Mr H
Banana'd
The real way to effect change will be solidarity. The election rules in MD are what need to be changed. Closed primaries are only good for keeping the powerful in power.
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Truer words have never been spoken.
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Recently, we went to dinner with a couple; they are wonderful people, we had a great time. About in the middle of our time together, I said something like: 'since we are starting to get into politics, would you be surprised if I told you WE are REGISTERED democrats??"
To our pleasant surprise and amazement, both husband and wife said they too were registered democrats! For exactly the same reason so many of us have switched over.
I want to help fix gerrymandering.
I want my representatives to listen to me.
I want to better influence people who have been brainwashed by mainstream media.
I want to help Hogan get things done; and get reelected.
I want to vote out Mike Miller, Mike Busch and a few other career incumbent politicians that have done so much damage to this once great state.
Simply put, let's Take Maryland Back!
Another great American, who also happens to be a Democrat:
Sheriff David Clarke is a Democrat.
A real Democrat, but one that does not cow-tow to the extremist agenda.
If you don't know him, here's a typical, great interview with him:
A real Democrat, but one that does not cow-tow to the extremist agenda.
If you don't know him, here's a typical, great interview with him:
Blacksmith101
Grumpy Old Man
- Jun 22, 2012
- 22,269
Don't forget a lot of Democrats switched last election in order to vote against Trump because they knew Hildabeast would take the Primary.
On Politics: What Democrat would be crazy enough to challenge Nancy Pelosi on her home turf?
Meet Stephen Jaffe
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-on-politics-column-20170505-story.html
Long story short, this man (democrat), is running against Nancy Pelosi (one of the worst democrats in America) in her district.
He just might win. And even if he doesn't, any opposition to Pelosi highlights her failings, distracts her, and requires the democrats to spend money (and time) fighting Stephen Jaffe, that they won't have to use against conservatives in the General election.
This is exactly the kind of situation we face in Maryland. Every bit helps. Everyday I meet more and more people that are converting to register as Democrats so they may vote against the worst Democrats in Maryland.
Happy Friday everyone!
Meet Stephen Jaffe
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-me-on-politics-column-20170505-story.html
Long story short, this man (democrat), is running against Nancy Pelosi (one of the worst democrats in America) in her district.
He just might win. And even if he doesn't, any opposition to Pelosi highlights her failings, distracts her, and requires the democrats to spend money (and time) fighting Stephen Jaffe, that they won't have to use against conservatives in the General election.
This is exactly the kind of situation we face in Maryland. Every bit helps. Everyday I meet more and more people that are converting to register as Democrats so they may vote against the worst Democrats in Maryland.
Happy Friday everyone!
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We just need 5 seats in 2018, read this, lets discuss: https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...37ddb6e813e_story.html?utm_term=.7eb0fb93c586
This is a mighty fine looking list of folks to make sure they don't get reelected. Please post info about them or their districts. Thx!!
Astle (AAACO)
DeGrange (AACO)
Brochin (BACO)
Klausmeier (BACO)
Mathias (Worchester)
This is a mighty fine looking list of folks to make sure they don't get reelected. Please post info about them or their districts. Thx!!
Astle (AAACO)
DeGrange (AACO)
Brochin (BACO)
Klausmeier (BACO)
Mathias (Worchester)
Please support my friend John Grasso for Dist 32 over Ed DeGrange(D). He is currently AA county council president. He is a great guy and with us on all of our issues. He will gladly speak to you about ANY concerns that you may have and give you his honest take on what he believes and where he thinks the state should be going. Honestly, the state could use more people of his(our) mindset and we would ALL be better for it.
Mr H
Banana'd
So M&M are headed toward Federal indictment?
OH, we can only hope....
Two things really stand out to me in that article, first is that even Mike Miller recognizes Brochin is lame:
The second is how arrogant some of these Democrats are:
During the state GOP’s spring convention in late April, Haire played part of a radio interview in which Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said he thinks Republicans are “going to pick up a couple of seats” in his chamber next year and that Brochin appeared to be especially vulnerable. “It’ll be hard for a Democrat to hold onto that seat,” Miller said in the interview.
The second is how arrogant some of these Democrats are:
The state GOP has run radio, billboard and social-media ads suggesting Young is too liberal for the district he represents. But the 76-year-old former Frederick mayor stands firmly behind his record, which includes votes to override the governor’s veto of the renewable-energy bill and support for same-sex marriage, stricter gun-control laws and protections for undocumented immigrants. “I feel I can vote the way I feel is right and win,” Young said. “If that makes me more vulnerable, I can handle that.”
j_h_smith
Ultimate Member
- Jul 28, 2007
- 28,516
DINO Alert
I think you all know that I've been a DINO for as long as I have kids in college. Well today, I got some information on a group that I have not heard about before. Maybe they are well known, I don't know.
