Josh Kurtz

Aug. 4, 2010 - If the reaction in Crisfield a few weeks ago was any indication, Mary Kane, the Republicans’ presumptive lieutenant governor nominee, seems to be getting a good reception as she travels around the state as former Gov. Bob Ehrlich’s newly minted running mate.

And why not? Kane is personable, smart, enthusiastic and attractive. By most accounts, she was a pretty solid choice.

But despite Kane’s many assets, the political calculus that went into her selection may be faulty. Republicans are arguing that because she lives in Montgomery County, Kane will help Ehrlich pick up votes in the so-called California of Maryland politics — a place that, like the real California, has become a Democratic stronghold in the past few election cycles. Depending on the political dynamic in the rest of the state, Ehrlich doesn’t necessarily have to do much better in Montgomery County to oust Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) this year — but it would certainly help.

Read more: Ehrlich, Kane and the Montgomery Calculus

On the surface, the annual J. Millard Tawes Clam Bake and Crab Feast, slated this year for July 21 in beautiful Crisfield, Md., is an all-you-can-eat-and-drink seafood festival that draws 5,000 people or more to a remote corner of the Eastern Shore.

But really, it should be called Pol-a-Palooza — especially in an election year like this one.

For the uninitiated, the Tawes crab feast is an event unlike any other in the Mid-Atlantic. Spread out over a marina parking lot, with the unforgiving sun beating down on the asphalt and no hint of a breeze despite the proximity to water, it is a chance to consume an unlimited amount of crabs, clams, fish sandwiches, fries, corn, beer, soda and more. All for the bargain price of $40.

Read more: A Washington Point of View: A crab feast that has politicians drooling

He’s been a fixture in Montgomery County and Maryland politics for so long that people think they really know County Executive Ike Leggett.

They do not know him.

The 12-year tenure of Leggett’s predecessor as, Democrat Doug Duncan, was so noisy, so full of self promotion and gratuitous battles, that Leggett’s first term was bound to look dull in comparison. But it’s been anything but dull.

No one, not even the most hard-core right-winger, wants to come into office and begin making drastic budget cuts and lop off workers’ heads. But that’s what Leggett, a Democrat, who entered office in late 2006 during a bad economy that got progressively worse, has been forced to do — often over the objections of the County Council.

“Nowhere did anyone anticipate that the challenges would be this great,” Leggett said in a recent interview.

Whatever grand dreams Leggett may have had — of improving the school system and expanding social programs, of creating affordable housing and business opportunities and curtailing the county’s crippling traffic — have gone by the wayside. If you had to write his political epitaph today, it would have this unlikely designation: fiscal steward. Some admirers might even offer: fiscal conservative.

He’s pushed for a property tax overhaul, though the Council did not go along with it to the extent that Leggett wanted. He’s fighting for more fees for ambulance services. He’s blocked raises for public employees and is exploring long-term, structural reforms in county government that could lead to long-term savings.

During his 16 years on the Council, Leggett was seen as a quiet consensus-builder. During that time, the word “bold” was often applied to Duncan — never to Leggett.

“I’m not one of these quick, gun-happy people that shoots off at the mouth all the time,” he said. But in his own way, you could call Leggett bold.

“My style is a very deliberative one,” he conceded. “But when I make a decision, I make a decision.”

Leggett’s decisions haven’t made everyone happy. Public employee unions are grousing. Some business leaders are disenchanted. Alliances on the County

Council shift so quickly, Leggett never truly knows who his friends are, though he said he has “cordial relations” with all nine members.

Throughout his public career, Leggett has always had a steely, analytical political mind that allowed him to step back from the fray whether he was, wittingly or not, right in the middle of it. That hasn’t changed. So as he looks ahead to his own probable re-election and four more years in Rockville, he scrutinizes the Council elections and figures that all nine members are likely to be back.

As a trailblazing African-American leader, Leggett also sounded the alarm early that the Democratic Party in Maryland needed to do more to promote minority candidates and appeal to minority voters.

