Why Billy Will Stay Put

Barry Glassman, after years of biding his time, playing it cool, and largely avoiding major election-year face offs many thought he could have won (the Heltons came awfully close to ousting David Craig last year, after all) looks poised to assume the position of Harford’s Northern Senator. With Hooper set to step down before the end of the year due to failing health, Glassman’s competition for the gubernatorial appointment to replace him looks slim – in the early stages at least.

The real question will be, Who Replaces Barry. It will not be Council President Billy Boniface, who would be nuts to give up his seat in Bel Air. As a friend of The Dagger so eloquently put it, “the chief of seven is better than the freshman minority of a circus of 143.” Former Del. Joanne Parrott, after being booted just last fall, and letting her public image slip a bit beforehand, is less than likely to win the support of the county’s Republican Central Committee. Former council prez Rob Wagner, who we can’t imagine wanting to join the throng on the House floor (and who’s had some image problems of his own), lives outside the Northern district.

As The Dagger hears it, central committee members Teresa Reilly and Chad Shrodes, in his first year as a county councilman, are both considered serious early candidates to replace Glassman. Reilly, in the vein of her husband, Clerk of the Harford County Circuit Court Jim, is a political construct who has served on enough committees, campaigns and fundraisers to be considered for the delegate spot (for more case history on the rise and fall of a political constructe, please see Sheryl Davis-Kohl).

Shrodes is a Democrat turned Republican who might be itching to move on up - especially with whispers former county councilman Lance Miller, the man who formerly occupied his seat - is eager to get back into the game.

God knows we’ll probably hear from Bob Thomas before this one’s over, as he’s so far yet to reject his role on the committee as He Whom No One Wants To Let In Out Of The Rain. In fact, a parade of failed candidates and up and comers will likely ask for the spot.

Perhaps the two fine young Republicans most hoping for an untimely death or well-timed political scandal to escalate their political careers are former county councilman Mike Geppi and current Bel Air Mayor Terry Hanley.

Unfortunately for them, neither lives in Glassman’s Northern District 35A, so any interest in political ascension would have to be to take on Barry for Hooper’s senate seat. Geppi was once the GOP golden boy and was rumored to have formerly boasted of making a run for council presidency, which never materialized. For Hanley to move on up he’d have to take on a former colleague at nearly every step - ‘Cap’n’ Jim McMahan at the county council and Del. Susan McComas in Annapolis, both were former Bel Air Town Commissioners. His try for Hooper’s senate seat would likely just be to garner future name recognition and credibility.

As if that wasn’t enough, it’s likely the entire cast of characters who ran against Shrodes in his bid for the Northern District D seat on the Harford County Council - Charles Burns, Amy Hopkins Daney, Jason Gallion and Doug Howard - are opening exploratory committees. We won’t be holding our breath on this one.

Stop the Election!: Candidate Maybe Wins Round 1 (updated)

Last Wednesday, Steve Johnson stood, dressed in a tan sport coat and a dress shirt, on the sidelines and watched as candidates for mayor and Aberdeen City Council passed a microphone in front of a crowd of 120 voters. This Wednesday, Johnson stopped the election.

Tossed from the ballot by Aberdeen’s Board of Elections over questions of whether he lives within city limits, Johnson won the first round in his legal quest to get back on the ballot late Wednesday afternoon when Harford County Circuit Court Judge Stephen Waldron put the election on hold until the matter can be resolved. Waldron will decide Friday on whether to rule on the injunction himself, or to let the sitting city council decide Johnson’s fate.

Wait. That sound you just heard was the needle screeching off the record. That’s right, folks, the city council, including the bloc Johnson described late Wednesday night as “The Three Amigos” could well decide the fate of a man threatening their own incumbency. Johnson’s attorney will be arguing vigorously against such a scenario Friday. Continue reading Stop the Election!: Candidate Maybe Wins Round 1 (updated)

In Atlas We Trust

As one Dagger reader in attendance described it, last night’s Aberdeen FOP candidates forum was “pretty vanilla.” That it was. There were no meaningful outbursts from the crowd, and only glimmers of passion from the candidates. Even the powerful Redshirts showed up in their new, more subdued blue shirts. The questions, written down by attendees and apparently selected for mildness by FOP officials, were beach balls. But some of what went down before – and after – the forum was a bit more interesting.

