***MarylandReporter.com’s Len Lazarick will be on NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt on News Channel 8 to analyze Tuesday’s election. The show is live at 10 a.m. and reruns at 1 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.***
TRANSITION BEGINS: A relaxed and joking Republican Gov.-elect Larry Hogan told reporters Wednesday he would create a bi-partisan administration and credited his upset win to listening to voter frustration. “It doesn’t matter to me if someone is a Republican or a Democrat, I’m going to be the governor for all Marylanders,” he said. “This victory was not a partisan one.” Erin Cox writes the story for the Sun.
- Hogan named James T. Brady, a Cabinet official for Democratic former Gov. Parris Glendening, as co-chair of his transition effort. Brady, who served as economic development chief for Glendening, played a similar role after the election of Bob Ehrlich, the state’s last Republican governor, in 2002.
PURPLE LINE WORRIES: Katherine Shaver of the Post reports that Montgomery and Prince George’s county officials expressed alarm Wednesday about the possibility that Maryland Gov.-elect Larry Hogan would cancel construction of a light-rail Purple Line and vowed to fight for a project they consider key to the region’s economic future.
RED LINE HOPES: The most pressing policy shift that Baltimore City Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is likely to face under Hogan relates to transportation. Hogan has expressed opposition to Baltimore’s planned 14-mile Red Line light rail project and recently said he might seek to postpone it. Rawlings-Blake said she’s hoping for the best regarding the $2.9 billion east-west light rail project, which has already received federal, city, state and local funding commitments, Kevin Litten reports in the Baltimore Business Journal.
BROWN’S FOLLY: If you’re feeling sorry for Anthony Brown this morning, you should probably find something else to read. The lieutenant governor ran an historically inept campaign and lost a race that should have been impossible to lose. Moreover, in falling by around 80,000 votes to Larry Hogan, Brown managed to take down a number of Democrats around the state who would have won with even a modest amount of help from the top of the ticket, opines Laslo Boyd for Center Maryland.
HOGAN’S PUSH: In a column for the National Review, Christopher Summers of the Maryland Public Policy Institute writes that after eight years in office, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown was poised to become governor. Instead, Republican Larry Hogan won, “saving us from a third term of one-party monopoly rule. Hogan, in one of the most stunning electoral upsets in the nation, did something else unthinkable: He forced Brown to take positions outside Democratic-party orthodoxy in this deep-blue state, including taking a no-new-taxes pledge and promising to position Maryland as the best business climate in the nation. These are Hogan’s own goals, but much work is ahead.”
WHO IS LARRY HOGAN? Republican Larry Hogan campaigned for Maryland governor as a successful businessman and political outsider in a state capital dominated by Democrats. But he has spent much of his life on the fringes of political power, writes John Fritze in this short Post profile.
- John Wagner of the Post lists seven things you might not know about Larry Hogan, including that his roots are in Prince George’s County.
AFTERMATH: With Larry Hogan as Maryland’s next governor, David Moon of Maryland Juice asks: What happened down-ballot, what’s next and what about the Purple Line?
- From a very different point of view, Mark Newgent of Red Maryland assesses winners and losers in Tuesday’s election.
- MarylandReporter.com has election analysis from four different point of view, three professors and a columnist: Roy Meyer, Melissa Deckman, Rick Vatz and Blair Lee.
VOTER TURNOUT: The Sun’s Michael Dresser reports that Larry Hogan won his race for governor not just because Marylanders of both parties turned out to support his call for lower taxes, but because tens of thousands of Democrats in key jurisdictions stayed home. Turnout plummeted in Baltimore City and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties to the lowest levels in the state.
- Here’s a link to several Sun maps showing how Maryland counties voted over the last four gubernatorial elections.
HOW BLUE IS MARYLAND? Jenna Johnson of the Post writes that after the surprise gubernatorial victory of Republican Larry Hogan in Maryland, pundits wondered how such an upset could happen in a state long dominated by Democrats. But how blue is Maryland?
A SETBACK FOR O’MALLEY: Anthony Brown’s loss in Maryland’s gubernatorial election was an unexpected setback for state Democrats — but it also represented a possible problem for the party’s patriarch, Gov. Martin O’Malley, as he eyes a campaign for president in 2016, John Fritze writes in the Sun.
GOP EXCEEDS STATEHOUSE GOALS: Before the election, the state GOP laid out a dream scenario: Elect Republican Larry Hogan as governor and pick up five seats in the House of Delegates. But, reports Luke Broadwater for the Sun, they surpassed that goal Tuesday night.
A REALIGNMENT: Josh Kurtz of Center Maryland writes that what Democratic Party leaders must now come to grips with is that, when legislative districts like Kevin Kelly’s and Johnny Wood’s and Mary-Dulany James’ and Johnny O’s are lost, they’re probably never coming back. It’s like the Deep South, where Democrats almost never win anymore except in districts with high African-American population.
DISTRICT 38B: Less than 24 hours after Tuesday’s election, Carl Anderton was still trying to wrap his brain around his victory over a 28-year incumbent in the District 38B House of Delegates race. “This is a whole new world now,” he said. “It’s surreal.” Liz Holland writes for the Salisbury Daily Times that Republican Anderton, the mayor of Delmar, beat Del. Norman Conway, a Democrat who has served in the House since 1987 and is chairman of the Appropriations Committee.
DEL. CONAWAY RESIGNS CITY JOB: Luke Broadwater of the Sun reports that state Del. Frank Conaway Jr. resigned from his job in the Baltimore City Hall mailroom Wednesday amid allegations that he misused city resources by posting a series of rambling videos online in which he referred to himself as “meta,” discussed Sasquatch and Yeti, and asked whether he lives in a hologram.
DELANEY CLAIMS VICTORY; BONGINO WON’T CONCEDE: U.S. Rep. John Delaney declared victory Wednesday in an unexpectedly tight race for Maryland’s 6th Congressional District, while Republican challenger Dan Bongino, trailing by a slender 2,166 votes, maintained that it was too close to call. In a statement to supporters, Bongino said he will wait until the estimated 5,500 absentee ballots are counted, reports Bill Turque in the Post.
4 JUDGES RE-ELECTED: After a contest that roiled both local legal and political circles while placing the personal life of an incumbent judge on full public view, four sitting Circuit Court judges were elected Tuesday to 15 year terms on the bench, writes Louis Peck for Bethesda Magazine.
WICOMICO EXEC CULVER: In a profile for the Salisbury Daily Times, Phil Davis writes that the last two days inside the Cellar Door Tavern, owned by newly elected Wicomico County Executive Bob Culver, have been stark contrasts for the Republican. The article is topped by a video.
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