The following is a guest post by Adam Pagnucco:

Most attention concerning the next round of state and local elections centers on the Governor’s office. Can the Democrats find a nominee to knock off Larry Hogan or can the Governor earn a second term? But the playing field is much larger than that. In truth, we are about to find out whether Maryland is on its way to becoming a genuine two-party state.

For most of the last few decades, the Maryland Republican Party has been almost irrelevant. Their sole Governor from the seventies through the early 2000s, Bob Ehrlich, was ejected after one term. Their presence in the General Assembly was negligible. Most of the large local governments were controlled by Democrats most of the time. The great debates of the day were driven by discussions within the Democratic Party and were not affected very much by those on the outside. But there is a real question now as to whether that sort of Democratic dominance will continue.

Regardless of whether Governor Hogan is reelected, the GOP enjoys a stronger position for future elections than anyone can recall in recent times. In 2022, the County Executives of Anne Arundel, Harford and Howard could very well be running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination whether Hogan wins a second term or not. If and when they do, Republican council members and/or state legislators will run to fill those Executive seats and become the next generation of local leaders. Competition for local council seats will be fierce in swing jurisdictions like Frederick, Howard and Baltimore County. Term-limited local officials will run for the General Assembly. In other words, in the absence of an earth-shattering event (like a Donald Trump presidency) or a mass revival of the Maryland Democratic Party, the Republicans’ recent gains could become self-sustaining.

The GOP will probably never be the majority party in Maryland in our lifetimes, but they don’t have to be. All they have to do is become competitive. That will enable them to become a factor in public policy debates both through their ability to win and hold elected office and through the threat of their doing so. We may already be seeing the effects of this as a bill to steer public funding to private schools has passed the Maryland Senate. Of the 25 Senators who voted in favor it, 14 were Republicans and some of the Democrats came from competitive areas like Anne Arundel, Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore. The House did not pass the Senate’s proposal, but did agree to use public money to fund private school scholarships for the first time in the budget. Rising right-wing influence may also be a factor in the Senate’s passage of tax cuts for the rich. This is a reversal from the Senate’s approval of tax hikes for “half millionaires” (those making $500,000 or more) in 2012 and the General Assembly’s approval of a temporary millionaire tax in 2008.

Another consequence of the GOP’s ascent could be the empowerment of its extremist elements. Governor Hogan presents a moderate face to the public. But a recent Baltimore Sun poll found that 34% of Republican primary voters supported Donald Trump for President and another 25% supported Ted Cruz. That is sure to capture the attention of Republican elected officials and influence their behavior. Republicans like race-baiting Delegate Pat McDonough (labeled by the Sun as “the Trump of Baltimore County”); neo-Confederate Anne Arundel Council Member Michael Peroutka; Delegate Neil Parrott, who wants to require HIV victims to get tattoos to obtain medicine; Hogan-appointed anti-LGBT and anti-immigrant Baltimore County school board member Ann Miller; and Frederick County Council Member Kirby Delauter are all part of the GOP bench. Imagine what they would do with real power.

The challenge facing Maryland Democrats is not just Governor Hogan – it’s also the growth of the GOP in areas other than the two Beltways and the portion of I-95 connecting them. Will the Democrats respond with a sweeping statewide effort to regain their past dominance? Or will Republican gains at the local level be entrenched? That may be an even bigger question than the identity of the next Governor and it could set the political table for many years to come.

The following is a guest post by Adam Pagnucco:

Far from the eyes of Annapolis, Baltimore, Rockville and Upper Marlboro, the GOP is steadily expanding its grip on county governments in Maryland. In fact, the Republicans hold majorities of almost all categories of powerful county officials.

Let’s start with County Executives (including the Mayor of Baltimore).

In 2003, six counties plus the City of Baltimore had executive positions. Only Harford County had a Republican Executive. By 2015, three more counties (Wicomico, Cecil and Frederick) had executive positions. The Democrats and Republicans are now tied at 5-5. Anne Arundel and Howard, both strategically critical suburban counties, have flipped from Democratic to Republican. The current Republican Executive of Wicomico defeated an incumbent Democrat to claim the seat. Republicans are a threat to claim the Executive seat in Frederick if they run someone other than Blaine Young, and that would give them a majority for this office.

Now let’s examine County Councils and Commissions.

In 2003, the Democrats had local legislative majorities in 11 of 24 counties. By 2015, the Democrats had majorities in 7 counties as Allegany, Cecil, Talbot and Wicomico had flipped to GOP control. In 2003, Democratic local legislators outnumbered Republicans by 77-61. In 2015, the Republicans had an 81-61 lead. Omitting the Big Three Democratic strongholds of the City, Montgomery and Prince George’s, the GOP’s edge increased from 60-45 to 81-28. The Maryland Association of Counties (MACo) is effectively Republican-held territory.

