Every victorious candidate in a statewide election for the last 10 years has won Howard County, assuming that Baltimore Mayor Martin O?Malley keeps his lead there with the absentee ballots.
“There are ways in which [Howard] is our New Hampshire,” said Peter Shapiro, senior fellow at University of Maryland?s Academy of Leadership. Politicians consider New Hampshire important to win.
“There is a way in which this central county reflects a central temperament. Unlike Montgomery, Prince George?s, Baltimore, western Maryland and the Eastern Shore, which have distinct political identities, what you see in Howard County is a swing county.”
The county has progressed into this role only recently, said Donald F. Norris, director of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
“Howard County has gone from a solidly Democratic county to a solidly swing county,” he said. “It went really big for [John] Kerry two years ago, but two years before that, it went to [Robert] Ehrlich.”
The leaders who won Howard County and the state are: President Bill Clinton in 1996; Gov. Parris Glendening in 1998; Vice President Al Gore in 2000; Gov. Ehrlich in 2002; U.S. Sen. Kerry in 2004; and newly elected U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin this year.
Candidates should pay attention to the pivotal county though it has only about 100,000 voters, said Morgan State political science professor C. Vernon Gray, a former Howard County Council member.
“O?Malley did come into Howard County quite a few times,” he said. “He knew Howard County was strictly in play.”
