The Maryland primary vote

Despite Maryland’s geographic diversity, the Donald Trump sweep last night was convincing and across-the-board. According to preliminary results, he ran up crushing margins in the parts of the state where he was known to be leading, including the Eastern Shore, with Worcester his best county at 73%, Dorchester at 71, and Somerset, Caroline, Wicomico, and Queen Anne all in the 64-68 range. In Western Maryland, he carried Allegany with 65 percent and Washington with 60. He broke 60 percent in Harford, Charles, Cecil, and Kent.

Equally impressive was Trump’s performance in carrying every suburban county as well as Baltimore City. Although one poll had showed him lagging Kasich by 20 points in the D.C. suburbs days before the election, he won both Montgomery and Prince George’s and even succeeded in carrying Howard County by four points over Kasich. Those three counties, plus Baltimore City, were his only under-50-percent showings; Frederick County, at 51 percent, was his next weakest. (Disclosure: I did some volunteering with Kasich’s effort in the final weeks of the contest.)

Despite talk of strategic voting for Kasich by Cruz supporters, Kasich finished only 4 points ahead of Cruz. And despite talk of a highly regionalized race between the two, Cruz was not as weak in the D.C. area, nor as strong in rural Maryland, as all that. Cruz did top Kasich by 5 to 10 point margins in Hagerstown and points west, and led him by modest margins in Southern Maryland. But Kasich’s vote exceeded Cruz’s in five of the nine Eastern Shore counties. Of the big suburban counties, Cruz managed to beat Kasich by 4 points in Frederick and one point in P.G., and otherwise trailed him by margins of 4-10 points in Baltimore, Harford, and Anne Arundel, 13 in Montgomery, and 17 in Howard.

My friend Chrys Kefalas’s bid for U.S. Senate proved no match for that of House Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga, whose well executed campaign occupied much the same ground Kefalas had tried to stand on, combining plucky biography with Larry-Hogan-style cheerful problem solving. Between a fund-raising edge, broadcast, 5 mailings, a raft of endorsements from influentials, and solid debate performances, Szeliga did exactly what she needed to do to lock down the nomination, and will now face the heavily favored Democrat Chris Van Hollen in November.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s convincing win is not unexpected, nor is that of Democratic Senate nominee Chris Van Hollen. It’s worth remembering that Van Hollen was deeply involved in the partisan Democratic push for an IRS crackdown on conservative-leaning nonprofits that led to the Lois Lerner scandal.

In miniature, January 22

• Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s financial transactions tax scheme “won’t raise any revenue” [Tim Worstall] Democrat from Eighth District also wants to push feds deeply into second-guessing employers’ wage policies, and supply/demand be damned [Washington Times]
• Following NYC and other jurisdictions, MoCo bans plastic foam containers and peanuts [Bill Turque, Washington Post]
• MoCo, P.G. officials hope new administration doesn’t do to them what some of their favorite governors did to the rest of the state [David Boaz]
• 27 Democratic lawmakers urge left-tilted economic agenda; only ones not from MoCo/PG/Howard/Baltimore corridor are Senator Ron and Delegate Karen Lewis Young [Maryland Reporter]
• MoCo plans crackdown on vaping, although it is a far safer substitute for cigarettes and imposes much less burden on those nearby [Gazette, more, related Jacob Sullum (“As more teenagers vape, fewer smoke”) and Ronald Bailey]
• State panel recommends following Virginia model of no-fault birth injury compensation fund to replace litigation [Daily Press]

In miniature, Aug. 28

• “Auditors from the federal government are delving into the debacle of Maryland’s health insurance exchange, The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday. All we can say is, good.” [Frederick News-Post] Catalogue of state ObamaCare exchange debacles, of which perhaps only Oregon’s outdoes ours [Peter Suderman] Role of departing health commissioner Sharfstein [Maryland Reporter] Role of Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, earlier;
• More details on GOP poll finding governor’s race almost neck-and-neck [Maryland Reporter, earlier]
• Police militarization: Frederick News-Post runs a letter from me about vote by Reps. Van Hollen, Delaney to preserve Pentagon-surplus-to-cops program. Choicest comment: “The liberal left is never happy.” (Referring to me!) Related Baltimore Sun coverage of 1033 program in Maryland; earlier post here.
• Conveniently, privacy laws conceal identity of official in the O’Malley/Brown administration accused of inside dealings [Baltimore Sun] My little crony: Mark Newgent traces energy subsidy flow to firm run by O’Malley sidekick [Red Maryland]
• Truly discouraging that legislature would discontinue reporting through which we learn that law enforcement agencies in Maryland have conducted more than 6,500 SWAT raids since 2010, the great majority over execution of search warrants [Newgent]
• Dems launch StopPeroutka.com [Len Lazarick, Barry Rascovar; earlier] His affinities with Anne Arundel sheriff nominee [StopPeroutka.com]

Militarize local cops? Six Maryland House members voted for, two against

Two months ago, joining forces from right and left, GOP Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) backed an amendment that would have ended the shipment of various categories of military-grade armaments to local police forces under the 1033 program, which has shipped billions of dollars’ worth of such equipment to local forces in recent years. Among items that would no longer have been made available, had the amendment passed: “aircraft (including unmanned aerial vehicles), armored vehicles, grenade launchers, silencers, toxicological agents (including chemical agents, biological agents, and associated equipment), launch vehicles, guided missiles” and so forth.

