How will Larry Hogan (R-MD) and Charlie Baker (R-MA) do as governors?

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

P.S. Guys, let's not forget that most men and women are still "straight". And that these people have rights too. And they must be respected and preserved no less then  rights of LGBT people.. Some liberals seem to forget about that...

I'm pretty sure most liberals are straight as well...

Only because they haven't been liberated from their forced societal norms.

[smoltchanov]

P.S. Guys, let's not forget that most men and women are still "straight". And that these people have rights too. And they must be respected and preserved no less then  rights of LGBT people.. Some liberals seem to forget about that...

I'm pretty sure most liberals are straight as well...

Sure. But some tend to forget about that. May be out of "political correctness", i don't really know. But political correctness taken to extreme becomes an idiocy, here i am absolutely sure...

[smoltchanov]

So um... what was he even elected to do? Nothing?

He has shown  that quite straightforwardly during campaign: help business. Easing taxation and so on. Surely - not  "improve social services". Maintain them -yes, but - hardly more..

[The Other Castro]

P.S. Guys, let's not forget that most men and women are still "straight". And that these people have rights too. And they must be respected and preserved no less then  rights of LGBT people.. Some liberals seem to forget about that...

I'm pretty sure most liberals are straight as well...

Sure. But some tend to forget about that. May be out of "political correctness", i don't really know. But political correctness taken to extreme becomes an idiocy, here i am absolutely sure...

So because of political correctness, a straight liberal might accidentally partake in some libertas-style recreational activities and suddenly realize oh wait, that's right I'm straight! Dang political correctness, making me confused about my sexual orientation...

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Just realised Hogan doesn't even believe in anthropogenic climate change. Moderate my arse. Hopefully the legislature will frustrate his more stupid promises like his inane scaremongering around the 'rain tax'.

[warandwar]

Baker will prolly be the next William Weld.

Hogan will likely be ousted in 2018--MD is not really a state with a high tolerance for Republicans of any sort, and is pretty inelastic. I suspect his anti-transit positions will cost him a lot of votes in Montgomery County, at the very least. Democrats would still be smart to run a candidate from Baltimore County against him though; his victory this year was mostly due to anti-urbanist fervor in suburban Baltimore--a fervor which I expect probably was linked to race.

In case anyone doesn't know what an ignorant airhead is, see above.

If you think that counties that voted 17 and 20 percent for Obama voted against Brown because of race, you're an idiot.

There's a definite history of racism in the Maryland suburbs (a lot of white flight from b-more). It's hard to not see racial undertones in things like Carroll county wanting to ban all public transit from outside the county from entering.
Also recall that Mikulski and O'malley both over-performed Brown. Not saying they're overtly racist, but there's definitely a perception in Maryland that these places are.

So if you think Brown did so badly because of race you probably live in Maryland.

[warandwar]

Just realised Hogan doesn't even believe in anthropogenic climate change. Moderate my arse. Hopefully the legislature will frustrate his more stupid promises like his inane scaremongering around the 'rain tax'.

The rain is tax is stupid and not well thought out.

I'm interested to know why you think that. I don't think the stormwater management fee is a bad idea on itself, I just think that Brown could have done a better job explaining what it actually did. (Hint: it did not tax rain)

[Rockefeller GOP]

Just to be clear, liberals who claim their preferred candidates did worse strictly because of racism ARE acknowledging that, in such a scenario, these racists would be Democrats who would normally vote for the party, yes?  It's not like Republicans are more likely to vote for a White Democrat over a Black one; they're not voting for the Democrat, period.

[smoltchanov]

Just to be clear, liberals who claim their preferred candidates did worse strictly because of racism ARE acknowledging that, in such a scenario, these racists would be Democrats who would normally vote for the party, yes?  It's not like Republicans are more likely to vote for a White Democrat over a Black one; they're not voting for the Democrat, period.

