{"id":9706,"date":"2018-03-01T07:00:36","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T12:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9706"},"modified":"2018-03-01T01:03:33","modified_gmt":"2018-03-01T06:03:33","slug":"four-more-years-for-franchot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/?p=9706","title":{"rendered":"Four More Years for Franchot"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco.<\/em><\/p>\n

For many months, rumors have abounded about the Democratic establishment seeking to find a primary challenger to its hated nemesis, Comptroller Peter Franchot.\u00a0 But at the close of candidate filing, it became clear that the effort to oust Franchot had failed.\u00a0 The Comptroller has no Democratic opponent, and with only an unknown Republican running against him<\/a>, Franchot is certain to get four more years in office.<\/p>\n

Among the statehouse\u2019s leadership, Governor Larry Hogan is regarded as a rival but not a bitter enemy.\u00a0 That\u2019s because since the Governor is a Republican, a certain amount of political competition is expected.\u00a0 Franchot, on the other hand, is despised by the Annapolis Democratic ruling class.\u00a0 As a Democrat and a former twenty-year Delegate, someone in Franchot\u2019s position would normally be expected to be a loyal player on Team Dem.\u00a0 Instead, the Comptroller is the leader of Team Franchot \u2013 a team with different interests and tactics than Team Dem \u2013 and the leaders revile him as an apostate.<\/p>\n

Understanding Franchot requires breaking out of the conventional political box \u2013 something the Comptroller specializes in.\u00a0 Here are four facts about Franchot that players in state politics should recognize.<\/p>\n

He Has Built a Thirty-Year Career on Rebellion Against Authority<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go back to 1986.\u00a0 District 20 State Senator Stewart Bainum was leaving his seat to run for Congress.\u00a0 Two Delegates, Ida Ruben and Diane Kirchenbauer, ran for the open Senate seat.\u00a0 But Ruben was not content to go to the Senate \u2013 she wanted to control the entire district.\u00a0 So Ruben put together a slate including incumbent Delegate Sheila Hixson, MoCo Democrat of the Year Robert Berger and former Takoma Park City Council Member Lou D\u2019Ovidio.\u00a0 Franchot, then a young aide to Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey, was having none of it.\u00a0 He launched an aggressive door-knocking campaign for Delegate running against lobbyists, greedy banks, insurance companies and \u201cspecial interests\u201d of all kinds.\u00a0 Franchot finished first in the Delegate race<\/a>, surpassing even Hixson, and learned an early lesson: revolting against the establishment, both political and economic, could be electorally rewarding.<\/p>\n

Franchot targets special interests in a 1986 mailer.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That was just the beginning.\u00a0 Two years later, Franchot ran a tough and occasionally negative race against the new darling of moderates in MoCo, Congresswoman Connie Morella.\u00a0 (This is the only race Franchot would lose.)\u00a0 In 1992, Franchot backed an ill-fated coup attempt against House Speaker Clay Mitchell<\/a>.\u00a0 Mitchell\u2019s rival, Nancy Kopp, would go on to be rehabilitated, but Franchot was sent so far to the back of the bench that he could have been sitting in a Bay Bridge toll booth.\u00a0 After the 2002 election, Franchot began running against Mister Maryland, Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, and even took out a $750,000 loan on his house to do it<\/a>.\u00a0 After winning an upset victory, Franchot then fought with Governor Martin O\u2019Malley and the legislature\u2019s presiding officers over slots and other issues all the way through Hogan\u2019s election.\u00a0 And the fight goes on over craft beer.<\/p>\n

Here is a partial list of all the establishment figures Franchot has taken on in the last thirty years: two incumbent Delegates in his home district, a popular Congresswoman, multiple House Speakers and the Senate President, a sitting Democratic Governor and one of Maryland\u2019s most influential all-time political figures in Schaefer.\u00a0 No other politician has assembled such a list and survived.\u00a0 And yet here is Franchot, more than thirty years later, with no primary opponent.<\/p>\n

He Champions Non-Partisan Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n

Think of some of the issues Franchot has taken on in the last decade: opposition to slots, cracking down on fraudulent tax returns, getting air conditioning in Baltimore County schools, opposing MoCo\u2019s liquor monopoly, moving the start of school until after Labor Day and liberalizing state laws on craft beer.\u00a0 These issues seem like an eclectic set but they have two things in common.\u00a0 First, none of them are partisan or ideological issues.\u00a0 Folks in the left, right and middle can agree on many of them.\u00a0 And second, the constituencies in opposition are attractive opponents to have: casino conglomerates, tax cheaters, corporate mega-beer producers and incompetent bureaucrats.\u00a0 To quote former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, from a political perspective this is [expletive deleted]<\/em> golden.\u00a0 Franchot has picked up allies and admirers in all these fights who range all over the political spectrum and will never desert him.\u00a0 How many Maryland politicians can make that claim?<\/p>\n

Moreover, despite the contempt that the establishment holds for Franchot, he has had his share of wins.\u00a0 Pressure from Franchot and Hogan has helped accelerate Baltimore County\u2019s school construction program.\u00a0 Hogan\u2019s executive order on school openings after Labor Day, a Franchot idea, has gone unchallenged.\u00a0 Last year, Franchot got a major tax fraud bill passed through the General Assembly<\/a>.\u00a0 And the current efforts to put slots money in a lockbox for education is a big vindication for Franchot, who has argued for a decade that gambling money was not used for schools as promised but has instead been poured into the general fund.\u00a0 We will see how his current craft beer crusade turns out.<\/p>\n