The full House voted down the amendment by a vote of 355 to 62. Leadership from both parties opposed the amendment, which won votes from 19 Republicans and 43 Democrats.

So how did the Maryland delegation come down? Only Democrats Donna Edwards and John Sarbanes voted to end the flow of military gear, while Democrats John Delaney, Chris Van Hollen, Elijah Cummings, Dutch Ruppersberger, and Steny Hoyer and Republican Andy Harris joined Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner in voting no.

Zaid Jilani at Vanity Fair writes that “Congress has been a willing participant in the arming of the police for years now, and the man most responsible for this trend graduated from Congress to the executive branch: Vice President Joe Biden.” Jilani also notes that defense equipment producers and police interests form a powerful combined lobby to keep the program big. On the role of Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, who of course is himself a senior Democratic leader in the House:

Hoyer is one of the two members who have received thousands of dollars from the National Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.) in this campaign cycle. As tensions continued to mount in Ferguson, F.O.P.’s executive director Jim Pasco defended the militarization of police officers. “All police are doing is taking advantage of the advances of technology in terms of surveillance, in terms of communication and in terms of protective equipment that are available to criminals on the street,” Pasco told The Hill on Thursday.

Maryland’s own statewide F.O.P., it should be noted, just endorsed Democrat Anthony Brown for governor.

If Maryland representatives, especially those representing liberal and African-American communities, seek to reverse the militarization trend in view of public reaction to the scenes from Ferguson, Mo., it will be their own record most of them will need to run away from. Incidentally, I’m scheduled to join radio host Diane Rehm tomorrow (Monday) at 10 a.m. on her popular WAMU program to discuss police militarization; you can find more of my recent writing on the subject at links here and here.

To see how your Representative voted, follow this link.

In miniature, July 19

• Rasmussen has Anthony Brown 13 points up on Larry Hogan, not actually impressive right after Brown’s multi-million primary ad buy;
• When lawmakers here voted to hike cigarette taxes high above those of nearby states, many appeared to think the social costs of developing a large bootleg-cigarette sector no big deal. But they are [includes disturbing video of death in police custody]
• “Peroutka donates $1M dinosaur skeleton to Creation Museum” [Capital Gazette, more on the Anne Arundel council candidate]
• Is ours the most speech-hostile delegation in the country? Democratic Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin and Reps. Donna Edwards, John Sarbanes (and don’t forget Chris Van Hollen) take lead in attempt to roll back First Amendment protections for campaign speech [Mark Newgent]
• Prof. Mark Graber reports on sexual harassment training at the University of Maryland [Balkinization]
• “Maryland Tested Kids on Material It No Longer Teaches, Guess What Happened?” [Robby Soave, Reason]

Density at the Takoma metro

When transit-oriented development begins to get real for Montgomery County neighbors — in particular, when a substantial apartment building is proposed atop the Takoma metro at the D.C. border — you might expect progressives to be all in favor of it, given its recommended benefits in averting sprawl. Yet leading progressive Democrats like Chris Van Hollen, Heather Mizeur, and Jamie Raskin instead play along with locally powerful NIMBY forces demanding lower density. David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington wonders why.

The IRS Scandal’s Hometown Maryland Angle

In contrast to online media and the talk-show world, the metropolitan newspapers that define the old-line press have been caught flat-footed by the re-emergence of the IRS nonprofit targeting scandal (an exception: the Wall Street Journal opinion page). Last Friday it was disclosed that more than two years’ worth of external emails by former IRS nonprofit director Lois Lerner had been wiped out in a computer crash, and more recently it was revealed that email records of another half-dozen key players in the scandal have also been lost. The Washington Post ran only AP coverage of the June 13 revelation, while the New York Times did not go even that far, ignoring the story entirely for more than three days. Many other newspapers, too, played down the story with back-pages coverage or none at all. And no doubt one contributing factor was that as budgets have been cut in the newspaper business, many papers have gutted or even closed their Washington presence, and are willing to devote independent resources only to stories that involve some local angle.

But the IRS scandal does involve a local angle for citizens of many places, for a simple reason: individual members of Congress were among those pushing hardest for an IRS crackdown on politically adverse nonprofits. Democratic Senators from Michigan (Carl Levin), Illinois (Dick Durbin), New York (Chuck Schumer) and Rhode Island (Sheldon Whitehouse) were among those leading the pack, as, on the House side, were Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Elijah Cummings (both D-Md.) This is the crackdown that soon proved abusive, and one of the questions to be answered is whether the members of Congress were in direct touch with agency insiders seeking to make life difficult for the nonprofits. It’s known, for example, that Lois Lerner inquired of staff whether they had handled a request from Rep. Elijah Cummings regarding a conservative group he disliked by the name of True the Vote. Another agency email suggests that Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s appearance on a talk show may have been part of a public relations push coordinated both inside and outside the agency to build support for a crackdown.

Wouldn’t it make sense for the Frederick News-Post (whose circulation includes a large stretch of Van Hollen’s MD-8 district, and a small portion of Cummings’s MD-7) to look into these connections a little more closely? Or the other newspapers such as the Washington Post and Gazette papers?

Some links to get an editor started on Van Hollen’s role are here, here, here, here, and here.

Some links on Cummings’s role are here, here, here, here, here, and here.