Anthony Brown for lieutenant governor
Maryland Del. Anthony Brown, D-District 25, is getting nowhere near the negative attention fellow Prince Georgian Michael Steele got four years ago when he ran for lieutenant governor as a Republican. Brown’s hardly getting any attention at all. Too bad, because this former helicopter pilot, Harvard classmate of Barack Obama, and decorated Iraq war veteran deserves more than a passing glance.
Currently House majority whip, Brown would be the first black Democrat to hold statewide office in Maryland — where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1. Steele crashed through the racial ceiling four years ago; it’s about time a Democrat did the same.
The son of a Jamaican doctor who’s focused attention on expanding health care in Maryland, Brown has been overshadowed — and outtalked — by running mate Martin O’Malley. But he’d be in a much better position than Catonsville Republican Kristen Cox to help steer critical state funding to the still-growing Washington suburb that’s been shortchanged in the past.
Steele helped get $673 million in transportation improvements for Prince George’s over the next six years. Brown can maintain that momentum. And as a former chairman of Prince George’s Community College’s Board of Trustees, he’d be an ideal ambassador for an often overlooked institution of higher learning that is absolutely essential to the county’s future economic growth.
Doug Gansler for Maryland attorney-general
Rarely before Doug Gansler’s initial appearance on the state’s political horizon have Maryland voters seen such a raw combination of unalloyed ambition, concrete achievement and potential for future public service. Since first being elected Montgomery County state’s attorney in 1998, the former federal prosecutor clearly has had his eyes on higher office, even as he has compiled an impressive record in Rockville of aggressive prosecution of gangs, drug dealers and, most notably, D.C. snipers Lee Boyd Malvo and John Muhammed.
Gansler’s brashness served Marylanders well when he demanded that the sniper duo be returned to Maryland for prosecution even though a Virginia jury had given Muhammed the death penalty and Malvo a life sentence. Justice demanded that the two killers also face a jury of Marylanders and Gansler made certain that happened.
Gansler promises to seek a RICO-like anti-gang statute and prosecution initiative, as well as aggressive efforts to insure local and state officials in Maryland work seamlessly with federal anti-terror programs. Gansler is also pledged to seek to tighten laws that currently allow excessive judicial discretion in criminal sentencing and to go after environmental offenders, especially with regard to the Chesapeake Bay.
Scott Rolle, Gansler’s Republican opponent, is the Frederick County state’s attorney and would also make a solid attorney general. Maryland desperately needs a revived two-party system, but in this particular race Democrat Gansler is clearly the best choice.
