State Roundup, June 27, 2014

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DEMOCRATS MAKE UP:Democrat Anthony G. Brown took the stage at a Democratic unity event Thursday night and planted a kiss squarely on his former political rival, Del. Heather Mizeur, writes Erin Cox in the Sun. It was, after all, a “kiss and make up” party to mend the wounds from the long and acrimonious Democratic primary, which ended in Brown’s landslide victory Tuesday night.The candidates who had the most making up to do, however, never shared the stage. Attorney General Doug Gansler was missing.

REPUBLICANS UNITE: As hard as it was for some of them, the four Republicans who had run against each other for governor put on a show of unity Thursday night, with the three losers supporting winner Larry Hogan in an event organized by the state Republican Party, Len Lazarick reports in Maryland Reporter.com. Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman also pledged her support to Del. Steve Schuh, who beat her in the primary.

As hard as it was for some of them, the four Republicans who had run against each other for governor put on a show of unity Thursday night, with the three losers supporting winner Larry Hogan in an event organized by the state – See more at: https://marylandreporter.com/#sthash.nN6xOK0O.dpuf

HOGAN AD CONTROVERSY A partisan bickering match broke out in Maryland politics Wednesday over whether it’s outrageous or fair game to put a certain photo of Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown and Howard County Executive Ken Ulman flexing their biceps into an attack ad., Erin Cox writes in the Sun.

HOPKINS STRIKE AVERTED: A four-day strike by service workers at Johns Hopkins Hospital that had been scheduled to start Friday was averted after Gov. Martin O’Malley asked both sides to take a one-week cooling-off period.

KITTLEMAN VS. WATSON: Amanda Yeager in the Columbia Flier and Howard County Times has a long preview of the race for Howard County executive between state Sen. Allan Kittleman and County Council member Courtney Watson.

UNION PAYBACK FLOPS: Angry about recession-era cuts and legislative setbacks, the unions representing Montgomery police, fire and non-uniformed employees tried to exact some payback from the County Council and County Executive Isiah Leggett on Primary Day, writes Bill Turque in the Post. It didn’t go so well.

CLOSE PG COUNCIL RACE: Thirteen votes. That’s all that separates Prince George’s County Council candidates Doyle L. Niemann and Deni Taveras after a hard-fought primary election that pitted a savvy newcomer against a seasoned political hand.

TIGHT ARUNDEL RACES: Eric Knowles has conceded to Don Quinn in the race for state Senate in District 30, but the county council race in district 5 between Michael Peroutka and Maureen Carr-York is still too close to call, Rema Rahman reports in the Capital.

EPA RATES STATES: Federal overseers of the Chesapeake Bay cleanup say Maryland and Virginia are meeting the multistate partnership’s pollution-reduction goals, but Delaware is falling short, Jeremy Cox writes in Delmarva Now.

INCUMBENT CHALLENGE: Southern Maryland voters chose Chris Chaffee of Prince Frederick among the three Republican candidates in Tuesday’s primary to challenge Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md., 5th) in the November general election, reports Jason Babcock in the recorder. Chaffee won all but one of the five counties represented in the 5th Congressional District.

ST. MARY’S TURNOUT: Voter turnout in St. Mary’s didn’t even reach 17 percent during Tuesday’s primary election and eight days of early voting, writes Jason Babcock of the St. Mary’s Enterprise. With 65,247 active voters in St. Mary’s, just 10,772 cast their ballots.

CHARLES COUNTY: Del. Peter Murphy felt good heading into Tuesday’s primary election that his campaign for Charles County commissioners’ president had a appealed to voters, but he said he never expected to walk away from his race against current commissioners’ Vice President Reuben B. Collins II with a double-digit victory, writes Jeff Newman for the Charles County Independent,  along with more on the Charles County races.

TURNOUT BOTHERSOME: Newman also writes in the Independent that the low turnout in the county bothered candidates. Despite a sluggish morning at the polls Tuesday that had county officials fearing a historically low turnout,  an evening rush of workers on their way home from work ended up pushing the county’s turnout in the 2014 election to a respectable level.

MEETING PRAYER: For the first time since the early city commissioners became a mayor and city council in 1890, the Laurel City Council began its meeting with a religious invocation that was not Christian, writes Luke Lavoie in the Laurel Leader. Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism based in Nevada, opened Monday’s council meeting with an invocation from Sanskrit scripture, which is considered a sacred language in Hinduism.

VOTES STILL BEING COUNTED: A runner-up in the primary race for Talbot County school board District 4 won’t be clear until Wednesday, July 2, and may not be known until Monday, July 7, when the last of the district’s absentee ballots are counted, writes Henley Moore in the Star Democrat.

POP QUIZ: WBAL TV has compiled a slideshow quiz of some of Maryland’s geography.

HOMELESS POPULATION: Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz says the county is taking a new approach to addressing homelessness, Rob Lang reports on WBAL Radio. It is a ten year plan with seven strategies that Kamenetz says will reduce and prevent homelessness.

BALTIMORE MAYOR STEPS IN IT: Asked to comment yesterday on her aide’s hiring of a neighbor to a $60,000 position at the minority business development center, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake responded with her own set of questions.

“He was a neighbor? That is relevant because?” writes Mark Reutter in Baltimore Brew. This was the mayor’s first public response to a Brew article describing how the top positions at a newly created minority business center were filled by partners in a failed hotel scheme – one of whom, David Mosley, lives next door to Sharon Pinder, director of the Mayor’s Office of Minority and Women-Owned Business Development.

About The Author

Len Lazarick

len@marylandreporter.com

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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