Analysis: Political carryout: I’ll have the Wayne Curry to go, please

When I asked Sen. Rich Madaleno, the MoCo budget maven, if anything had surprised him at Monday’s budget briefing, his response was immediate: Wayne Curry was there.

Not that anybody really noticed the former Prince George’s County executive as he stood by the Joint Hearing Room door like a greeter or took up a prominent aisle seat or when he worked the room after the session.

Before the meeting, I asked Curry why he was there. He said he wanted to “see for himself” what the budget was going to do. Then he asked me why I wasn’t at his big birthday bash last Thursday. “I wasn’t invited,” I said lamely – like I never go to a political event without a personal invitation. But, hey, there were thousands at the event. How’d he know I wasn’t there?

In articles that came out after this morning’s State Roundup was put together, Josh Kurtz at Center Maryland has a full blown and typically astute analysis of “Wayne’s world” and Aaron Davis in the Post blog describes Curry’s visit to Annapolis.

Not that Curry was there just to get quoted in The Sun, the Post, MarylandReporter.com and whoever else had an open notepad. The Sun’s Annie Linskey repeatedly pressed him about his political plans, and Curry danced around the topic both figuratively and literally, doing a little soft-shoe routine. And why wasn’t Linskey at his birthday party? Curry wanted to know. She gave him the same lame excuse I did.

So is he going to run for governor, run on a ticket with former MoCo exec Doug Duncan or Bob Ehrlich? Or just drumming up business for himself and the Murphy law firm?

I have no idea what Wayne Curry is going to do, and maybe he doesn’t either. But I know what he was clearly doing in Annapolis Monday — glad-handing politicos, chatting up reporters, getting his digs in at the incumbent governor, generally stirring the pot and trying to drive the O’Malley camp crazy.

Wayne Curry was having FUN.

-Len Lazarick

About The Author

Len Lazarick

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Len Lazarick was the founding editor and publisher of MarylandReporter.com and is currently the president of its nonprofit corporation and chairman of its board He was formerly the State House bureau chief of the daily Baltimore Examiner from its start in April 2006 to its demise in February 2009. He was a copy editor on the national desk of the Washington Post for eight years before that, and has spent decades covering Maryland politics and government.

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