HUNDREDS SWARMED SENATOR JACK BAILEY BULL ROAST

HUNDREDS SWARMED SENATOR JACK BAILEY BULL ROAST

BY KEN ROSSIGNOL

THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY

BRETON BAY, MD. – The annual Bull Roast held on the hilltop of Breton Bay behind the Olde Breton Inn located at Society Hill overlooking Breton Bay on September 14, 2023, brought out nearly six hundred to pay homage to retired Delegate Jerry Clark and to support Maryland Sen. Jack Bailey (R. St. Mary’s, Calvert District 29).

Bailey added crawfish to the menu, a delicacy relatively unknown in the land of the Flask, the Fiddle, and the Dark-Roasted Possum, as Sen. Paul J. Bailey, the uncle of Jack Bailey, often referred to the Mother County of Maryland.

Several hundred golfers started the day off at 9 a.m. for a golf tournament, and many returned at six o’clock in the evening for the Southern Maryland banquet held under a gigantic tent.

St. Mary’s Commissioners Mike Hewitt and Randy Guy were holding court themselves as only the Gods of Walled City Politics might imagine which petitioners from the crowd of developers and favor seekers were learning if their much sought-after requests might be answered in coming months as the commissioner calendar proceeds. Former St. Mary’s Commissioners Barbara Thompson (R. Hollywood) and Frances Eagan (R. Lexington Park) both attended.

Calvert County Commissioner President Buddy Hance introduced Senator Jack Bailey instead of St. Mary’s Commissioner Randy Guy, who can only read a script, and Hance is quick on his feet. Calvert Commissioner Todd Ireland was present as well. Hance pointed out that Senator Bailey is quick to assist with any needs of Calvert County, even the two-thirds of the county that is not in Bailey’s district. Senator Bailey told the crowd that he greatly valued the guidance he received from retired Delegate Clark, with whom he shared breakfast every morning of the ninety-day session of the General Assembly. With the departure of Clark and the arrival of Delegate Todd Morgan to replace him in Annapolis, Bailey didn’t mention who picks up the tab for breakfast during the current four-year term or if either of the Morgans, who are St. Mary’s delegates even take their breakfast at his table.

The back-slapping and hand-gripping at the Bailey Bull Roast continued until the crowd was finally quieted long enough for the Pledge of Allegiance and Star Spangled Banner to be said and performed.

The most famous lobbyist in Maryland, Bruce Bereano, attended and made his rounds, including paying homage to Barbara Wood, the widow of the late Delegate Johnny Wood, who began the Bull Roast decades ago when he ran for the House of Delegates.

Johnny Wood decided to retire in 2014 after nearly being beaten in the 2010 election by Republican Matt Morgan, who won the seat in 2014 and was reelected in 2018. In 2022, Senator Bailey took over the tradition of the Bull Roast and honored Johnny Wood at the event for his years of service.

Wood died earlier in 2023, perhaps as a warning to what might be the fate of Jerry Clark in being this year’s honoree.

With Southern Maryland Fried Chicken, beef Barbeque, and the curious creatures from Louisianna leading the table fare, the crew who inherited the Inn long owned by the late Democrat St. Mary’s Commissioner Eddie Bailey proved again that they learned well at the tutelage of their late boss and continue to provide a good feed. Eddie Bailey lost the 1994 election to Republican Larry Jarboe, who attended the 2022 Jack Bailey Bull Roast.

Delegate Matt Morgan, Republican of Golden Beach, Seventh District, and the rest of the north end of St. Mary’s County, was missing from the event due to a recent medical issue or perhaps still having his nose out of joint over being displaced as Chairman of the St. Mary’s County delegation to the House of Delegates.

Delegate Todd Morgan, who took over the House of Delegates seat represented by Del. Clark and shared between the mid-section of St. Mary’s County and the southern tip of Calvert, once again stood tall above the fray of fractured crawfish as folks tried to remember how to pop off the heads of the strange spiders and disgorge the innards without first having the benefit of becoming inebriated. Sen. Bailey promised that attendees would like the crawdads nearly as much as he enjoyed the low price of acquiring them from the Gulf of Mexico with the keen skills of Kevin Thompson.

 The Republican Women’s Club was selling raffle tickets for a painting to raise funds for their activities. Former School Board Member Rita Weaver and Republican Woman of the Year, GOP Central Committee Chair Jennifer Boyd, and Dr. Jamie Boyd, as well as GOP Central Committee treasurer Josh Guy, circulated in the crowd as the queue for the buffet line formed. The hardest working person at the affair had to be School Board President Karin Bailey, who was the chief organizer of past events as well as this one.