I got a postcard today from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. They seem to be directing their efforts at the state level. If you want to check them out, here is the web page.
www.DLCC.org
Their message is that my involvement is critical if they are going to elect Democrats at the state level across the country.
The postcard was paid for by Grassroots Victory PAC 1225 I St NW, Suite 1250 Washington, DC 20005.
Lets see if they become more of a player later on in the year. It's gotta be a push for the 2018 mid term elections.
HTH
I think you all know that I've been a DINO for as long as I have kids in college. Well today, I got some information on a group that I have not heard about before. Maybe they are well known, I don't know.
I got a postcard today from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. They seem to be directing their efforts at the state level. If you want to check them out, here is the web page.
www.DLCC.org
Their message is that my involvement is critical if they are going to elect Democrats at the state level across the country.
The postcard was paid for by Grassroots Victory PAC 1225 I St NW, Suite 1250 Washington, DC 20005.
Lets see if they become more of a player later on in the year. It's gotta be a push for the 2018 mid term elections.
HTH
That's what it sounds like to me. It could be a subgroup of -0-'s OFA.
j_h_smith
Ultimate Member
- Jul 28, 2007
- 28,516
Yes, I think this is a group we may want to keep a close eye on. Looks to me as if they will be spending someone's money to further the Dems message in the states. Since I've never heard of them, I thought I'd post their information so others may look out for their message. But I kinda doubt they'd spend money in Maryland due to the overwhelming Democratic majority here. But you never know.
I'm going to look up that PAC and see what I can find out. Probably a SOROS sponsored group.
j_h_smith
Ultimate Member
- Jul 28, 2007
- 28,516
It would seem they are just a feeder PAC to Actblue. Neither are big wigs in the scheme of things. They sure do act like something they are not. Not a lot of money. I don't know how they plan on changing the elections in each state unless they think (or know) they are getting a large influx of money sometime this year.
Never mind....
Never mind....
Bump
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Democrats admit that redistricting was done for political reasons:
(I think this is from BaltSun, it was emailed to me by a trusted friend)
Maryland Democrats drew the state's convoluted congressional districts with an eye toward ousting a longtime Republican incumbent and replacing him with a Democrat, former Gov. Martin O'Malley has acknowledged as part of a high-profile legal challenge to the maps winding its way through federal court.
The acknowledgment that state Democrats were working in 2011 to add a seventh member of their party to the House of Representatives, widely understood at the time but seldom conceded publicly even now, comes as Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is advocating for a nonpartisan redistricting commission, ostensibly to curb partisan gerrymandering.
The lawsuit, filed in 2013 by a former federal employee, is shedding new light on the machinations that took place behind the scenes as Democrats sought to oust Republican Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett from the seat he had held for nearly two decades.
"That was my hope," O'Malley told attorneys in a deposition. "It was also my intent to create … a district where the people would be more likely to elect a Democrat than a Republican."
Mapmakers extended the boundaries of Bartlett's Western Maryland district into Democratic portions of Montgomery and Frederick counties after the 2010 Census, and former banker John Delaney, a Democrat, won the seat in 2012 by nearly 21 percentage points.
The plaintiffs are hoping to formally establish what is widely believed: That Maryland Democrats considered past voting patterns to squeeze an advantage out of the maps. Attorneys recently deposed O'Malley, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and House Speaker Michael E. Busch as part of the lawsuit, and reviewed emails of officials involved in the process.
The plaintiffs, including Stephen M. Shapiro of Bethesda, are making a novel legal argument: They say the redistricting was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment rights of Republican voters in the 6th District.
Most gerrymandering cases have been brought under the 14th Amendment, and involve questions of how racial groups are treated, not voters of a given political party.
In a motion filed late Wednesday, attorneys said the maps were drawn not by the public commission created by O'Malley in 2011 to perform the task, but by a consultant working for the Democratic members of the state's congressional delegation.
Though it is not uncommon for consultants to handle the technical work of a redistricting, testimony in the case suggests that it was the Democratic delegation members who drove the effort.
The Democratic lawmakers, led by Rep. Steny Hoyer of Southern Maryland, hired Washington-based NCEC Services Inc. to craft the map, according to court documents. Eric Hawkins, an analyst at the organization, told attorneys he drafted between and 10 and 20 different versions of the maps.
