The Lord of the races must have put out a memo: The flavor of the month is health care.
The O?Malley-Brown campaign did daily events related to various aspects of health care and health insurance starting last week. Gov. Robert Ehrlich “unveiled” his own health initiative for low-income people Monday. Candidates for attorney general and comptroller endorsed the Healthy Maryland Initiative, seeking to raise the cigarette tax by $1 a pack.
Congress and the president got tangled over embryonic stem cell research, the first veto of this presidency. Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate and House talk about health insurance all the time, as they did at different forums Monday and Tuesday night.
Even a federal judge got the memo, issuing his opinion Wednesday knocking down the Fair Share Health Care bill, the so-called Wal-Mart bill. The decision produced a flurry of e-mailed finger-pointing from the partisan camps.
Steele doesn?t get memo
Lt. Gov. Michael Steele?s Senate campaign apparently didn?t get the health memo, staging an event on Tuesday about public safety. Steele deflected a question on how he would vote on stem cell research as “hypothetical.” Democratic operatives had been begging reporters to pop the question, even though Steele has made clear in the past he opposes the use of embryos in research.
O?Malley leery of smoking tax
As other Democrats endorse the $1-a-pack tax hike to cut teen smoking and improve health coverage, Mayor Martin O?Malley is keeping his distance. “We have not embraced that,” he told reporters last week. “We hope that is a shrinking and declining revenue source” as the number of smokers goes down. “We do share the goal of universal care,” he said.
Ehrlich, highly allergic to most tax hikes, has long rejected the idea. But Democratic supporters of the plan are hoping O?Malley will come around. “I?ll have much more ability to influence him” rather than Ehrlich, said Democratic Del. Sheila Hixson, chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means.
Cardin: energized or yelling?
A reporter at Tuesday night?s forum for Senate candidates made the observation that Rep. Ben Cardin seemed particularly “energized” on stage.
“He yells his empty rhetoric at us now,” shot back Karyn Strickler, wife of candidate Allan Lichtman, Cardin?s sharpest critic on the stump.
Cardin, a low-key policy wonk with 40 years of legislative experience, clearly has sharpened his tone and raised his volume, jabbing his finger to make points. But it?s hard for anyone to match the stage skills of former Congressman Kweisi Mfume, who is always fresh in recounting his tale of personal redemption from the mean streets.
At the Tawes crab feast Wednesday, Myrna Cardin was subbing for her husband, who wason the Hill. The campaign has picked up “lots of energy,” Myrna Cardin said. “I walk into the office and see people who I don?t know,” which she said was unusual and “gratifying” for someone who?s been in political circles for decades.
Len Lazarick is the state house reporter for The Baltimore Examiner and can be reached at [email protected].
