MECHANICS WANTED
ELECTION FLASHBACKS: 2006 in St. Mary’s County and 2018 Updates on Politics
Election Post Script:
(Originally published in 2006 in Cheap Shots) – The scrumptious foods were laid out on tables adorned with decoration, the room was full of flowers awaiting the glorious victory of Tommy McKay but when a tv camera panned his headquarters on election night, there was no one inside while Hambone asked for folks to join him. No one showed up which was just about the story at the polls when Senator Roy Dyson smoked McKay winning with 68% of the vote.
And the small bungalow in Great Mills used as a headquarters by Dyson was full of exuberant volunteers, none of them builders or developers, and instead of lavish trays of foods there were crock pots of homemade chili.
On the edge of the property of Liberty Homes developer Guy Curley still stood the large sign featuring the face of McKay, as did the Empire Homes office on Rt. 235. Just about every tract of land owned by local builders and developers was adorned by McKay campaign signs, virtually matching visits made to these same sites in the past two years looking for stormwater management violations.
During the past four years no citations for violations of the stormwater management laws were given out in St. Mary’s County, making it easy to understand why McKay had such strong support from builders and developers.
Last minute ads by McKay linked Dyson to the Senator’s proposal to bring commuter rail to Southern Maryland, a link he richly deserves for his efforts. But McKay tried to make voters believe that somehow those using commuter rail would not be riding trains with laptops, newspapers, books, or be napping.
Instead the McKay commercials attempted to paint the picture of criminals robbing stores and then jumping on commuter trains to flee back to the dangerous city. McKay didn’t succeed in fooling voters with his twisted view of the world.
The night before the election a crash halted traffic on the Solomon’s bridge for nearly three hours, underscoring the need for a second span, a proposal made by Dyson for the past two legislative sessions but which was opposed by Ehrlich and McKay until two weeks before the election when they flip-flopped.
Some local builders, who are important parts of our local economy in that they help the area grow, provide jobs and services for retail consumers, confuse the role they play in our society with a view that they know everything that is best for the rest of us. They don’t. We are going to have growth, that is for sure. But we need to manage it properly, to bring about new retail and office complexes with proper planning.
A case in point is the First Colony shopping center located at the intersection of Rt. 4 and Rt. 235. This center was approved by the politicians and planners without a traffic signal installed on St. Andrews Church Road where the center’s access road is located. This traffic signal is now being installed four years later at a total cost to the taxpayers instead of being paid for by the developer.
There have been untold number of crashes and injuries at this site and anyone could have predicted that this would be the case. But somehow, state and local highway planners, which are probably really just a bunch of chimpanzees with dart boards and bottles of Jack Daniels, decided that a traffic signal wasn’t needed there.
All of the commercial development is allowed in St. Mary’s without any impact fee, as this tax is placed strictly upon the residential property. There has been no effort on the part of the county commissioners to plan for an expanded bridge, participate in commuter rail planning or link Pegg Road with Rt. 5, build FDR Blvd or complete the Lexington Park redesign.
With McKay and his shenanigans out of the way, the new St. Mary’s Board is now in a position to hire a new county administrator, with the inside word that EDC Director Savich is the guy for the job, and get started working with Senator Dyson and Governor-Elect O’Malley.
They might as well get on board Dyson’s train, because boys, the train is going to be leaving the station….the voters were given a clear choice for transportation solutions, this was Dyson’s defining issue and the voters gave a big thumbs up to more bridge spans and commuter rail. People are tired of sitting behind the wheel and being stuck in traffic. They are tired of the lawlessness on our highways and deputies who fail to enforce traffic laws. The voters spoke loud and clear and we have a soon to be ex-Governor now packing his bags and trying to figure out where he can get a job.
Maybe McKays will need two new stock boys.
They always put blowhard politicians in charge of solving transportation gridlock and expect results. 2004
Update in 2018:
Tommy “Hambone” McKay ran in 2010 for St. Mary’s County Commissioner President as the GOP candidate and lost to Democrat Jack Russell (no terrier); McKay ran for House of Delegates in the 2014 GOP primary to succeed the retiring Del. Johnny Wood and came in last after the winner Matt Morgan and the second place Bryan “Puff” Barthelme. Even though McKay had another four years to finally get the college degree in business administration that he claimed he earned but was revealed to be a false claim, he didn’t bother.
Sen. Roy Dyson won another term in 2010 which was to be his last political win as he lost a bid for another term in 2014 to Republican Steve Waugh. The aloof Sen. Waugh who snubbed St. Mary’s County residents while he waltzed around Annapolis and ticked off Gov. Larry Hogan, lost the GOP primary in 2018 to retired Natural Resources Police Officer and Mechanicsville resident Jack Bailey. The sleazy Steve Waugh blamed Bailey’s wife Karin, a school board member, for a teen suicide in a desperate last-minute blast a few days before the primary election. After blowback on social media, Waugh then threw his aide under the bus and blamed her for the misfire – in true Tommy McKay fashion.