Here are the splits for State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs.

Democrats went from having 13 State’s Attorneys in 2003 to 8 now. Among Sheriffs, Democrats went from 14 to 11. Democratic majorities turned to Republican majorities in both offices.

We’ll have some thoughts about what this means in Part Four.

The following is a guest post by Adam Pagnucco:

The Maryland Democratic Party’s top goal is defeating Governor Larry Hogan. The Maryland Republican Party’s top goal is getting him reelected. But the context of the next election is not simply about Hogan and his Democratic opponent. The context also includes other state and local offices, and in that arena, the GOP is on the march.

To demonstrate that, we compiled data on party identification of office holders at the state and local levels in 2003 (the first year of Governor Ehrlich’s term) and 2015 (the first year of Governor Hogan’s term). The offices we examined are State Senate, Delegate, County Executive (including the Mayor of Baltimore), county councils and commissions, State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs. For Senators and Delegates we compiled results at the regional level (large individual counties and groups of small counties) because state legislative districts often cross over county lines. All local offices are reported by county.

Let’s look at State Senators first.

The party split of Senators is identical for both 2003 and 2015: 33 Democrats and 14 Republicans. There were no major regional changes between the two years. The imbalance in favor of Democrats is preserved in this category. (Note that the change numbers in the right column don’t add to zero because some regions overlap each other.)

Now let’s look at Delegates.

The GOP won a record number of Delegate seats in 2014, but their total (50) is not that much more than it was in 2003 (42). A few regional trends are apparent. The Democrats are down to one Delegate on the Eastern Shore. They are close to an even count in Southern Maryland, although that is because one of the area’s three legislative districts is split with heavily Democratic Prince George’s County. The two Democratic Delegates in Western Maryland come from a district that is narrowly drawn around the City of Frederick. Baltimore City has lost two Delegates who would normally be Democrats because of population shifts.

Despite these changes, the Democrats are firmly in control of the General Assembly and proved it by overriding all six of Governor Hogan’s vetoes. The REAL changes are taking place in local governments, far from the attention of Annapolis and Democratic officials in the party’s strongholds of the City of Baltimore, Montgomery and Prince George’s.

We’ll illustrate that in Part Three.

The following is a guest post by Adam Pagnucco:

Competition between Governor Larry Hogan and General Assembly Democrats has been hot and heavy since the Governor’s first State of the State speech and his first budget. The Governor has alternated between calling for bipartisanship and landing heavy partisan blows against his opponents. The Democrats have responded by holding up some of his legislative agenda and overriding all six of his vetoes. Battle lines are clearly being drawn for 2018.

Hogan is sometimes compared to his former employer, Governor Bob Ehrlich. When Ehrlich won the 2002 general election, Democrats chalked it up to the lackluster campaign run by their nominee and regarded him as a fluke. They soon rallied around Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley and kicked out Ehrlich after one term. O’Malley decimated Ehrlich in their 2010 rematch by 14 points. Senate President Mike Miller promised to bury the Republicans and predicted it would take them forty years to recover. And then Hogan was elected.

Like Ehrlich, Hogan ran against an underwhelming Democratic Lieutenant Governor. Like Ehrlich, Hogan has positive job approval ratings (although Hogan’s are a bit higher for the moment.) And like Ehrlich, Hogan has problematic relations with the General Assembly. But there is one major difference between the two: the Maryland Republican Party is stronger now than it was in Ehrlich’s day.

Prior to Ehrlich, the last Republican Governor was former Baltimore County Executive Spiro Agnew, elected in 1966. Four straight multi-term Democratic Governors (and one Acting Governor) separated Ehrlich and Agnew. In that time period, the GOP had two U.S. Senators (John Glenn Beall and Charles Mathias) but those offices have both been held by Democrats since Barbara Mikulski’s election in 1986. The Democrats held most U.S. House seats and controlled most of the large local governments during the majority of this period. The GOP was rarely a factor in either politics or government.

Ehrlich was criticized by some for not doing enough to change this imbalance. During his time in office, the GOP’s voter registration percentage fell slightly and the party did not substantially increase its reach around the state. After his defeat in 2006, Ehrlich conceded Democratic dominance. He told WBAL, “It’s clear in Maryland that there is a direction people are more comfortable with… It’s the way it’s always been. And then we had this four-year sort of off-course thing, and people are clearly more comfortable with a single-party kind of deal here. They did not like the conflict.”

That is not Governor Hogan’s point of view. He is happy to battle Democrats through his dominant social media machine and uses them as whipping boys for all that ails the state. And Hogan has something that Ehrlich did not: a growing GOP bench. Whatever happens in the next election, that bench is something that demands attention from the Democrats for the foreseeable future.

What does the GOP’s bench look like? We’ll find out more in Part Two.