in evaluating what the future will be. But in some respects, the past may not be as useful a guide as usual because of the sheer unprecedented nature of what is now happening.
The best analogy for this current at-large race is a giant, open air bazaar. Voters enter it and encounter dozens of kiosks, each with a candidate selling his or her candidacy. Each candidate promises the best deal – just for you! – as the voters stroll by. Which ones can cut through the noise? Which ones can attract the most people? The four kiosks that sell their wares to the most voters will win the competition. And it could very well be that those wares will be very different from each other as different segments of the market drive their favored candidates to victory.
Overall, the at-large field is shaping up to be deep and talented. The only shame here is that there are many more good candidates than available seats, meaning that some highly qualified people are going to lose. On to our first impressions of the new candidates, given in no particular order.
Marilyn Balcombe, Germantown
Some liberals stereotype business leaders as anti-union, anti-government (except when collecting corporate welfare), anti-tax and primarily – perhaps solely – concerned with accumulating profits. Your author once worked on union organizing campaigns in the South and met a few corporate owners who fit that bill! But if that’s what you think of business leaders in general, Marilyn Balcombe is going to surprise you.
The long-time President/CEO of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce, Balcombe is representative of MoCo’s chamber leaders who tend to be very different from their counterparts elsewhere. All of the full-time, paid local chamber presidents are women. Some of them are moms who have been active in their PTAs. Most are Democrats who tend to be liberal on social issues. All favor funding for public education. All are pragmatic rather than ideological. And absolutely none of them are tea partiers.
Balcombe, who holds a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology, is analytical by nature. She does not prejudge issues on the basis of ideology and continually seeks out evidence in making her decisions. She agrees with the county’s emphasis on education but wants to augment it with robust economic development. She’s a good listener who prefers policy to politics. (She will admit to not being crazy about the political parts of running for office!) Above all, she is a grown-up. If you’re looking for a serious, hard-working, center-left candidate who will focus on making the county more competitive with its neighbors, Marilyn Balcombe should get your vote.
More to come in Part Two.
By Adam Pagnucco.
Labor Day is the one day of the year when the press discusses one of America’s great historic institutions, the labor movement. Much of the press’s discourse contains annual descriptions of labor’s decline, some sympathetic and some not. Whatever its causes, the story is true: union influence over the economy and American quality of life has been shrinking for decades. Maryland is not immune.
Labor unions are important protectors of working class and middle class people. Unlike political parties, corporations and the press, labor unions were created directly by working people, are governed by leaders those working people elect and are accountable to their memberships. In their heyday from the 1930s through the 1970s, they played indispensable roles in passing laws on social security, civil rights, wage and hour standards and benefit protections. They also reversed the income inequality that prevailed from the Gilded Age through the 1920s and built America’s first large, influential middle class. Under assault by corporate America, hostile politicians, problematic trade policies and economic change as well as – in some cases – handicapped by myopic leadership, they have mostly retreated to the public sector and a few urban strongholds in the Northeast, the Midwest and the West Coast. Many of today’s economic problems, like stagnant wages, vanishing pensions and the increasing dominance of the one percent can be linked to union decline.
The ultimate source of union power is labor’s percentage of the workforce, commonly called union density. When unions establish collective bargaining for a critical mass of employees in a given market, whether industrial, geographic or both, their compensation becomes the standard that even non-union employers must meet. That’s right – even non-union workers benefit from unions. But when unions are unable to organize significant percentages of workers in their markets, they struggle to maintain high levels of wages and benefits in the face of overwhelming non-union competition. Hence, union density is a critical measure of union effectiveness.
According to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, union density in the United States was 10.7% in 2016, down from 24.0% in 1973. Maryland’s union density in 2016 was 11.0%, almost exactly the national average. New York was the only state in 2016 to have a union density of more than 20% while 27 states had densities of less than 10%.
One might suppose that Maryland would be an exception to the rule of declining unionization given the size of its public sector, its long-time control by labor-friendly Democrats and the status of Baltimore as a once-great manufacturing and shipping center. But the truth is that Maryland has mirrored the rest of the country in falling union density. In 1983, 18.5% of its total workforce was in unions. By 2016, that share had fallen to 11.0%.
Union decline in Maryland has been uneven. Protected by laws allowing state and local government collective bargaining and friendly politicians, public sector unions have mostly held onto their power. Their density in 2016 (27.4%) was little changed from 1983 (29.9%). The real fall of Maryland unions has taken place in the private sector. In 1983, 14.4% of Maryland private sector workers were union members. In 2016, that share had dropped to 5.6%.
Private sector union collapse in Maryland has been broad and deep. Construction unions saw their density fall from 16.0% in 1983 to 12.7% in 2016. In the services sector, the drop was from 10.7% to 5.0%. And in private manufacturing, unions in Maryland have been almost obliterated. Union density in that sector fell from 29.2% in 1983 to a shocking 3.9% in 2016.