Neither Gov. Martin O’Malley, Sen. Roy Dyson, Sen. Mac Middleton, Del. John Bohanan or Congressman Steny Hoyer were able to bring commuter rail to Southern Maryland or a new span across the Patuxent River at Solomon’s Island.
Bohanan was whacked by newcomer Republican Deb Rey in the 2014 election for Delegate representing Lexington Park and southern St. Mary’s County, on the same day his brother-in-law Dyson was beaten by Waugh, ending the Dyson-Bohanan Dynasty and domination of St. Mary’s politics.
Jack Russell was whipped by Republican Randy Guy in the 2014 election. Guy ran an ad in 2010 when he opposed McKay in the Republican primary for Commissioner President, pointing out that he earned an Associates Degree while in the Air Force and posed in front of a bank of slot machines, with the banner headline “GOT DEGREE? IT’S NO GAMBLE WITH GUY”. McKay, who had attempted to blame a county staffer for the false claim of a degree on the county website prior to the 2006 election contest with Dyson, called the Guy ad a “personal attack”. Most folks just thought it was funny.
Now Republican St. Mary’s Commissioner President Randy Guy is running against Democrat Howard Thompson, who is the nephew of big liberal Republican Barbara Thompson who spent her two terms in office raising every tax she could find whenever she could find the votes on the board to do so. With Babs orchestrating every thought and move of Howard, the thought of her running the Board by proxy is pretty scary. The hey-day of the Democrats running county government in St. Mary’s is over. Tommy Mattingly couldn’t even win the post of Leonardtown Mayor after serving three tax-hiking terms as St. Mary’s Commissioner. Dan Raley failed to win the post of treasurer as the way he blew money on a trip to New York City for the bond sale, $5,000 on limo service in just two days, proved he need to be kept as far away from the county treasury as possible. Raley was demolished in a two-to-one margin by incumbent Jan Norris.
Middleton lost the Democratic primary in Charles County for his state senate seat in the 2018 Democratic Primary as he attempted to gain a seventh four-year term after having amassed a half-million dollar campaign war chest and posed for campaign photos with a small black boy as he faced a challenge by a credible black candidate, Arthur Ellis, in the majority black Charles County. While Middleton stood in the way of bringing commuter rail to Southern Maryland and accomplished nothing in that effort, Ellis campaigned on a platform of bringing MARC service to Southern Maryland.
The former and defeated Del. Bohanan, now a high-priced lobbyist and not about to give up his new elite and big paying job, is now running a shadow campaign to defeat Del. Deb Rey, who is an Air Force Veteran. Bohanan has put up a lawyer and Army veteran who works for a defense contractor. The Bohanan stand-in is campaigning without sounding too much like a liberal Democrat but should he win, he will likely perform like Bohanan did, in lockstep with the liberal Democrats of Montgomery and Prince George’s County.)
Republican St. Mary’s Commissioner candidate Eric Colvin was campaigning recently at Leonardtown Wharf and performed his rap election message, complete in jive dialect. Maybe next time he’ll do it with blackface. Colvin makes a lot of sense in his interview which can be found on the Election Interviews tab above, but this rap presentation lifts the lid on a different style of a politician not seen before in St. Mary’s. Colvin posted this video below on his Facebook page. What is really significant is that Colvin nor the dozen or so posts on his Facebook page can figure out that a white Republican imitating the ghetto dialect of a rap singer might seem a bit weird as he pitches for votes or perhaps he is going to join a traveling Minstrel Show in blackface.
Applauding Colvin was Plantation Democrat Robbie Loker, who is running for the House of Delegates against Carpetbagger Matt Morgan who fills his coffers with campaign money from developers in his bid to turn Charlotte Hall into Waldorf. Loker comes from the Good Old Boys Democrats of St. Mary’s who used to run the county as a sideshow over the years.
Democrat Rose Frederick running to unseat St. Mary’s Commissioner Mike Hewitt (R.) has yet to accept an invitation for a video interview but she has posted her own interviews of other Democrats on her Facebook page. This one with Circuit Court Clerk Democratic candidate Faye Wheeler:
Rose did this interview with Tom Brewer, whom she introduced as Tom Brewster. Brewer might be the most unusual State Senate candidate since Al Bingman when he ran against Sen. Bernie Fowler. Brewer is the Democratic candidate opposing Republican Jack Bailey. Evidently, the former Senator and Congressman Roy Dyson figured out that the days of Democrats prevailing at the polls in St. Mary’s are long gone.