"The purpose of what we were doing was, No. 1, incumbent protection. And No. 2, trying to see if there was a way that there was another Democrat district in the state," Hawkins said in his deposition.
Court documents show aides to Hoyer, Miller, Rep. John Sarbanes of Baltimore County and others were involved in that effort.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to force the state to begin the process of redrawing the maps for the 2018 midterm election.
"Everybody understood that the Democrats were targeting the 1st District or the 6th," said Michael B. Kimberly, an attorney with Mayer Brown who is representing Shapiro pro-bono. "But it's been quite a lot of work getting state officials to come around and finally admit that."
A spokesman for O'Malley referred questions to the Maryland attorney general's office. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Brian E. Frosh declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for Hoyer said redistricting reform should be addressed at the national level.
"While partisanship has always played a role in redistricting, Rep. Hoyer has long advocated for national redistricting reform that doesn't advantage one party over the other," spokeswoman Annaliese Davis said.
Depositions in the case underscore the fraying nerves behind closed doors during the redistricting process, even as Democrats presented a mostly unified public face.
"John Delaney was irate after the eventual map came out and was absolutely, positively convinced that we went out of our way to carve his million-dollar home out of the Sixth District," O'Malley said in the deposition.
"Congresswoman [Donna] Edwards was not willing to discuss anything about the map and felt that whatever we do in any other district is fine by her, but she did not want a single precinct of her district moved anywhere," O'Malley said.
Edwards, a Prince George's County Democrat who left her seat last year to run for Senate, was among the most vocal critics of the map at the time.
Edwards and Delaney declined to comment Wednesday.
O'Malley, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, wrote in a social media post recently that he was convinced as governor that the party should draw lines that are favorable to Democratic candidates.
He acknowledges that the approach isn't necessarily "good for our country as a whole."
For those still involved in Democratic politics in the state, the position isn't so easy to flip. A nonpartisan commission of the kind Hogan has proposed would likely result in fewer Democrats in the Maryland delegation. That has put state Democrats in the awkward position of saying they support redistricting reform, but only if Republican-led states go along at the same time.
The idea, they say, is based on mutual disarmament: A Democratic-led state shouldn't have to give up its advantage if Republicans elsewhere are still relying on it. That calculation will be complicated if Hogan wins a second term next year and has a say in how the maps are drawn following the 2020 Census.
Miller, in his deposition, repeatedly denied that politics influenced how the lines were drawn. Asked if he personally wanted to maximize the Democratic advantage in the districts, Miller flatly stated "no."
"You credit me with having too much say in these things," Miller told the court. "Since I don't run for Congress, I'm not a member of Congress, I want lines that are drawn that are fair to everybody. And like I said before, I'm bipartisan. I work for Republicans and Democrats."
A unanimous Supreme Court in 2015 described Maryland's congressional district map as a "crazy quilt" and ruled that Shaprio's case must be allowed to proceed.
Shaprio had appealed to the Supreme Court after a district judge said the case did not meet the standard for convening a panel of judges to review and dismissed it.
Shapiro based his First Amendment claim on a 2004 concurring opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy in another case.
Kennedy wrote that the First Amendment could be used as a basis of a redistricting lawsuit if plaintiffs could argue a state law resulted in a "disfavored treatment" of some voters based on their political views.
(I think this is from BaltSun, it was emailed to me by a trusted friend)
Maryland Democrats drew the state's convoluted congressional districts with an eye toward ousting a longtime Republican incumbent and replacing him with a Democrat, former Gov. Martin O'Malley has acknowledged as part of a high-profile legal challenge to the maps winding its way through federal court.
The acknowledgment that state Democrats were working in 2011 to add a seventh member of their party to the House of Representatives, widely understood at the time but seldom conceded publicly even now, comes as Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is advocating for a nonpartisan redistricting commission, ostensibly to curb partisan gerrymandering.
The lawsuit, filed in 2013 by a former federal employee, is shedding new light on the machinations that took place behind the scenes as Democrats sought to oust Republican Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett from the seat he had held for nearly two decades.
"That was my hope," O'Malley told attorneys in a deposition. "It was also my intent to create … a district where the people would be more likely to elect a Democrat than a Republican."
Mapmakers extended the boundaries of Bartlett's Western Maryland district into Democratic portions of Montgomery and Frederick counties after the 2010 Census, and former banker John Delaney, a Democrat, won the seat in 2012 by nearly 21 percentage points.
