MGA 2020 Playbook: Guide to Defeating HB4!

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  • dblas

    Past President, MSI
    MDS Supporter
    Apr 6, 2011
    13,087
    [snip]

    And yet here we are. Those bills were killed. You can say they bit off more than they could chew. You can say we had some mysterious allies in the Democratic party. You can say it was all because Busch died. Point is, they hesitated. Despite the fact that they had everything going for them + unbeatable majority, they decided it wasn't worth it. And where are they now? Those bills haven't reared their ugly head this session. How did we go from 2013 where everything passed, to 2019 where nothing passed? I can only conclude that we have SOME effect on these politicians. They CAN be talked to (even if just a little, that's all we need). We DO matter and I want people to SEE that rather than resort to the same dejected defeatism that plagues 2A advocates everywhere. Maryland is NOT a lost cause. There are states like CA, NY, and NJ which certainly are and they've earned their right to give up. But us? We still have our chance.

    [snip]

    Here I go again....Let me reiterate what happened in 2013.

    We were effective, we made a big impact. No, not in the Senate, where they had already made up their minds, but in the House. It took them a month to bring SB281 to a committee vote by the joint committee, a full three weeks longer than O'Malley, Bush, and Miller had planned on.

    Why?? Because we were relentless, and we not only had folks working hard in the halls and behind the scenes. We worked tirelessly and had friends behind the scenes in the House that worked hard as well. We had them to the point that they were going to scuttle the bill and rewrite it to be 7 distinct working groups to examine the 7 different parts of the state statutes for changes.

    So....what happened???

    We were so effective, we made them cheat and cheat hard.

    The night before the committee vote, O'Malley, Bush, and Miller had a caucus meeting with the Democrats on the joint committee. They told them exactly what 10 amendments they could approve, and further told all of them if they did not vote as directed, they would lose their committee appointments and all discretionary spending for their respective district for the rest of the term.

    Read that again....WE MADE THEM CHEAT, AND THREATEN THEIR OWN MEMBERS TO GET WHAT THEY WANTED......

    In the joint committee hearing, there was an individual that sat directly behind the co-chairs....President of the Senate Mike Miller. O'Malley was also in the back room for the entire voting session. Both of them were there to ENSURE that the committee vote went as planned. Even to the point of having a re-vote on an amendment that had previously passed, only to defeat if on a tie vote (The Chairman voted to bring it to a tie)

    So, with regards to 2013, they may have passed SB281, but it was a lot less lethal to us than the original and they wasted a lot of political capital to get it done.
     

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