The annual dinner of the League of Conservation Voters last Monday night was ostensibly a nonpartisan event to honor Republican Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, among others. But it almost had the flavor of a fundraiser for the Democrat Gilchrest has endorsed as his successor in the 1st Congressional District, Queen’s Anne County State’s Attorney Frank Kratovil.
“I’ve been warned that I can only mention Frank Kratovil’s name five times,” said the keynote speaker, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, an old friend of the Kratovil family who helped bring in national funding for the Kratovil campaign.
Hoyer lavished praise on Gilchrest as “a man of intellect, a man of great vision, a man of great courage. The politics of our state were made better by your service.”
A RINO?
The event made clear why, as Gilchrest himself said, “I was always called a moderate, and in the district I was often called a RINO,” a Republican in name only.
Gilchrest is a passionate environmentalist who often voted against his party colleagues, and not just on the House floor. “I voted for Martin O’Malley” for governor, he confessed, to the applause, hoots and hollers of the dinner audience, and he plans on voting for Sens. Barack Obama and Joseph Biden Jr. as well.
Republican nominee Andy Harris, who beat the nine-term incumbent in a bruising primary, has been painting Kratovil as a liberal, much as he did to Gilchrest. The congressman threw the cloak of moderation over the Democrat as competent, informed, independent thinker who has integrity and courage. “A moderate is not someone who sits on the fence,” Gilchrest said.
O’Malley spoke after Gilchrest, and was happy to hear that the congressman had voted for him in his race against Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who had a falling out with Gilchrest. “I would have been even happier if you did one of those very nice ads that you did for Kratovil,” O’Malley said.
Proxy battle
The O’Malley-Ehrlich contest is being fought out in proxy in the congressional race, with Harris trying to tie Kratovil to the current governor.
“Frank Kratovil is just like O’Malley, more taxes, more spending,” says an unidentified voter in a Harris TV ad that includes an on-screen endorsement of “my friend Andy Harris” by Ehrlich himself.
O’Malley has helped Kratovil raise money, but some months ago, the candidate’s Web site was stripped of photos that had shown the two men together. But if you’d like to see them, just click here. The anti-Kratovil site is allegedly not affiliated with the Harris campaign.
Adding his voice to the analysts who have changed the rating of the Harris-Kratovil race, Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist, changed his assessment on Thursday from “leans Republican” to “toss-up.”
Slots support
Two more polls are showing solid support for Question 2, the constitutional amendment establishing slot machine gambling.
A Washington Post survey of 1,000 Maryland voters released Tuesday found 62 percent supported the new gambling and 37 percent opposed. The poll, with a margin of error of 3 percent, found almost two-thirds of voters were most concerned with the economy and even larger number said the state budget deficit was a “big” problem, factors helping to drive support for the slots question.
An internal poll three weeks ago for the pro-slots For Maryland For Our Future group found 58 percent of the 600 voters they surveyed supported the slots gambling and 38 percent would vote against it.
Slots opponents have a more diffuse set of reasons for objecting to the video lottery terminals, the Post poll found. Those objections included gambling addiction, immorality, the effect on poor people, increased crime, doubts about the revenues and paying for education with gambling money.
Comptroller Peter Franchot said the polls are “simply a reflection of the flood of gambling money that has come into the state.” Slots opponents are being outspent 10 to 1 in the contest, about $4 million to $400,000.
Pensions sound
Like every pension fund and 401(k) account, Maryland’s state pension system has taken a major hit in the last few months.
Lawmakers at a hearing on Wednesday were told the fund had lost $7.1 billion since June, almost 20 percent. But state Treasurer Nancy Kopp reassured them, “Regardless of the market, we have a sound pension system.” State employees “will be getting the correct benefit at the correct time.”
Less reassuring was the congressional hearings on Wednesday focusing on the bond rating agencies that were handing out triple A rankings to securities based on subprime mortgages. Those are the same Wall Street firms that give Maryland its own near-sacred triple A rating. That rating may still be rock solid but its worth is now undermined by the behavior of the rating houses.
