Is Janet Owens? entry into the comptroller?s race good news or bad for 84-year-old William Donald Schaefer, the increasingly curmudgeonly comptroller?
“This wasn?t necessarily good news for Schaefer,” said political scientist Matthew Crenson, of Johns Hopkins University. “Schaefer has been on the defensive” and “Owens has a good base of support” in Anne Arundel County and the Baltimore region.
The opposite view is held by former Howard County Council Member Vernon Gray, who is now a political science professor at Morgan State University. Owens “splits the anti-Schaefer vote and almost assures his re-election. ? This helps Schaefer,” Gray said ? a view shared by Democrats such as House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Thomas Mike Miller.
Understandably, the other Democrat in the race, Del. Peter Franchot, takes the bad-news view. “I think it will hurt Schaefer,” Franchot said. Owens, a pro-business fiscal conservative, “shares the same political philosophy,” and she also shares the same regional base, he said.
In the April Gonzales Research poll, Schaefer did better in the Baltimore area and ran even with Franchot among female Democratic voters, who might see appeal in Owens.
But Owens is not the only woman in the race. In fact, the sole candidate who has actually filed for the race is Republican Anne McCarthy, 47, dean of the business school at the University of Baltimore.
“This is the first time in decades that anyone has had a chance against William Donald Schaefer,” said McCarthy, who has a doctorate in management. “I think that in the past couple of years he has said things that have tarnished his own image and Democrats are not pleased with him.”
“I can?t criticize him for what he has done,” McCarthy said, particularly his support of Ehrlich policies, which she backs as well. “I would do a couple of things differently” and be more proactive in tax policies that encourage business growth, she said.
