Kratovil, Harris and the 1st District
"Stick to truth, stick to decency, stick to honesty, stick to issues."
-- Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, upon his election in 1990, explaining his formula for victory
What we have here is the stuff of political science classes: How Republicans lost what would have been a perfectly safe seat in the U.S. House of Representatives despite a national tide favoring Democrats in the Year of Obama. It was one of only two seats held by the GOP in Maryland and it was in a district redrawn a few years ago to favor Republicans even more.
Wayne Gilchrest, the decent, honest, moderate Republican from the Eastern Shore who held the seat for 18 years, did not survive the February primary challenge of two GOP opponents -- Andy Harris, a conservative's conservative who lives in Baltimore County, far from the heart of the 1st District, and E.J. Pipkin, the former junk bond millionaire who, like Harris, serves in the Maryland Senate. Pipkin won election to the state Senate from the Eastern Shore in 2002. Two years later, he ran for U.S. Senate, losing to Barbara Mikulski by a 2-1 margin.
The ambitious Pipkin put a million bucks into his primary campaign this year and took 20 percent, slicing off a big piece of the Eastern Shore vote that normally would have gone to Gilchrest.
Harris, meanwhile, got 43 percent in the primary, trouncing the incumbent Gilchrest, who ended up with 33 percent. It was a bitter primary, with Harris employing the same negative campaign messages that won him a state Senate seat over Vernon Boozer 10 years earlier. Boozer had declined to make the standard concession phone call to Harris. A decade later, so did Gilchrest, who said, "A concession amounts to rewarding unseemly behavior. I'm not bitter, but my God, what's happened to democracy? It's a clear sign the party is split between dogma and tolerance."
Harris took the same negative approach into the general campaign against Democrat Frank Kratovil, the state's attorney in Queen Anne's County who fired back with some negative ads of his own.
The general election was Harris's to lose -- and he did. Harris, endorsed by former Gov. Bob Ehrlich, won the hearts of more than 33,000 voters in the February primary while Kratovil came away with 28,000 and 40 percent of the Democratic primary vote. Harris had made a big splash with the Gilchrest upset, and he had nice chunks of money coming in from an anti-tax group and "pro-life, pro-family" conservatives. This might have worked in 2004 -- it's what got George Bush re-elected that year, after all -- but not in 2008.
All along, Harris was of the belief that what 1st District voters really wanted wasn't Wayne Gilchrest, the Chesapeake Bay champion and modest former school teacher they'd sent to Congress for 18 years. Harris knew better. What they really wanted, he thought, was a bare-knuckles conservative's conservative from Baltimore County with a terrible voting record on the environment. Looks like he was wrong about that. Not by much. But wrong enough. And now a Democrat from the Eastern Shore, endorsed by Wayne Gilchrest, gets the seat. Good work.
Harris says in The Sun today that he thinks the pendulum will swing back the other way -- heavy to the right -- in two years. That's wishful thinking. If Harris wants to win the seat it's Harris who has to do the swinging, and toward the middle. It might also help if, as a state senator, he voted for a couple of measures that showed a little progressive thinking about the bay and the environment.
Comments
I will miss Wayne Gilchrest, and would have continued to vote for him forever. That said am thrilled to not have Harris representing me. Thank you Frank Kratovil!
Posted by: Tony | November 8, 2008 1:44 PM
Perhaps this will serve as a wake up call to Bobby Ehrlich and the Maryland GOP that they can't win elections in this state by running to the extreme right (with the exception of Roscoe Bartlett in the 6th district). I would like to see Wayne Gilchrest return the favor by running against Bobby in the 2010 gubernatorial primary.
Memo to Bobby Haircut: You reap what you sow.
Posted by: MCG | November 9, 2008 7:05 AM
What an excellent synopsis of the 1st district race. Thank you, Dan Rodricks! I'm a lifelong democrat, but I believe that Wayne Gilchrest is a decent man who put partisan politics aside and did a great job representing my district. I would have voted for him in the general election this year if he had not been defeated by Andy Harris's far right attacks in the primary. We in the first district need to be very protective of our Chesapeake Bay and Kratovil clearly has a much better record on environmental issues than does Harris. I applaud Wayne Gilchrest for his independence and integrity in crossing lines to endorse Kratovil. I agree with MCG, and hope Gilchrest will consider running for governor on the Republican ticket against Mr. Erlich.
Posted by: CKS | November 10, 2008 1:37 PM
The winners in this election are the citizens in the 1st District, especially those on the Eastern Shore. Among Eastern Shore voters, Kratovil finished about 10% above Harris -- and that carried him to victory in the District. The Kratovil voters on the Eastern Shore -- and in the counties of Baltimore, Anne Arundel, and Harford -- put ideas and integrity above party identification and dogma. And anyone who knows Gilchrist realizes that he never would have endorsed Kratovil simply to get back at Harris, but did so only because Gilchrist himself shared enough of Kratovil's ideas and integrity.
Assuming Kratovil does a good job and can get re-elected in 2010, the Maryland legislature is likely to make Kratovil's District more favorable to him after redistricting, and then the people of the 1st District can look forward to many years of great service from Kratovil -- much as they did with the many services of great service from Gilchrist.
Posted by: JoePlummer | November 10, 2008 5:20 PM
Extremely well said. While I was and am a big supporter of Frank Kratovil, I have to say I am both sad and puzzled to have seen Bob Ehrlich throw away his political capital on a mean-spirited right wing zealot like Andy Harris. Ehrlich was able to win the governorship and maintain good approval ratings because he was widely viewed as a moderate. This little episode has undoubtedly greatly harmed his ability to run successfully for statewide office ever again.
Posted by: MRB | November 10, 2008 5:25 PM
Gee, I wonder: will Rodricks and Company condemn the Democrat majority in Maryland for being extremist and partisan?
No, that's right...it's just the Republicans.
DR: Just the Republicans who lost a safe seat in the House of Representatives.
Posted by: Nina | November 12, 2008 6:18 AM
Gilchrest was a "Republican in name only" and needed to go. Just look at the comments already posted from "lifelong democrats" who thought Gilchrest was doing a great job. If the district is going to be run by a liberal it might as well be run by a registered democrat, not a democrat posing as a republican. It's sad to see that the 1st district has become as liberal as the rest of this sorry state. Not too surprising though I guess.
Posted by: Steve | November 12, 2008 8:09 AM
Steve,
The voter makeup of the 1st district hasn't changed- the voters just rejected someone who didn't share their views about the environment. You see, there's this large body of water, called the Chesapeake Bay, that is treasured by people of all political stripes. There's a reason that Andy Harris was supported by the Club for Growth- they don't care too much for politicians who are more concerned about the environment than big business.
The 1st district didn't become liberal overnight just as Maryland didn't turn conservative overnight when Bob Ehrlich was elected governor in 2002. Like Ehrlich did in '02, Kratovil ran a superior political campaign and did a better job of connecting with the voters.
Posted by: MCG | November 12, 2008 4:43 PM