The plaintiffs are hoping to formally establish what is widely believed: That Maryland Democrats considered past voting patterns to squeeze an advantage out of the maps. Attorneys recently deposed O'Malley, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and House Speaker Michael E. Busch as part of the lawsuit, and reviewed emails of officials involved in the process.
The plaintiffs, including Stephen M. Shapiro of Bethesda, are making a novel legal argument: They say the redistricting was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment rights of Republican voters in the 6th District.
Most gerrymandering cases have been brought under the 14th Amendment, and involve questions of how racial groups are treated, not voters of a given political party.
In a motion filed late Wednesday, attorneys said the maps were drawn not by the public commission created by O'Malley in 2011 to perform the task, but by a consultant working for the Democratic members of the state's congressional delegation.
Though it is not uncommon for consultants to handle the technical work of a redistricting, testimony in the case suggests that it was the Democratic delegation members who drove the effort.
The Democratic lawmakers, led by Rep. Steny Hoyer of Southern Maryland, hired Washington-based NCEC Services Inc. to craft the map, according to court documents. Eric Hawkins, an analyst at the organization, told attorneys he drafted between and 10 and 20 different versions of the maps.
"The purpose of what we were doing was, No. 1, incumbent protection. And No. 2, trying to see if there was a way that there was another Democrat district in the state," Hawkins said in his deposition.
Court documents show aides to Hoyer, Miller, Rep. John Sarbanes of Baltimore County and others were involved in that effort.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to force the state to begin the process of redrawing the maps for the 2018 midterm election.
"Everybody understood that the Democrats were targeting the 1st District or the 6th," said Michael B. Kimberly, an attorney with Mayer Brown who is representing Shapiro pro-bono. "But it's been quite a lot of work getting state officials to come around and finally admit that."
A spokesman for O'Malley referred questions to the Maryland attorney general's office. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Brian E. Frosh declined to comment.
A spokeswoman for Hoyer said redistricting reform should be addressed at the national level.
"While partisanship has always played a role in redistricting, Rep. Hoyer has long advocated for national redistricting reform that doesn't advantage one party over the other," spokeswoman Annaliese Davis said.
Depositions in the case underscore the fraying nerves behind closed doors during the redistricting process, even as Democrats presented a mostly unified public face.
"John Delaney was irate after the eventual map came out and was absolutely, positively convinced that we went out of our way to carve his million-dollar home out of the Sixth District," O'Malley said in the deposition.
"Congresswoman [Donna] Edwards was not willing to discuss anything about the map and felt that whatever we do in any other district is fine by her, but she did not want a single precinct of her district moved anywhere," O'Malley said.
Edwards, a Prince George's County Democrat who left her seat last year to run for Senate, was among the most vocal critics of the map at the time.
Edwards and Delaney declined to comment Wednesday.
O'Malley, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, wrote in a social media post recently that he was convinced as governor that the party should draw lines that are favorable to Democratic candidates.
He acknowledges that the approach isn't necessarily "good for our country as a whole."
For those still involved in Democratic politics in the state, the position isn't so easy to flip. A nonpartisan commission of the kind Hogan has proposed would likely result in fewer Democrats in the Maryland delegation. That has put state Democrats in the awkward position of saying they support redistricting reform, but only if Republican-led states go along at the same time.
The idea, they say, is based on mutual disarmament: A Democratic-led state shouldn't have to give up its advantage if Republicans elsewhere are still relying on it. That calculation will be complicated if Hogan wins a second term next year and has a say in how the maps are drawn following the 2020 Census.
Miller, in his deposition, repeatedly denied that politics influenced how the lines were drawn. Asked if he personally wanted to maximize the Democratic advantage in the districts, Miller flatly stated "no."
"You credit me with having too much say in these things," Miller told the court. "Since I don't run for Congress, I'm not a member of Congress, I want lines that are drawn that are fair to everybody. And like I said before, I'm bipartisan. I work for Republicans and Democrats."
A unanimous Supreme Court in 2015 described Maryland's congressional district map as a "crazy quilt" and ruled that Shaprio's case must be allowed to proceed.
Shaprio had appealed to the Supreme Court after a district judge said the case did not meet the standard for convening a panel of judges to review and dismissed it.
Shapiro based his First Amendment claim on a 2004 concurring opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy in another case.
Kennedy wrote that the First Amendment could be used as a basis of a redistricting lawsuit if plaintiffs could argue a state law resulted in a "disfavored treatment" of some voters based on their political views.
Is there anyone who can look at a district in central Maryland and can come any conclusions other than:
A. It was done to disenfranchise as many non-D's as possible or,
B. The persons drawing the lines spent several days on peyote.
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