Before things got started, as 19-year-old mayoral candidate Nicole Burlew (who could make national news with her campaign if she sharpens her act just a bit) stood for a TV interview, we at the Dagger hung out in the background at Festival Park, booting a soccer ball around. Mayor Simmons stopped by, and it was only a matter of minutes before he’d removed his suit jacket and was bearing his right bicep, showing off fresh ink. Flew the guy up from Florida to do the job, Fred said, explaining that he’d been to famous tattoo shops in Vegas and South Beach, but could never find an “artist” qualified to give him his only tattoo: that of Atlas. Anyone who’s been in the War Room at City Hall might have noticed a statue of the Greek Titan, a revelatory symbol of Fred’s guiding philosophy; the same, still red from the etching now holds up a bluish sphere on the mayor’s arm. Just as the conversation turned to how clean the park looked, a homeless woman approached to ask Fred why he doesn’t put out ashtrays. Continue reading In Atlas We Trust

Press 1 for Intolerance

One of the greatest moments of my career as a local newspaper reporter came a few days after Maryland District 7 Delegates Pat McDonough and Rick Impallaria got into a scuffle with a pro-immigration activist in an Annapolis hallway.

I was sitting at a Board of Education meeting and in a break between presentations, listening in on a hushed recounting of the incident. The board’s liaison to the state legislature was filling the school system’s second in command (a congenial guy named Ray Brown, who’s since taken another job) on details too grisly for print.

I leaned over and said, “You know the best part – when the guy pushed Pat McDonough…” and I held my hands up to show how a toupee might have been slipped halfway off (when we said we’d publish rumors, this is what we meant…Pat could very well be working with just a weird head of hair). Continue reading Press 1 for Intolerance

Fear and Loathing at Campsite 100

The weekend started like this: me, stopping the car at an intersection in the middle of a 44,000-acre state forest, gray dust rolling past the windows. “Do you want to try it?” I backed up the car and eased the 1997 Nissan Maxima (manual, with spoiler) onto the brown dirt ski slope that is Kirk Road. A Coleman lantern, filled to the brim with kerosene, dangled from the rear view mirror. There was an hour of daylight left, and as battery acid leeched into my veins, I pushed the car harder and harder up and down the impossible rocky hills of the off-road trail.

About five minutes after I had yelled at the guys in the car to shut up, I pulled to a stop at the zenith of a rollercoaster-looking drop-off; I turned off the engine, jumped out and lit a cigarette. Brian and Scott – cooler heads than mine – set off running down the road while I tried to calm down. We were off to a bad start.

Over the next two days we would evade the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Police twice, rescue a pair of lost dirt bikers, catch and release a rare wood turtle and a hognose snake, survive an insane 40-mph ride through the woods in the bed of a drunken redneck’s pickup truck, and hone our skills at axe tossing. But first, Brian would have to run off the hippie squatters at Campsite 100, and my poor old sedan would have to traverse the final grueling 400 yards of Kirk Road. Later that night, significantly, after we had laid hotdogs and beans on top of frayed nerves, we hiked out into the black woods, and gazed up at the Milky Way. “How can we see it if we’re in it?” I asked. Not 24 hours later, I was drunkenly calling out foreign moons like Karaoke requests around the fire, imploring the brains among us to retell the icy details: “Do Io again, man…Now do Europa!”

SEEN: Chuck Boutin

Now that he’s been comfortably nestled in the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings for a few months, we’ve been wondering what’s up with the Honorable Chuck Boutin, former Aberdeen mayor and state delegate and erstwhile member of the Maryland Public Service Commission.

I spotted him, his massive skull nodding like a mutant head of cabbage, standing outside Klein’s in the All-America City on a recent afternoon. He was standing by the entrance, dominating the conversation with a diminutive woman who looked a bit past middle-age. When I came out, they were standing out in the parking lot, old Chuckles still yammering away at the lady, like she’d tried to get to her car and he’d followed her. I’m sure he was explaining how he managed to win himself the Great Reward in the Sky for all local politicians: a ridiculously cushy state job. And, how he then managed to hang on, somehow convincing O’Malley to shuffle him into a position as an Administrative Law Judge, rather than just give him the boot.

Boutin’s head really is huge. Like if you stood four NFL regulation-size footballs on end and bound them together with duct tape. Then filled them with hot air (you saw that coming, right?). Continue reading SEEN: Chuck Boutin

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