In the hallway leading to his private bathroom in the Treasury Building, Peter Franchot has a framed April 2006 letter from then-Gov. Robert Ehrlich:
“Dear Peter [handwritten], I have received your March 29, 2006 letter; we will miss you in Annapolis next year. Sincerely, Bob.” Franchot shows it to a reporter and laughs.
The laugh is on Ehrlich. He not only expected to win re-election. He thought his mentor and ally, William Donald Schaefer, would be returning as comptroller, too.
The laugh was on most everyone. Virtually no one in politics, even his closest friends, expected Franchot to win, except the candidate himself. Virtually no one helped him to win. He mortgaged his house to loan his campaign $750,000, the bulk of his funding. Except for the mortgages he has largely paid off, Franchot owes little to anyone.
Franchot got lucky, the way people who bet against the odds and challenge the favorite get lucky. The Big Brown in the race ? Schaefer ? collapsed under his age and crankiness. Anne Arundel County Executive Janet Owens was weaker than expected. Franchot clobbered them both in the D.C. suburbs.
Not for the first time in his 60 years was Peter lucky. He grew up in a well-off New England family, went to an elite prep school, and then idealistically dropped out to work in the 1968 anti-war presidential campaign of Eugene McCarthy, losing his student draft deferment.
Drafted into the Army, he got lucky again when a Lt. Perez at Fort Hood, Texas, plucked him out of training as a forward artillery observer and made him a clerk in the 1st Armored Division.
“I probably wouldn?t be sitting here, or not all of me would be sitting here,” Franchot said, “because the life expectancy was about 30 days in Vietnam,” for these soldiers who go beyond the front lines.
In 1986, he ran for the House of Delegates in what is arguably Maryland?s most liberal legislative district, which includes Silver Spring and “the People?s Republic” of Takoma Park. Two years later, he tried to unseat first-term Republican Rep. Connie Morella.
“It was a raucous campaign,” Franchot said. “I was a happy warrior. We just took it to the streets. We went to the press. I actually got close in the polls” but had little money for TV ads. I was very excited about running for Congress, but I have no interest in Washington now,”
“He hasvery strong opinions, and he?s never been the kind of person to constrain his opinions,” Kumar Barve said. “The leadership in both chambers is annoyed with him,” but “Peter has never been a person who sought out the love of his colleagues.”
As majority leader, Barve played a key role in putting together the Democratic majorities for tax increases and slots. “Peter has done nothing to hurt himself with voters,” he said. “It?s a perfect place to be” politically. “If [slots] win, he fought the good fight. If it fails, he was an important factor in its defeat.”
Re-buttal
It was surprising last week when this column reported that cigarette tax revenues were down after the tax was doubled in January. It was also untrue. Butt receipts are lower than estimated, but cigarette revenues were up 29 percent this May compared to last year. Given a doubling of the tax, though, there has still been a significant drop in smoking, or a major jump in buttlegging (smuggling.)
