The first visit by a candidate for Governor in the 2014 election in Maryland took place on Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2013, when Attorney General Doug Gansler drew about two hundred people to a breakfast sponsored by Leonardtown attorney Phil Dorsey.
A political odd-couple, Fritz, a Republican and former Democrat, appeared and endorsed the candidacy of liberal Democrat Doug Gansler. Fritz, who came in third in a three-way race for Circuit Court Judge in 2004, railed against liberal Democrat Judge Karen Abrams, an appointee of Maryland Governor Parris Glendening, a Judge with much of the same views as Gansler. Fritz also has the distinction of likely being the only States Attorney in Maryland who pleaded guilty to carnal knowledge, along with two other young men, of a 15-year-old girl, in an incident that the victim claimed was a gang rape. Fritz advised then-Sheriff Richard Voorhaar and a band of deputies that their plan to seize all copies of St. Mary’s Today newspaper the night before the election in 1998 would be lawful. That action led to a civil rights case that was decided against Fritz and the Sheriff, costing the taxpayers over one million dollars.
In addition to Richard Fritz endorsing Gansler were former St. Mary’s Commissioner Dan Raley and longtime waterman Tucker Brown, who knows a lot about Maryland’s critical seafood industry and regulations administered by the heavy hand of state agents.
The GANSLER GATHERING… was held at St. Phil’s, which is a former church, that Phil Dorsey bought when the Episcopal parish opted to restore and renew the old St. Andrews Church on St. Andrew’s Church Road, which is the final resting place of both Dorsey’s father and grandfather, from whom he inherited the much ballyhooed “Dorsey Machine” of local politics.