A moderate Republicans (say, from Montgomery county) could easily vote for Democrat, and in the past approximately these area gave us Charles Mathias, Gilbert Guide, Newton Steers and Connie Morella, all of which voted at least left-of-center (IMHO - frequently even as liberals)

[warandwar]

Just to be clear, liberals who claim their preferred candidates did worse strictly because of racism ARE acknowledging that, in such a scenario, these racists would be Democrats who would normally vote for the party, yes?  It's not like Republicans are more likely to vote for a White Democrat over a Black one; they're not voting for the Democrat, period.

There's a third option when you register to vote (Independent).

[Rockefeller GOP]

Just to be clear, liberals who claim their preferred candidates did worse strictly because of racism ARE acknowledging that, in such a scenario, these racists would be Democrats who would normally vote for the party, yes?  It's not like Republicans are more likely to vote for a White Democrat over a Black one; they're not voting for the Democrat, period.

There's a third option when you register to vote (Independent).

Okay, so a mix of registered Democrats and independents.  It just seems that too often some misguided Democrats use the following logic: My party's non-White nominee did worse than previous White nominees --> he/she lost because of racism --> the "other side" is racist, when in fact it would be a negligible amount of Republicans/conservatives voting on race.

[traininthedistance]

Just realised Hogan doesn't even believe in anthropogenic climate change. Moderate my arse. Hopefully the legislature will frustrate his more stupid promises like his inane scaremongering around the 'rain tax'.

The rain is tax is stupid and not well thought out.

Yes, taking common-sense Pigouvian approaches to fixing the constellation of problems that come from overuse of impervious surfaces (such as increased flooding during storms; reduced groundwater recharge; non-point source pollution running into one of MD's most culturally and economically significant natural resources, the Chesapeake; etc. etc. etc.) is "stupid and not well thought out".

The so-called "rain tax" is one of the best public policy ideas out there, period.  It should be in place most everywhere.  Though I will grant that its urgency is especially sharp in Maryland, given that the state of the Chesapeake Bay makes it especially important there.

[warandwar]

Someone will have to actually convince me that (A) it will help reduce pollution, (B) it's not unfair to landowners. If someone could do that I would gladly do a Romney flip flop on this issue.

It seems like you think this is just a tax on impervious surfaces. It's not.
Remember there's a federal mandate that these 10 counties need to improve their stormwater management systems. That requires money. The legislation provides these 10 counties with a funding mechanism: a fee that is indexed to the amount of impervious surface in a property. What that fee is is left to the counties. This money is then used for various improvements (like these). It's that simple and it does reduce pollution.
It's not unfair to landowners. Yucky stormwater flows down my driveway, into the street and then into the sewer. From there, it goes to the bay. This yucky stormwater makes the bay yucky. Marylanders want a non-yucky bay, and anyway we're federally obligated to do these improvements.
Hogan declared in his recent state of the state that he wanted to get rid of the fee and let counties come up with their own way of financing these improvements. This is fairly ridonk-q-lous to do when he's already cutting funding for schools for these populous counties affected by the federal mandate. All removing the fee will do is make it harder for counties to fully fund their schools, roads, etc. I'd say having underfunded public schools is unfair to most landowners!

I feel like this should be under the Maryland 2016 thread I made, though.

EDIT here's a FAQ

[hopper]

Probably Baker will do a good job. He does have prior experience in Massachusetts state politics in working for the Weld and Celucci Administrations.

I was kinda lukewarm to Hogan's first "State of the State Address" He is talking about 2 executive orders right off the bat. Let the legislature pass bills and work their will rather than doing executive orders. I think that's good Hogan wants to do redistricting reform but let the legislature pass a bill in order to do that. Its a wait and see on how Hogan will do I think overall as governor.

[sg0508]

I think the big issue facing any statewide Republican in MD is that a very solid percentage (probably 45% of those that turnout) will NEVER support a GOP candidate no matter who is in office, what they've done, etc....the "R" next to their name is the only thing that matters.  The ceiling for statewide Republicans in MD (not that there have been many lately) is very low.