Following are the percentages gained by Republican candidates in Baltimore City, Montgomery County and Prince George's County since 2002. Races with no GOP candidate or with incomplete tickets are not included. Together, these three jurisdictions accounted for 42% of Maryland's registered voters in 2010.
Montgomery County: The great GOP tidal wave of 2010 caused an average Republican gain of 2.9 points in MoCo. No Republicans were elected in 2006. No Republicans were elected in 2010. (The county does have six precincts in Congressional District 6 that vote for Republican Roscoe Bartlett.)
Prince George's County: The Republicans' vote percentage has declined steadily since 2002. They did not bother to contest the majority of elections in the county in 2010.
Baltimore City: Just as in Prince George's, the GOP's performance is so poor that they often do not bother running candidates in Baltimore City. And the chart below does not include the Republicans' losses in city government races, which are held in odd-numbered years.
Here is the GOP's record in the three Democratic strongholds together.
How are the Republicans supposed to compete statewide if they cede these three jurisdictions to the Democrats?
Thursday, November 04, 2010
Republican Performance in the Democratic Big Three
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4 comments:
If you were a Republican looking at these results, what would you conclude about how to build the party into a competitive force in statewide elections?
It seems doubtful that a candidate can win statewide when they are picking up less than a third of the vote in MoCo and are barely into double digits in Prince George's -- never mind Baltimore City. If Ehrlich had run up big margins in Baltimore County (instead of basically tying) it would not have helped much.
And if the Republicans have to compete in the DC suburbs in order to be viable statewide, then where would they even begin? The GOP candidates for county-level offices in MoCo were totally disorganized and barely campaigned, but even if they had their act together, it appears that the Republican label has become radioactive for a majority of voters in the major jurisdictions.
Casey Anderson
The Republican Party is in disarray, both statewide and even more so on a local level. There are any number of reasons for this (way too many to try to put in a comment, even for this prodigious commenter), but the fact is that beginning in the mid-1990s, the GOP has collapsed as a functioning political entity in the most populous areas of the state.
There used to be Republicans around here: Connie Morella, Howie Denis, Jean Roesser, Jean Cryor and others. You could agree with them or not, but they were well known and well respected.
Name me one prominent Republican in Montgomery County right now. Or Baltimore City. Or Prince George's County. Just one.
Can't do it, can you? Despite a national wave, not one Republican came within a hundred miles of getting elected in the Big Three.
For all intents and purposes, the Republican Party doesn't exist in the three largest jurisdictions in this State, and barely clings to life at the state level. With Bob Ehrlich likely finished as a candidate, there is simply no realistic likelihood that things are going to get better any time soon.
Jonathan Shurberg
Here are two explanations I have heard for the absence of prominent (or even remotely plausible) Republican candidates:
(a) After getting elected in 2002, Bob Ehrlich became the state GOP and the state GOP became Bob Ehrlich. As governor and later as candidate-in-exile, Ehrlich did little to help build the party by recruiting candidates, helping them raise money, etc., and was generally all about Bob. Republicans were complacent about this state of affairs because as long as Ehrlich either was the governor or seemed likely to become the the governor again, they could rely on the prospect of control of the executive branch (and its control over patronage, policy, etc.) to make up for the lack of GOP representation in the General Assembly. Now that Ehrlich has gone down the tubes they are screwed.
(b) At some point voters in the suburbs (MoCo in particular - see, e.g., Connie Morella -- but also Howard County and many voters in Baltimore County) came to associate the Republican brand with right wing nuttiness and generally abusive behavior, largely as a result of what national Republicans were doing. With the GOP brand badly damaged, Republicans at the local level cannot even persuade voters in places like MoCo to listen to what they have to say, much less vote for them. Consequently, few people who are serious about actually trying to get elected would contemplate running as Republicans.
Do you think these are accurate/complete explanations?
The Republican Party did absolutely nothing to support the Republicans running in Prince George's.
No campaign support, no appearances on their behalf by Ehrlich or his running mate.
The state GOP website only listed about half of the contact information (web, email, social media, etc.) available for PG's GOP candidates. The PG county website was less supportive and couldn't even spell the names of all the Republican candidates right.
The Green Party candidates probably had more party support than the hapless Republicans who tried to at least show the flag for their party.
Charles Lollar ran well outside PG, even beating Hoyer in two of the district's four counties, including Hoyer's home county. I wonder if Lollar would have done better if the party had supported him, or if the Post (which once claimed to be One of the World Great Newspapers) had acknowledged Lollar's candidacy and race instead ob blowing him off as unnamed "nominal opposition."
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