School Board Member Jim Davis and Ellynne Brice Davis, a candidate for Orphans Court last year and who came within 75 votes of ousting incumbent and embattled Judge Michael White, joined Colonel James Krilich (US Army Ret.) at a table with KC Schnitker. Schnitker serves as the Chesterton Academy of St. Mary’s as Director of Development for the new Catholic school in Mechanicsville.

Senator Jim Simpson (D. Charles, St. Mary’s), who beat John William Quade in the Democratic Primary in 1974 and set off a month’s long tale of woe by Quade at the indignity of losing his home county to a Charles County interloper, proved he not only could whip Quade in that election but, unlike the late Delegate Quade, is still above ground in 2023. 

The beer tycoon Simpson was elected to the Maryland Senate in the General Election in 1974 after serving two terms as a Charles County Commissioner. He took over from Sen. Paul Bailey, who completed his fourth term in the Maryland State Senate that year. Senator Paul Bailey, a Republican, was best known for legalizing slot machines in 1947 and passing a Refinery Referendum Act in 1974, which allowed voters in St. Mary’s County to turn down the proposal by Steuart Oil Company to build an oil refinery at Piney Point on the Potomac River. The five-term Maryland Senator and five-term Maryland Congressman Roy Dyson was nowhere to be seen on the green hilltop, where he had attended many events in the past.

Congressman Steny Hoyer always attended the Bull Roast over the years but failed to appear this year to support his hometown, Maryland State Senator Jack Bailey. Hoyer lives in a fashionable home on the Patuxent River near Trent Hall, the homeplace of the Baileys. Hoyer, like his old office-mate Nancy Pelosi, still is in Congress representing the 5^th Congressional District of Maryland. Hoyer and Pelosi both worked on the staff of the late United States Senator Daniel Brewster in the early sixties, where Nancy answered the phones, and Steny opened the mail. Pelosi recently announced she is running for reelection to get two more years of insider trading.

 Hoyer, who was the youngest Maryland Senate President in history before joining the ill-fated ticket of Acting Governor Blair Lee II in the 1978 Democratic Primary, where Harry Hughes soared to victory, won a special election in 1982 to replace the stricken Congresswoman Gladys Noon Spellman. That was the good old days when a member of Congress who had a stroke stayed in a nursing home instead of skulking around Capitol Hill in a hoodie. It is unknown if Hoyer is in a state of decline other than a scary vision of him, which appeared in a Zoom call to the public in 2022.

The political tremors of the Jack Bailey Bull Roast came from the appearance of both sitting Judge Amy Lorenzini, late of Calvert County, where she spent most of the last 15 years peeling overdue legal fees from the clutches of clients of a big-deal law firm in Prince Frederick and making sure firm attorneys appeared in court on time to represent their clients – as well as newly announced challenger Sue Ann Armitage. Lorenzini likely earned an excellent salary but not as much as a Judge on the Circuit Court is paid by the hapless taxpayers.

  Since Judge Amy lives in a house owned by her husband in Wildewood, she fits the bill for appointment to the vacant judgeship after a political spat caused by Senator Jack Bailey’s failing to provide support for St. Mary’s States Attorney Jaymi Sterling last year’s election. Jaymi’s daddy was the Governor who propelled Bailey into the Senate in 2018; thus, all politics comes down to what have you done for me lately.  

Both the sitting judge, who actually was on her feet, and the judge-hopeful held court in different sections of the teeming crowd under the large white tent, seeking the blessings of the political faithful for the judge election kickoff on May 14, 2024, primaries and perhaps the General Election.

The eight-hundred-pound elephant who wasn’t in the room under the big top was former Governor Larry Hogan, who must have been in his daily shuttle between network newsrooms in DC and New York as he plays the lead role in the No-Labels political club designed to deny the presidency to Donald Trump. Hogan was the kingmaker for Jack Bailey in 2018 after Steve Waugh failed to stay in the Governor’s corner and played footsie with the late Senate President Mike Miller.

When Senator Steven Waugh was left out of the groundbreaking ceremonies for the Five-Year Mile widening of Rt. 5 in Leonardtown in 2018, that photo of the politicians digging with gold shovels to impress voters is the one photo that all of those officials who were present might like to forget as it took five years for the pricey one mile of highway to be widened. With all that uproar, digging up of land for new utilities, ditches, sewer, and water, somehow the bozos running Maryland forgot to add a traffic light at Moakley Street. 

Bizarre is the most descriptive way to label the State of Maryland and the Town of Leonardtown, along with its legislative delegation and county commissioners, for this cluster mess of the highest degree. Undoubtedly, future history will record this as just another Maryland Memory as a complete Socialist Governor, Wes Moore, now works in lockstep with the far-left looney Democrats controlling the Maryland General Assembly.

Next year, the Jack Bailey Bull Roast might want to swap out the Louisiana spiders for crab balls, but it would be about impossible to have a larger and more enthusiastic crowd to show support for Senator Jack Bailey.