Governor Elect Larry Hogan of Maryland: Hogan Win Likely Shoots Down O’Malley Bid for President as Voters Say No to Third Term with Brown

Commentary and Analysis

By Ken Rossignol

Larry Hogan set out four years ago to change Maryland as thousands of taxpayers became disgusted with the big-spending, big-taxing mantra of the Democrats under Martin O’Malley and began fleeing the state for Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and points south.

Few believed that Hogan could actually defeat O’Malley’s junior varsity bench warmer, Anthony Brown, and politics as usual continued in what once was known as the “Free State”.

Politicians such as John Bohanan, (D. Lexington Park) continued to support tax hikes and increases in the gas tax while also approving raids on the transportation trust fund that should never have been entrusted to the politicians to slush around to their favorite projects.

Brown brought President Barack Obama to Maryland to campaign for him in Prince George’s County and while network TV cameras rolled, Brown supporters got up and walked out during the President’s appearance.

Bill Clinton showed up and was the star at Brown fundraisers to raise money to pay for ads showing Bill Clinton imploring Maryland voters to choose Brown due to the need for a leader.

Those ads with Clinton ran exactly one year after Brown supervised the catastrophic failure of the rollout of Maryland’s new version of healthcare. This boondoggle really wasn’t needed to convince voters to vote against Brown and another round of higher taxes, they pretty much had made up their minds.

The minds in the state who really didn’t get the message were and are the delusional leftist Democrats who, if left to their own devices, will only be satisfied when Maryland becomes an island like in Lord of the Flies when only the tax-takers and the left wing liberals will be left and began to eyeball each other as the remaining feast to eat.

Election results as of midnight on election night showed Brown winning only in Baltimore City, his home of Prince George’s County and Charles County, which has become an annex of PG County. Even Montgomery County with a long record of liberal voting habits went for Hogan and Brown’s running mate Ken Ullman, couldn’t even bring his home county of Howard into the Democratic column. As the incumbent County Executive in Howard, it is apparent the voters in that county had enough of Ullman and saw little point in elevating him to the role of Lt. Governor and assisting Anthony Brown in raising taxes even higher.

Inevitably, the left-wing Democrats, which are about the only wing left in the party of the elite and the free-ride crowd, will try to blame the loss of Brown on racism. If and when they do so, they just might slow their addled brains down a bit long enough to note that the new incoming Lt. Governor Boyd Rutherford happens to be a black man and that fact was not kept a secret from the electorate.

Rutherford makes the third black Lt. Governor in a row for Maryland with two of the three being Republicans. Republican Mike Steele was elected with Gov. Bob Ehrlich in 2002 and was the first black candidate in Maryland to win a state-wide office. The Democrats have yet to be able to do so.

Apparently not as many Marylanders who pay taxes and resent the big-spending schemes and shenanigans of the O’Malley Administration over the past eight years have moved. They were still here for the 2014 election. With about a hundred thousand vote margin of victory, Larry Hogan will be moving into the State House offices of the Governor where he once worked as the appointments secretary for Ehrlich. He also will be occupying the Governor’s Mansion and will be making executive decisions such as appointing Maryland’s judges, regulators and thousands of state executive level jobs.

The entrenched political machine of the Maryland Democrats just lost a landmark election and the coming months and years will be a reporter’s paradise keeping up with all of the hoopla.

The Democrats have twice lost the Governor’s post in the past twelve years by nominating a minority candidate who also an incumbent Lt. Governor was playing second fiddle to a two-term Democrat Governor who had become vastly unpopular due to extremist policies.

Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend ran in 2002 and picked a white Republican that few today can name, not that anyone knew who he was that year. As a result, many black Democrats who believed that many qualified blacks were available but passed over for a Republican, had little incentive to push for the Democratic ticket.

Thus, Ehrlich became the first GOP Governor of Maryland since Spiro Agnew, county executive of Baltimore County, was elected in 1966.

Kennedy family fatigue with the voters may have played a role as well as Ehrlich was a popular Baltimore area Congressman.

Governor / Lt. Governor

(Vote for One) County Break Down