Her ride to the retreat provided the perfect opportunity to practice, she said.
Stuck in bumper-to-bumper Memorial Day weekend holiday traffic as she drove south on Interstate 95, she didn't lose patience, even though it took four hours to go 20 miles, she said.
"I was able to think 'I'm on my retreat,' " and just take things as they happened.
"It was peaceful," she said.
A model fundraiser
Getting people to visit, much less buy big, expensive new homes is much tougher these days, but a confluence of interests produced a crowd of well more than 100 at an opulent 10,000-square-foot Toll Bros. model home in the Patuxent Chase development off Route 108 near Columbia on Tuesday night.
Del. Shane Pendergrass' annual political fundraiser attracted lots of people to the furnished model, which served the Democrat's goal of collecting what she predicted would be about $20,000 in donations. Best of all, from her perspective, the house came free.
"My campaign manager wanted to remodel her bathroom and she saw a model home," Pendergrass said, chuckling. Since Pendergrass knew her former campaign manager worked for Toll Bros., the firm that built the model, she asked to use the house for the event.
"It's gorgeous. It is a 'wow' house," Pendergrass said, and since as a member of the House of Delegates specializing in health care she doesn't deal with land-use issues as she did before 1994 when she served on the County Council, she didn't see any ethical conflicts.
"This is a spectacular house," she said, though the 10-foot ceilings, dramatic two-story entrance with curved stairways, the four heat pumps and the two, two-car garages make it the housing trade's equivalent of the giant, gas-guzzling Hummer. If you're interested, the sale price is north of $2 million.
Pendergrass isn't hurting for political financing. Her last campaign finance report filed in January showed a balance of about $51,000, and she benefits from an alliance with her three District 13 colleagues, all Democrats, who pool some resources during campaigns.
She expects to run for re-election, she said, though a decision is months away.
And the survey says ...
Several county Republicans friendly to business did well on the annual roll-call score card compiled by Maryland Business for Responsive Government, a nonpartisan but conservative pro-business group that rates votes on about a dozen bills the group considers key.
Republican Del. Warren E. Miller and Senate Minority leader Sen. Allan H. Kittleman each got 100 percent ratings from the group. Fellow Republican Del. Gail H. Bates scored 80 percent.
Among Democrats, State Sen. Edward J. Kasemeyer got 60 percent, and Del. Frank S. Turner scored 50 percent. State Sen. James N. Robey got a 25 percent rating on the 11 senate bills, while Dels. Shane Pendergrass, Guy Guzzone, Elizabeth Bobo, Steven J. DeBoy and James E. Malone got 20 percent ratings on the nine House bills used in the survey, according to the group's Web site.
