Who says August is a slow news month? This past week may have been the worst for the state’s Democrats since Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lost to Bob Ehrlich.
Consider the following.
Rise of the Conservatives
Revolts at the town hall-meetings on health care have attracted plenty of attention, but they may have a more lasting effect. Remember how we said that the conservative blogosphere was stalled? Not any more. Mark Newgent’s August 12 whipping of the Baltimore Sun drew 1,101 site visits, probably a one-day record for Red Maryland. The site is on pace for more than 12,000 visits this month, its best performance since October 2008. (Remember, August is supposed to be a bad month for political blogs.) And Ellen Sauerbrey, the original queen of Maryland’s angry conservatives, has both contributed to Red Maryland and started her own blog. For the moment, right-wing blogdom is once again on the attack.
Delegate Jon Cardin Scandal
This issue has gone national with exposure at the Huffington Post, National Public Radio, CNN and countless other outlets. The focus of the outrage is Cardin’s misuse of taxpayer resources, an increasingly sensitive issue in tough budget times. Cardin has apologized, and assuming that no more embarrassing facts emerge in the police investigation, he may be on the road to recovery.
MACO Moment
Five of the ten most-visited days in the history of MPW have come this week, primarily due to the booze-drenched MACO Moment scandal. It has attracted massive attention from all over the state. Rather than facing up to the exhibitionist stupidity of his staff, Governor O’Malley appears to be using George W. Bush’s strategy of ignoring everything and admitting nothing. So long as he blows it off, the images of his wild employees celebrating right before massive budget cuts will become part of his legacy.
Developmental Disability Cuts
This is an under-rated issue and our second-ranking story this week. Advocates for the most vulnerable people imaginable, those dealing with developmental disabilities, made their case and staged a big rally protesting the destruction of the last shreds of their safety net. They snared coverage from both the Post and the Sun. Budget cuts aren’t easy when the numbers have faces attached.
So let’s add it up. Angry and energized conservatives. Clueless and hypocritical state leaders. Vulnerable people about to go under.
It’s enough to drive a Democrat to drink.
Friday, August 21, 2009
One Helluva Week
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
MACO Mushroom Cloud (Updated)
At present, about 75% of all traffic to this site consists of direct entries to "Pols Party While Budget Burns." The post has now been linked by WBAL, the Ron Smith Show, the Shari Elliker Show, the Washington Post's Maryland Moment, the Examiner, Inside Charm City, O'Malley Watch, Salisbury News and the Maryland Senate Republican Caucus. This post is on its way to being the most-viewed piece in the history of MPW.
The insiders have totally missed the boat on how huge this story really is for the O'Malley administration.
Update: Now it's on Explore Baltimore County, the Baltimore Sun Forums, Newszap Forums and the Examiner (again).
Update 2: The post peaked at 78% of our traffic and produced the most-visited day in the history of MPW on Wednesday, 8/19/09.
The MACO Moment (Updated)
Blog traffic is burning up over the party-time photos from last week’s Maryland Association of Counties (MACO) meeting. This is turning into one hot August.
First of all, let’s make one thing clear: schmoozing and networking are legitimate parts of both the political and lobbying professions. That is how relationships are established, information is exchanged and compromises are worked out. MACO, and other events of its kind, serves to lubricate the gears of governance. The problem is that in this case there may have been a little too much lubrication.
The politicians in the early photos are guilty of doing little more than socializing with each other. None of them participated in the shot-splattered barbarity of the later photos. Through sheer bad luck, pictures of their harmless socializing wound up in the same Facebook album with the frathouse frolicking of the Governor’s staff. They have legitimate cause for grievance with the Governor’s failure to control his camera-happy, drunken underlings.
And that failure is spreading across the state like wildfire. Monday was the sixth-most-visited day in the history of MPW and Tuesday was the seventh-most visited day. That was primarily because every corner of the state piled into that booze-soaked blog post. That’s remarkable given that August is usually our worst month. It’s also noteworthy because not a single mainstream media source or conservative blog(!) has yet covered the story.
This presents two problems for the Governor and the Democratic Party.
Messaging
The Governor’s press people have worked hard to control how the mainstream media has covered the MACO conference and the next round of budget cuts. He persuaded both the Post and the Sun to write about his poring over thousands of residents’ suggestions for budget cuts. That deftly shifted the coverage away from devastating cuts and towards the Governor’s practice of grass-roots democracy. The Post also wrote articles describing MACO as “low key” and “sober.” The uniform message was that the Governor, his staff and his allies were serious-minded policy-makers undertaking the difficult work of government at the direction of the citizenry.
