More on Is MoCo Getting Its Share of the Spoils?

Yesterday fellow blogger Adam Pagnucco posed an excellent question "Is MoCo Getting its Share of the Spoils?" His post pointed out how few of the appointments were going to MoCo citizens. He looked at it from how large we are compared to the rest of the state. It is even more apparent when you look at it from the number of votes, especially Democratic votes we bring to get someone elected statewide.

Andrew Jackson created the spoils system but it has been refined through the years. In MD politics, Baltimore City has run this state and the Democratic Party since the beginning of time.

Look at this chart. It is from the state Board of Elections. It is the number of votes cast by county in the latest Gubernatorial election. I put it into a spreadsheet and compared the percentage of total votes statewide by county and the percentage of total Democratic votes by county as a percentage of total Democratic votes. In both cases, MoCo provides the largest percentage of votes and more importantly the largest percentage of Democratic votes.



In the case of MoCo, we are 17.1% of the statewide total in Nov 2006. We are also 20.3% of the total Democratic vote. We should be getting more from a Democratic Governor, especially one who loves to come here and remind us that he grew up in Rockville and Bethesda.

Here it is in detail.

As a rank order of vote as a % of the statewide total by county, here is the list:
MoCo 17.1%;
Balt Co 15.8%;
PGCo 11.6%;
AACo 10.5%;
Balt City 8.5%;
HoCo 5.9%
Everybody else: 30.5%

More importantly look at the list as to the number of votes that come from MoCo to get a Democrat elected statewide.

Here is that list as a % of Democratic votes as a % of total Democratic votes by county. Again rank order:

MoCo 20.3%;
PGCo 17.3%;
BaltCo 14.4%;
BaltCity 12.2%;
AACo 8.4%
HoCo 5.6%;
Everybody Else 21.7%.

What is our "reward"? Crumbs, leftovers.

One veteran political observer on seeing another Baltimore Democrat come to MoCo in the fall of 2002 said "the only time we see them (Baltimore based politicians) is when they are looking for money or looking for votes." I thought what she said was both untrue and crass. Now I find I am in complete agreement.

It is about time that our county Democratic officials demand that we get our share of appointments, our share of the spoils.

You know if we wanted to have a Governor who would support: slots, the ICC and not give us any of the spoils then we could have stayed with Governor Haircut.