He Lacks Ambition and Fear<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most politicians are driven by ambition and fear.\u00a0 Ambition, typically manifesting as a drive for higher office, causes politicians to take risks, stand out and appeal to critical interest groups.\u00a0 Fear can be healthy when it aids self-preservation, including fear of being disliked, embarrassed, ostracized or losing an election.\u00a0 The behavior of most politicians involves a competition and balance between these two competing traits.\u00a0 In a sense, Franchot has neither of them.<\/p>\n

Franchot\u2019s absence of fear is obvious.\u00a0 The scathing denunciations of Franchot by O\u2019Malley, the legislature’s presiding officers, the Baltimore Sun editorial page and various dukes and barons of Annapolis would scare the living daylights out of most politicians.\u00a0 Not Franchot.\u00a0 He not only doesn\u2019t care; the confrontations actually energize him.\u00a0 Your author has seen him grin and rub his hands together in glee at the prospect of taking on folks whom he would call \u201cbullies and bosses.\u201d\u00a0 No other influential figure in state politics acts like this.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing: Franchot also lacks any ambition for higher office.\u00a0 He figured out some time ago that Comptroller is a great job.\u00a0 Franchot doesn\u2019t have to vote on controversial bills, draft budgets, raise taxes or say no to constituents.\u00a0 He gets to travel around the state, hand out awards to small businesses, get involved with issues of his choice and, as long as tax refunds go out quickly and efficiently, he can do all of the above as long as he likes.\u00a0 So he isn\u2019t going to run for Governor, Congress or anything else.\u00a0 That frees up Franchot from having to compete for all of the Democratic interest group support he would need in a competitive primary with quality opponents.\u00a0 That means he gets to set his own agenda in a way other politicians can\u2019t.\u00a0 And boy, that has been a major asset to him.<\/p>\n

The Establishment Handles Him Terribly<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re a leader in the Democratic establishment, there are only two ways to deal with the occasional and inevitable Franchot eruptions.\u00a0 You can ignore them.\u00a0 You can co-opt them.\u00a0 Sometimes you can do both.\u00a0 But whatever you do, don\u2019t take on Franchot directly.\u00a0 Then he gets to fight \u201cbullies and bosses,\u201d and either gets his way or he gets to be martyred in front of legions of adoring supporters.\u00a0 Either way, he wins.<\/p>\n

The recent craft beer fight is a good example of mishandling Franchot.\u00a0 Maryland\u2019s alcohol laws are notoriously anti-competitive, although they have very slowly begun to liberalize.\u00a0 Franchot rightly criticizes the state\u2019s beer franchise laws, which essentially establish state-sanctioned distribution cartels, and he ridiculed a requirement in a bill passed last year<\/a> that craft breweries send some of their beer to distributors and buy it back before serving it in their tap rooms.\u00a0 Then he set up a task force to give his proposed beer law reforms legitimacy and had his army of craft beer supporters descend on Annapolis.\u00a0 What to do?<\/p>\n

The rational response would be to ignore and co-opt.\u00a0 From a strictly political perspective, the establishment should have given Franchot\u2019s bill a polite hearing but otherwise ignored it.\u00a0 Then they should have extracted pieces from it that the distributors could live with, pass those in a separate bill sponsored by state legislators who could use a bump, and declare victory.\u00a0 Franchot would declare partial victory too, but who cares?<\/p>\n

But this is Franchot so rationality went out the window.\u00a0 Instead, the leaders put forth two bills: one to retract the improvements the craft breweries won last year and another to form a task force to study whether the Comptroller\u2019s alcohol regulatory authority should be taken away.\u00a0 The establishment\u2019s reward was an all-day hearing that degenerated into a searing circus featuring angry and sputtering Delegates, militant craft beer advocates, allegations of payoffs through booze industry political contributions and a starring role for Franchot who got to denounce \u201cback room deals.\u201d\u00a0 They gave Franchot exactly what he wanted: a swarming sea of fans and HUGE press attention.\u00a0 How exactly is this supposed to encourage him to behave differently in the future?<\/p>\n

Franchot preens like a peacock before press and supporters outside the House hearing room where his craft beer bill was discussed.\u00a0 Credit: Franchot\u2019s Facebook page.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Bottom Line<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are 188 members of the General Assembly.\u00a0 The place needs hierarchy to operate.\u00a0 There must be organization, leadership, direction and consequences for violators.\u00a0 Otherwise, nothing would get done.\u00a0 All of this means that if the establishment didn\u2019t exist, we would have to create one.<\/p>\n

That said, establishments decay and become obsolete when they go unchallenged.\u00a0 There\u2019s a valuable role for disrupters like Franchot: they keep the leadership on its toes and make sure issues that do not originate solely within favored interest groups get addressed.\u00a0 This push and pull keeps the place vibrant and relevant and, over the long run, makes it better.<\/p>\n

The leadership may not always like that.\u00a0 But they\u2019re going to have to deal with it, at least for another four years.<\/p>\n

Disclosure: The author has done campaign work for Peter Franchot in the past but has not worked on his current campaign on craft beer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Adam Pagnucco. For many months, rumors have abounded about the Democratic establishment seeking to find a primary challenger to its hated nemesis, Comptroller Peter Franchot.\u00a0 But at the close of candidate filing, it became clear that the effort to oust Franchot had failed.\u00a0 The Comptroller has no Democratic opponent, and with only an unknown … Continue reading Four More Years for Franchot<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[151,26],"tags":[1545,1472],"class_list":["post-9706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adam-pagnucco","category-peter-franchot","tag-adam-pagnucco","tag-peter-franchot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4mKJE-2wy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9706"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9710,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9706\/revisions\/9710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theseventhstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}