“At one point I would have said the glass was half-empty,” he observed. “Now I’d say it’s half full.”

But Leggett still worries about Maryland’s poorest and most vulnerable residents, and even in liberal Montgomery County, he frets that some of the angry national debate over immigration could “become part of the political environment.”

All he can do, he said, is remain vigilant, and set an example.

Leggett, 65, said he has no further political ambition should he get reelected, so no one can see political motivations in what he does.

“I want to be a substantive person who makes real decisions that affect people,” he said.  Bennett’s post-election verdict on his lost: Constituents didn’t want to hear it. He wanted to explain his vote on the massive bailout package. Some people listened. Some sympathized. But the fire of anti-government, anti-Washington, anti-Wall Street, anti-tax, anti-everything was not banked. You’ve been in there too long, he was told.

Perhaps the Bennett experience would be well-received by Democrats who have been thinking they are the only ones with targets on their backs. Bennett said he imagined the dynamic would have to be measured state by state.

It’s possible, of course, that the economy is at the heart of this wide-spread demand for new faces in government. If the votes were to be tallied at this early point in the election year, many Democratic voters would “throw the baby out with the bathwater,” according to one city clergyman who’s close to the pulse of the people.

There was this bit of solace for Rawlings-Blake: She’s not up for election until next year, 2011.

Josh Kurtz is managing editor at Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper.

-June 2010 Print Edition

By Josh Kurtz  - All that sturm und drang across the land over health care reform, and still we don’t know exactly what the new law does. Rather than lay out every last detail, as you might expect, the 2,000-page bill raises as many questions as it answers, and leaves plenty of work ahead for state policymakers.

In Maryland, both U.S. senators supported the bill, as did six of the state’s eight House Members. Reps. Roscoe Bartlett (R) and Frank Kratovil (D) voted against it — Kratovil being the only vulnerable member of the state’s Congressional delegation. The Maryland Chamber of Commerce, like its national counterpart, opposed the measure; most statewide medical associations and advocacy groups supported it.

Congressional officials estimate that the new health care law will reduce the federal deficit by $124 billion over the next decade — an important number that helped assure the bill’s passage. But its financial impact on businesses, state budgets and consumers’ pocketbooks is less than clear.

There are at least 600,000 Marylanders without health care coverage and a substantial number — though we don’t know exactly how many — should be covered by the time the new law is fully implemented late in this decade. According to Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), tax credits for businesses to provide health insurance to their workers will begin to be available this year for more than 122,000 companies. Key provisions of the new law, he says, include:
• A sliding-scale tax credit to companies with fewer than 25 employees and average annual wages of less than $50,000, and a full credit to employers with 10 employees or less whose wages average less than $25,000;
• Tax credits of up to 35 percent over the next four years for eligible companies toward their contributions toward employees’ health insurance premiums;
• Guidelines for the state to create exchanges so small businesses can leverage their collective buying power for lower insurance rates — and significant tax credits for companies that purchase insurance coverage through the exchanges, in 2014 and beyond.

Equally significant, insurance companies must immediately stop the practice of denying people health care coverage for pre-existing conditions. And parents are now able to carry their children on their health care plan until their kids turn 27.

Under Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), Maryland moved to provide health care coverage to more than 161,000 people who didn’t have it. So the new law provides the state with some financial relief for the costs associated with that expansion. But the state must still take several steps to make sure the bureaucracy is able to take advantage of all the federal help, financial and otherwise, that is expected to flow this way.

Some experts question whether the state’s medical providers are fully equipped to serve all the extra people who will now be eligible for insurance coverage — particularly in rural areas or parts of the state, like Prince George’s County, where hospitals are struggling financially. There are myriad tax implications for the state that officials are only beginning to sort out.

“We in Maryland can’t wait to roll up our sleeves and get down to the business of reforming our health care system,” John Colmers, secretary of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said a few days after President Barack Obama signed the federal bill into law.

Be careful what you wish for.