Progressive elected officials and advocacy groups have focused on measures like minimum wage laws, sick leave laws, tax legislation, health care reform and education funding to help the working and middle classes and reverse income inequality. All of those things matter. But a long-term, sustainable progressive agenda may be impossible without a healthy labor movement. Independent labor organizations are critical to passing good laws, holding corporations and politicians accountable and preserving the gains made by working people against constant attempts to reverse them. Without them, the one percent will continue their march to total domination.
Disclosures: Your author holds two degrees in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and worked for sixteen years as a strategic researcher in the labor movement.
By Adam Pagnucco.
Council At-Large candidate Evan Glass has announced his campaign kickoff event at El Golfo in Silver Spring on September 16th. (For those who have not been to El Golfo, it is absolutely one of MoCo’s best Latino restaurants!) An interesting detail of his kickoff is the advertised presence of District 5 County Council Member Tom Hucker, who defeated Glass by a tiny margin in 2014. We reprint the announcement below.
By Adam Pagnucco.
In a post on Senator Cheryl Kagan’s Facebook page, Council Member George Leventhal has blamed the voters’ passage of term limits on “right wing populism.” Yes folks, you read that correctly!
On Sunday, Senator Kagan posted an innocuous account of the number of reusable bags she has accumulated in the wake of the county’s use of a bag tax. (Your author and many others can relate!) Her post had nothing to do with term limits and she even stated her support of the bag tax. Nevertheless, Leventhal replied within ten minutes. “Constituents have told me the bag tax was a primary reason term limits passed. I support the bag tax too, but I’m just letting you know that you walk a thin line when you associate with right wing populism by identifying yourself with term limits.”
First, Kagan did nothing to identify herself with term limits or with right wing populism of any kind. No reasonable person would make those leaps of illogic by reading her post. Second, while Robin Ficker and Help Save Maryland may have gathered signatures for the term limits charter amendment, 70% of the county’s voters (and a majority of Democrats) voted for term limits. Third, at the same time that “right wing populism” was apparently sweeping the county, those same voters supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by 75%-19%. The alleged right wingers also voted for Chris Van Hollen and Jamie Raskin by more than 50 points each.
Large majorities of every part of the county except Takoma Park voted for term limits. Is right wing populism running wild in MoCo?
Part of what is going on here may be a reaction to Kagan’s consideration of a run for County Executive, an office which Leventhal is seeking. Potential rivals are right to fear Kagan. She is an outstanding candidate who is a veteran of two recent hard-fought Senate races and has many fans inside and outside of her district. She is also plenty tough, having sent out mail against her 2014 opponent showing him “gallivanting around as a Republican elephant masquerading in a Democrat donkey mask.” She is unlikely to be intimidated by unfriendly statements on Facebook.
There are many reasons for the passage of term limits: the giant tax hike of 2016, declining local media coverage, falling voter turnout, unhappiness with nanny state laws and, in some areas, dissatisfaction with recent master plans. These factors and more combined to produce the biggest political revolt in MoCo in fifty years. But there is no evidence that right wing populism played a decisive role here. Leventhal’s remarks are reminiscent of his equating term limits supporters with Brexit voters and his branding of the entire effort as “dumb and unnecessary.” His views do not appear to have changed.
Disclosures: Your author is a big fan of Kagan, has done campaign work for Roger Berliner in the past and publicly supports Berliner for Executive.
By Adam Pagnucco.
Real estate agents in Takoma Park report that home values in the City have doubled in the last month as local candidates swarm in to buy houses. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said local realtor Walt Simonson. “They say they want to win their next election and they’re beating out all other bids!”
The candidate frenzy is driven by a surge of media coverage about Takoma Park’s dominance of the County Council. City residents occupy three of the four at-large seats. Also, Congressman Jamie Raskin, Comptroller Peter Franchot and DNC Chairman Tom Perez live in Takoma Park. As a result, a home in the City is seen by many as locking down a victory for elected office.
“If I can just get that house on Poplar Avenue, I know I’m gonna win,” said County Council candidate Evan Glass, who was relocating from Silver Spring. When shown data illustrating that the city’s dominance of the council was temporary, Glass didn’t believe it. “Fake news! I believe in winning. Don’t you?”
Some incumbents who represent districts in other parts of the county are renting second homes in Takoma Park just to increase their chances of reelection. Your author witnessed District 17 Delegate Kumar Barve, who is facing a challenger, signing a lease for a Maple Avenue apartment. On being asked what he was doing, Barve replied to your author, “None of your business!”
Political observers believe that Takoma Park residents will win ten council seats in the upcoming election. That’s noteworthy since there are only nine council offices at present. “We are installing a tenth council position reserved for Takoma Park. It will have veto power over the other council seats,” said Seth Grimes, a former City Council Member running for County Council. “In the unlikely event you elect non-City residents to the other seats, it won’t matter. But good luck anyway!”