The MACO imagery shows otherwise. It depicts the leadership of the Democratic Party preening in full plumage right before announcing a half-billion dollars in cuts for services that go mostly towards working-class and poor people. It also shows that the Governor’s staff, far from being “frugal” while studiously viewing the people’s budget suggestions, were instead much more interested in viewing the bottoms of shot glasses and liquor bottles.
Budget cuts won’t kill the Democrats. Hypocrisy might.
Tax Money
Most of the events at MACO were sponsored and financed by lobbyists. But we hear that many county officials may have used public money to pay for registration and rooms. At least one local leader also brought a security detail.
Earlier this month, we reported that Montgomery County Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg used county money to pay part of the cost of a three-week training she attended at Harvard. Upon her return, she declared, “We’ll have to tighten our belts, and we cannot wait until next May to do so.” (A lot of public employees have seen that blog post.) Some politicians defend their right to use public money so they can attend “trainings.” But let’s be honest – no one ever voted for a candidate while thinking, “He might be a pretty good public servant if only he took a couple more classes.”
Appearances matter a lot in tough times like these. Politicians at all levels are telling the voters that every cent of public spending must be scrutinized, and they are right. But they must start with their own offices’ expenditures if they are to have any credibility in making that argument. The publicly-funded trainings, trips and junkets must end until the budget crisis is over. And in this atmosphere, anything resembling Delegate Jon Cardin's incredible blunder is especially crippling. Remember, hypocrisy kills.
The silver lining is that all of this could have been worse. We hear that one prominent state leader traveled to MACO with an entourage of leggy twenty-something females. If any photos had been released of what one source calls “the hoochie-mama harem,” well... you get the picture.
Update: That silver lining is looking tarnished. O'Malley Watch has linked to the story. We recommend that all politicians read the comments on their post.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Pols Party While Budget Burns (Updated)
Governor Martin O'Malley made a big deal about wanting to have a "sober" Maryland Association of Counties conference last week. But one of his staffers proved otherwise by releasing a whopping 115 party-time photos to the public on Facebook. Who knew that hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts could be so much fun?
Update, 11 AM: The MACO partiers are covering their tracks. Eleven of the photos, including the three featuring the Governor and the Baltimore Mayor, have been deleted. But we still have them here.
Update, 3 PM: We can no longer see the content on Facebook. It has either been access-limited or deleted.
Governor O'Malley and indicted Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon.
Indicted Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon.
Baltimore City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake (left) and her Chief of Staff, Kim Washington (right).
The Governor's wife, Katie O'Malley, with Jeremy Rosendale. Rosendale is a former staffer for Baltimore City Council Member Mary Pat Clarke and is currently the Governor's Deputy Director of Correspondence and Constituent Services. He posted all of these photos on Facebook, where they can be seen by anyone, and helpfully identified most of the people in them. Thanks, Jeremy!
From left: Somerset Mayor Jeffrey Slavin, Jeremy Rosendale and Montgomery County Council Member Valerie Ervin. We hear plenty of other Council Members were there as well.
Colleen Martin-Lauer (left) and Colm O'Comartun (right). Martin-Lauer is a fundraiser for the Governor and former Prince George's political boss Al Wynn. O'Comartun is the Director of the Governor's Office.
Sophia Silbergeld, former staffer for Senator Ben Cardin and Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith, now a Democratic fundraiser. Observe her amazing dexterity as she hoists four drinks.
From left: Maryland Democratic Party Executive Director Travis Tazelaar, Baltimore City Council staffer Kim Washington, Laborers Union lobbyist Jayson Williams and Sophia Silbergeld.
Nick Stewart, a former spokesman and campaign staffer for the Governor (left) with Travis Tazelaar.
Jim Gillis, Executive Assistant to Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith (left) with Jeremy Rosendale.
A staffer in the Governor's press office (left), Stacy Landolt Mayer (second from left), the Governor's Deputy Legislative Officer, and Tom Hickey (right), the Governor's Board of Public Works liaison.
O'Malley staffer Colm O'Comartun (left), Democratic fundraiser Sophia Silbergeld (top) and Ashley Valis, a Special Assistant in the Governor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs.
Board of Public Works liaison Tom Hickey must love those budget cuts!
Here's some assorted booze-fueled mayhem proudly posted by O'Malley staffer Jeremy Rosendale. Pay special attention to his captions. We hope Facebook's 250 million users enjoyed them as much as you will.
