Party Politics

The chairman of the Columbia Council has sharply criticized the role of two prominent county Democrats in defeating a Republican council member, saying partisan politics have no place in Columbia elections.Charles Acquard of Kings Contrivance Village said the involvement of former County Executive M. Elizabeth Bobo and former County Councilman Lloyd Knowles probably dealt a fatal blow to the re-election campaign of Wilde Lake council representative Michael Deets, a Republican.Both Knowles, a Wilde Lake resident, and Bobo, a village property owner, denied that partisanship played a role, saying they helped Deets' opponent, Norma Rose, because of their longtime friendship.

Saying it's unfair to Democrats and blacks, the Annapolis DemocraticCentral Committee voted Tuesday to oppose the city's redistricting plan.Committee Chairman Michael T. Brown said the committee voted,5-0, Tuesday night against what he called a "Republican plan." Four members were absent.Brown complained that the plan, which will be presented to the City Council Dec. 16, fails to establish the three majority black districts warranted by Annapolis' 33 percent black population. Instead, hecharged, it makes safe districts for all four Republican aldermen --in particular Wayne Turner, R-Ward 6, who defeated Brown by only four votes in 1989.

WASHINGTON -- LEADING Democrats are playing a cynical game on the question of the 1992 presidential election. On the one hand, the party's most prominent spokesmen are telling both Democratic activists and the voters at large that President Bush has been a dAmerican children are at risk, the health care system is in collapse, the infrastructure is deteriorating, the streets are overrun with drugs and the homeless, and the gulf between the rich and poor...

The two Republicans on the County Council, tired of being snookered by their three Democratic counterparts, said Monday they plan a little devilment of their own.Charles C. Feaga, R-5th, and Darrel Drown, R-2nd, said they will be "looking more carefully at the political background" of the county executive's nominees to citizens commissions. They also said they hope to "make (County Executive Charles I. Ecker) a little more careful in the names he is sending in.""You haven't seen more Republicans than Democrats being appointed" to boards and commissions, "but you will now," Feaga predicted.

For the first time since the November election, the County Council voted along strict party lines Monday, defeating a proposal that wouldhave prevented council members from serving more than 12 years in office.Partisan politics also were expressed prior to a unanimous vote to help subsidize cable television rates for the poor, and on a motion to kill adequate facilities legislation which was tabled in November. Measures sponsored by Darrel Drown, R-2nd, would have limited council membership to three four-year terms and would have asked the state's congressional delegation to support a constitutional amendment putting a 12-year limit on service in the House and Senate.

How would you like to be chairman of the Republican Party?It pays well. You get a company car. The president calls you by your first name. And every morning, you get to walk Millie.So how come nobody wants the job?When George Bush was elected president just a little more than two years ago, the GOP looked unbeatable in the foreseeable future.Yet today, the party is in disarray. It is floundering, leaderless, adrift.Part of the problem is the illness of Lee Atwater. Atwater was an ideal party chairman.

Just when conservatism was supposed to be on the ascendant throughout North America, Canada's wealthiest and most populous province went socialist for the first time. Ontario voters did this last month out of sheer disgust with party politics, the constitutional paralysis, the looming recession, a regressive federal sales tax to take effect next year, the language claims of Quebec and everything concerning Conservative federal Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.The New Democratic Party is Canada's third, and left-most, political party.