Takoma Park’s dominance of local government is manifest in the regular shipments of gold bullion it receives, all stamped with the Montgomery County Government seal. When your author noticed a new shipment being unloaded into the city’s treasury vault, Mayor Kate Stewart said, “You’re not supposed to see that.” Workers proceeded to drape tarps over the bullion as it was hauled in.
The City is greatly aided in its mission to control world politics by its Takoma Park Political Domination School, established in 1890. Enrollment in the school is mandatory for all residents. Students are taught the fine arts of door-knocking, money-raising (except from developers), campaign rhetoric and opposition to conservatives. Many residents enroll their children in the school shortly after birth. “We start them young,” said employee Flo Steinberg, who works in the school’s Political Daycare Center. Two-year-old Marcy was seen receiving language training from Steinberg. “Liberal,” said Steinberg. “Lib-wuhl,” replied Marcy. “No, no. Lib. Err. Al.” The school’s success is proven by U.S. Census Bureau data indicating that 82% of Takoma Park’s residents are current, former or future elected officials. The other 18% are recent arrivals.
Xerxes Z-1, commandant of Galactic Fleet 26 from Planet X, agreed that the City dominated Earth politics. “When we came to this planet, we did not go to the White House. We are not interested in discount golf club memberships, financial transactions with Russian oligarchs or Cheetos. We asked to be taken to your leaders and of course that meant coming to Takoma Park.” The alien commander spoke from the grounds of the Takoma Park Political Domination School, where he had enrolled immediately upon reaching Earth.
By Adam Pagnucco.
Democrats all over the country have lately been demanding that Confederate statues and other monuments celebrating slavery be taken down. That extends to Maryland, where Baltimore Mayor Cathy Pugh had four Confederate monuments removed in the middle of the night. But when Maryland Democrats demanded that an Annapolis statue of former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney also be removed, they ran into opposition from arguably the state’s most powerful Democratic politician: Senate President Mike Miller.
Democrats’ objections to Taney are rooted in his authoring of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which held that descendants of Africans imported as slaves into the U.S. could not be American citizens. In 2015, Governor Larry Hogan defended the Taney statue in Annapolis in the Washington Post.
Gov. Larry Hogan (R) says he is opposed to a change in the state song and likened the effort to calls for removing the statue of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, author of the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision, from the grounds of the State House.
“It’s political correctness run amok,” Hogan said in an interview last week. “Where do we stop? Do we get rid of the George Washington statues out here and take down all the pictures from all the people from the Colonial era that were slave owners? Do we change the name of Washington County, Carroll County and Calvert County?
“You can’t change history, and we’re not going to be able to rewrite history,” Hogan said. “And I don’t think we ought to be changing any of that.”
After Democrats including House Speaker Mike Busch pushed back this week, Hogan changed his mind and agreed to remove the statue. The Governor was one of three members of the four-member board with jurisdiction over the statue to vote for removal. But one member of the board objected to the process of deciding the issue by email: Senate President Mike Miller. In his letter, Miller argued that Taney opposed slavery and “freed his slaves early in his life,” joined an “anti-kidnapping society” to protect free blacks and remained loyal to the Union until his death. Miller also cited support for the statue from former Baltimore City Delegate Pete Rawlings and a descendant of Dred Scott. We reprint the letter below.
Whatever one thinks of Miller’s opinion, it’s a big headache for Maryland Democrats. Much of their strategy to oppose Governor Hogan has been to criticize him for silence in the face of actions by President Donald Trump. That strategy has affected the behavior of the Governor, who just said that Trump “made a terrible mistake” in his comments on the white supremacist invasion of Charlottesville. But what of Miller? If his comments on the Taney statue had come from Hogan, Maryland Democrats would be swarming all over him. What happens when such sentiments come from one of the most powerful Democrats in the state?
One Democrat who did not blanch from criticizing the Senate President was Senator Rich Madaleno (D-18), who is running for Governor. Madaleno wrote on Facebook that Miller “is wrong.”
The rest of the Democrats now have a choice. They can be intellectually honest and take on one of the leaders of their party. Or they can ignore Miller and look like hypocrites.
As with Hogan on Trump, silence is not an option.
By Adam Pagnucco.
After our post on Frederick County Council Member Kirby Delauter’s views on the Civil War, Delauter reached out to your author on Facebook and requested an interview. Your author agreed, but when I stipulated that the interview be on the record, Delauter balked.
Below is the exchange with Delauter on the Western Maryland Politics Facebook page.
We have often gone off the record with sources in the past. But Delauter is different. He is the only local elected official we know of who has threatened to sue a news publication for “unauthorized” use of his name. We remind Delauter (and any like-minded politicians) that truth is an absolute defense to libel and defamation lawsuits, and that includes citing public statements made by public figures. Accordingly, while we are happy to communicate with Delauter, we will only do it on the record because of his history of threatening litigation.
One more thing. While Delauter may have been mocked by some for his threat against the Frederick News-Post, we take him very seriously. He has enthusiastic supporters, is an able fundraiser and represents a red district that is a good base for a GOP candidate running county-wide. Delauter may very well be Frederick County’s next Executive.
