The Campaign for Governor of Maryland

Showing their support, (from left) Irma Ramsey Cuellar of Silver Spring, Nguyen Minh Chau of Garrett Park, Rev. Ruby Reese Moone of Rockville. (Sun photo by Andre F. Chung) Oct 20, 2005

Doug Duncan, County Executive of Montgomery County, officially announced his entry into the 2006 Governor's Race, where he will compete with Martin O'Malley, Mayor of Baltimore, in the primary. I suppose I have some preference for O'Malley since he has a harder job, and because Mr. Duncan has been less supportive of public transit than he could have been, and more oriented to sprawl-promotion, both in terms of his pushing the idea of an "Outer" Purple Line, which would have enabled more sprawl, and the Inter-County Connecter, which will enable more sprawl. (This has been discussed in the past in this blog.)

He announced in Baltimore and talked about his efforts to "revitalize" Silver Spring, which I think of as merely big superbuildings not much different from the long discredited urban renewal programs of the 1960s-21st century (too many cities are still pursuing such policies refusing to acknowledge the lessons believing that with a wee bit of tinkering, different results will obtain "this time"), and his record with Montgomery County schools and minority populations.

In any case, either Duncan or O'Malley are likely to be more favorable on anti-sprawl and transit issues, and it's clear that the difference between a Democratic and a Republican administration in the state of Maryland is striking.

Both the Post and the Baltimore Sun covered the announcement, although I think the Sun took better photographs. See "Duncan opens campaign with shots at main rivals: Gubernatorial hopeful criticizes records of O'Malley and Ehrlich."

Michael Olesker, the Sun columnist that Gov. Ehrlich refuses to let any state employee talk to (if that isn't a violation of the Constitution and the 14th Amendment, I don't know what is), has a pretty good column about this also, "Political promises, vacant rowhouses." It's about the down-trodden neighborhood where the press conference was held, the jibes made at O'Malley by Duncan, and the presence of former mayors William Donald Schaefer and Kurt Schmoke, who certainly had some "impact" on the decline of the neighborhood--Olesker counted 32 empty rowhouses on one block alone!