Maryland Democrats

Your recent editorial regarding voter ID laws ("The phantom menace of voter fraud," Feb. 27) rightly criticized the Republicans in the legislature for trying to win votes by tinkering with the voting process. The attempt is clumsy and obvious. They should learn from the Democrats who accomplish the same end much more deftly. They carved legislative and congressional districts in which the Republican votes will be counted but just won't count. There is more than one way to rig an election.

President Obama will make what could turn out to be his only Maryland campaign stop June 12 when he visits Baltimore for a fund-raising event, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced Monday night. Obama is expected to attend a fund-raiser at a private home and a reception at a local hotel, a source familiar with the plans said. O'Malley announced the plan at the Maryland Democratic Party's annual gala dinner in Greenbelt, an event attended by many of the state's most prominent elected officials.

It has come to this: Election-year tension over Maryland's budget predicament has grown so intense that Republicans and Democrats can't even agree on how to talk about the problem. The General Assembly's top fiscal leaders want Republican lawmakers to gather for an unusual meeting next week to discuss programs that could be reduced or eliminated. Weary of being criticized for irresponsible spending, House and Senate leaders want Republicans to outline exactly where to trim from the state's $13 billion general fund budget.

Banker John Delaney knew that Maryland's ruling Democrats had someone else in mind to become the state's next 6th District congressman. But the 48-year-old multimillionaire from Potomac jumped into the race anyway. And despite early missteps, Delaney's campaign appears to be gaining momentum with just over a week to go before the April 3 Democratic primary. In the past month, he has won endorsements from former President Bill Clinton and The Washington Post , among others.

SOME MOURNED the loss of city-county cooperation. They feared an outbreak of racial or ethnic tension as blacks and whites or Jews and Gentiles struggled for representation. Others decried the outrageous interference of judges in the land of the politician. Most moaned about themselves. In fear and loathing, Maryland Democrats awoke 10 days ago to an altered world. They seemed as bewildered as Dorothy swept out of Kansas and not nearly so brave. They'd been scooped by a judicial tornado and dropped down in alien territory.

MARYLAND Democrats had better hold their applause. Lurking behind Bill Clinton's landslide in the Free State last week were some disturbing numbers.Yes, Mr. Clinton took Maryland by 272,000 votes. But he lost 15 of 24 subdivisions. Combine Bob Dole's totals with Ross Perot's and after absentee ballots are counted it's likely Mr. Clinton will have won only three subdivisions -- Baltimore City, Prince George's County and Montgomery County.Sound familiar? It looks like a carbon copy of 1992 -- and similar in many respects to 1994.

IF REPUBLICAN David Duke hopes to retrace Democrat George Wallace's footsteps across Maryland, he picked the right state but the wrong party.Going strictly by the numbers, Duke the kleagle, the newly sanitized Christian, hasn't got a shot as a Republican.Although there are Duke loonies among Maryland Republicans, most of them are mainstream, establishment and middlebrow white-bread types who like to discuss the intricacies of economic policy.But working-class Democrats would be more likely to resonate with Duke's send-'em-a-message politics of welfare reform, urban crime, affirmative action and racial preference programs.

Once bitter adversaries, Maryland Comptroller William Donald Schaefer and former Attorney General Stephen H. Sachs are on the same team supporting presidential candidate Bill Bradley. Schaefer joined a list yesterday of Maryland Democratic officials who have endorsed Bradley in his run against Vice President Al Gore. "I have been involved in public service for four decades, and rarely have I met someone with the integrity, honesty and character of Bill Bradley," Schaefer said in a statement released by the Bradley campaign.

Does anyone really think Republicans have a better modern record on civil rights than Democrats? The question arises in light of the suggestion that black voters in Maryland should abandon the Democratic Party, whose leaders endorsed the 1960s civil rights legislation at the risk of the party's historic dominance in the politics of the South - and the nation. When President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he predicted that the previously "solid" Southern Democrats would seek refuge in the GOP. He was right.

Bill Clinton launched his bid yesterday for the support of Maryland Democrats in the March 3 presidential primary, with bTC Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke hailing his vision and leadership from the pulpit of a major black church.Calling for a "new covenant" between a demoralized people and their government, the Arkansas governor promised "not just a deal, but a solemn agreement to create new opportunity" in the United States.The nation has been divided deliberately along racial and class lines by Republican politicians for the last 12 years, he charged -- but he quickly added: "I don't care whose fault it is anymore.

Your recent editorial regarding voter ID laws ("The phantom menace of voter fraud," Feb. 27) rightly criticized the Republicans in the legislature for trying to win votes by tinkering with the voting process. The attempt is clumsy and obvious. They should learn from the Democrats who accomplish the same end much more deftly. They carved legislative and congressional districts in which the Republican votes will be counted but just won't count. There is more than one way to rig an election.

Funny that The Sun is ranting at Democrat Kevin Kamenetz's "double standard" on pensions which appears to be standard operating procedure for Maryland Democrats. You should be happy with this typical Democrat behavior, just like the taxation dropped on us by Democratic Gov.Martin O'Malley. When will Democrats wake up and vote for a politician they can admire and not a failed party? In this state I will not hold my breath. F. Cordell

Last Tuesday, a Delaware state senate committee approved legislation to raise that state's minimum wage to $8.25 by 2014, making it $1 above the federal government's (and Maryland's) current standard. If the measure becomes law, the Diamond State would join 17 other states that require a minimum wage in excess of the $7.25 federal standard. That Delaware, a state ranked in the top-quarter of states for its business tax climate (according to the Tax Foundation), should demonstrate such interest in raising the minimum wage adds to the evidence that it's not strictly a red or blue state or liberal versus conservative issue.

The Maryland Democratic Party got through more than two hours of its annual pre-session  legislative luncheon in Annapolis Tuesday with nothing but love and peace and harmony in the air. Then, right at the end, came the dissension. After Gov. Martin O'Malley closed the program with a rousing call for Maryland Democrats to unite to re-elect President Obama and U.S. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, an unscheduled state Sen. C.  Anthony Muse mounted the podium and launched into an impassioned protest as the room emptied out. Muse, a Prince George's County Democrat who is running against Cardin in the April 3 primary, contended that O'Malley and U.S. House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer's violated party rules by using the event to issue full-throated endorsements of the incumbent.

Democrats have controlled the state of Maryland for over 40 years. If the average citizen cannot see the danger of one party control we are in serious trouble. Consider the following burdens for us Marylanders: A 15 percent increase in the gas tax; a doubling of the cost of a vehicle emissions test; a ridiculous congressional redistricting map; higher vehicle registration fees; using transportation taxes and fees to balance the general fund budget; increasing tolls; and raising tobacco taxes by $1 per pack.

In the state's first large-scale campaign event of the 2012 election cycle, Maryland Democrats hosted their party's national leader Wednesday for a rally intended to energize voters and drum up support for President Barack Obama's re-election. The visit by Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz also came as races in two of Maryland's recently redrawn congressional districts are heating up rapidly as the state's April 3 primary nears. A crowd of potential candidates is now circling each of those districts.

WASHINGTON -- Two top Maryland Democrats who have been political allies for three decades are attracting national attention for their sharply different reactions to the sex scandal that threatens to destroy the Clinton presidency.Neither Rep. Steny H. Hoyer nor Gov. Parris N. Glendening has defended Clinton's acknowledged affair with former White House intern Monica S. Lewinsky. But Hoyer interrupted his own re-election campaign to accompany the embattled president on a difficult overseas trip, and even publicly upbraided a reporter who raised the scandal at a Moscow news conference.

Democrats in Washington seldom criticized President Barack Obama during his first year in office. But if lawmakers from Maryland are any indication, leading members of his party think it's time for him to step up his game. Obama has tried to take on too many problems, some Marylanders say. And as he shifts emphasis in an election year, they worry that he could wind up punishing a portion of the Democratic base. "I think we pushed the agenda way too quick and tried to do too much too soon, because we were in the majority and he had the bully pulpit.

I realize that politicians will always use redistricting to give their party an advantage, but it is usually done in a subtle manner. Using computers, districts can easily be created that keep communities intact. The Maryland Democrats led by Gov. Martin O'Malley should be ashamed of the district map that they have created. It is a classic example of gerrymandering. The people and communities were totally disregarded to accomplish their political goals. Counties have been chopped into numerous pieces.

The several gerrymandered congressional redistricting plans now being considered by the General Assembly are self-serving and cynical. The heavy-handed manipulation of Maryland's voters is an crass perversion of how districts should be drawn, and it points up the corruptive danger of long-term one-party rule. Supreme Court rulings and federal laws require that congressional districts must be contiguous, compact, and equally populated. Please explain how any of the proposed districts meets the definition for being compact.