Ahhh, the joke that is Healthy Howard just continues to get funnier. Monday, The Baltimore Sun wrote an article showing how badly Ken Ulman’s pet project is faring.

Howard County’s highly praised attempt to provide low-cost, preventive medical care for uninsured residents is off to a slower than expected start.

Only about 200 people have joined since enrollment in Healthy Howard began last Oct. 1, county health officer Dr. Peter L. Beilenson said, falling short of the admittedly ambitious goal he set of signing up 2,000 members in the program’s first year.

“Enrollment is not where I hoped it would be,” Beilenson admitted under critical questioning at a recent county council budget hearing.

Regardless of whether the numbers were too optimistic or not, Ken Ulman claimed he needed to spend $500,000 of the county taxpayer’s money to fund a program to serve 2,000 people by his own administration’s estimates. The failed program clearly has not come close to this number and now even Ulman and his administration are claiming they are now only hoping (desperately I am sure) that it will serve 900 people. Yet they make no effort to cut the costs. Greg Fox applies some logic to this seemingly simple change in prediction, as reported by the gang at Explore Howard today.

County Council member Gregory Fox, the council’s sole Republican, submitted an amendment to the budget that would have cut funding for Healthy Howard from $500,000 to $250,000 and shifted the money to the budget for the Association of Community Services of Howard County, the umbrella organization that pays for Healthy Howard and other non-profit groups.

Because Healthy Howard has fewer participants than initially predicted, Fox argued , it should receive less money.

“Healthy Howard is asking to do less with more and I guess I’m a little bit perplexed by that,” Fox said.

I am perplexed too. In fact, isn’t Ken Ulman basically admitting his failed program is going to cost more than twice as much as he originally said it would by not cutting funds when he is cutting the number of people he is hoping to serve with this program? He claimed he need $500,000 for 2,000 people. Now he says he needs $500,000 for only 900 people. So in one year, the budgeted cost of this failed program has balooned from $250 per enrollee to $555 per enrollee. Of course, that doesn’t even consider that barely 200 people have signed up for this program to begin with, or nearly $2,500 per enrollee.

But I have no hope that the County Council is going to cut any money from this program since the last thing they want to do is admit that their party’s leader’s program is an abject failure and will just continue to throw money at it to make it look like it is working. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Explore Howard article:

Ulman’s $1.4 billion operating budget includes layoffs for nine county employees and mandatory furloughs in December for most other county workers.

I wonder how those people are feeling right now knowing some of them are losing their jobs and others are taking paycuts (via furloughs) so that Ken Ulman can use that money in what is clearly nothing more than a cynical attempt to put a bullet point on his resume to use in bids for higher office….

The Baltimore Sun had a good article yesterday on the growth of blogging in Howard County. A couple people emailed me asking why my website was not included and Wordbones even highlighted this on his website when mentioning the article. The truth of the matter is the reporter did contact me by email a few months ago. I responded by both email and phone, but never got a return call after that. I honestly assumed the article was dead since it did not appear for months after the reporter’s initial contact and never really followed up again. Anyway, I’ve been profiled before by local newspapers (Columbia Flier, Washington Post, Baltimore Examiner) and honestly, my blogging about Howard County news and notes has tailed off anyway, so my site probably was not a good fit for this article, so no big deal to me.

With the previous profiles in mind and looking at the websites mentioned in this article, I did find it interesting how things have changed. The Baltimore Examiner probably had the most in-depth profile of the Howard County Blogging Community in April 2006. The article is no longer available on the Examiner website (heck, The Baltimore Examiner doesn’t even exist in paper form anymore) and at the time, there were only four known blogs be written out of Howard County. I still hold some pride in that I was the first (starting in December 2002), but it wasn’t long after I started that the other three joined the fray. But a mere three years later after that profile, out of the four profiled in that Baltimore Examiner article, two are completely dead and a third is on life support.

Howard County Maryland Blog is still somewhat active in that has an occasional post from the original blog writer as well as from the occasional guest blogger; but, the site is not nearly as active as it once was. Interesting story back when I first started, I was still somewhat unknown and the writer of this blog came to me and mentioned he saw my site online. I had never really advertised my site to anyway, preferring to just live in my own world. It wasn’t long after that he decided to start his own website and, in my opinion, became the go to place for local news from Howard County. Our sites together did start gaining some recognition in Howard County to the where even local politicians were leaving comments and mentioning our sites in public. I know the writer of this blog, as well as a couple of his guest bloggers, personally and know they have enough on their plate to keep them busy. I am sure the blog is far down the list on priorities.

The other two blogs mentioned in that April 2006 profile are completely dead. One publicly announced on their blog they were closing down and the other by just natural attrition. HoCo Hayduke was actually the first pure Howard County blog I ever found. It was written by Ian Kennedy, who is now a cog in the Ken Ulman administration. He started out anonymously before “outing” himself online and running for the Columbia Association Council from Oakland Mills. Hayduke spoke strictly on local Howard County issues, adding in the occasional personal story as well, and was a daily read for me. However, it was understandable when he became a flack for Ulman that posting his own opinion online that might contradict the opinion of his boss would not be feasible and he decided to shut it down. Howard County Blog was started by Evan Coren and eventually added some additional writers such as former County Council candidate Jim Adams. His site was very detailed in looking at Columbia issues, especially on the development of Downton. However, once Coren won a seat on the Columbia Council from King Contrivance, his website went dormant and has had only one post since July 6, 2008.

For close to a year, we WERE the Howard County blogging community and knew each other to the point in 2006, we developed what we called the Howard County Blogger Forum for all the local candiadtes running for County Council and the General Assembly. Despite our political differences, Hayduke and Coren on the left and myself and the other blogger on the right, we came together and attempted to promote an online dialougue leading to eh 2006 election. I will freely admit that it did not become as successful as we had planned as some of the candidates (mostly Democrats) refused to particpate, but I believe it was a good hearted effort and I would like to believe the four of us helped create a great foundation for the much more thriving online discussions on local issues we have today.

Anyway, I am so glad to see a slew of new blog sites based in Howard County and talking about Howard County. As my site gained some national following, my blogging on local issues went down, so I am more than happy to have others pick up the slack (and then some). I sometimes find more news about what is going on in Howard County from these websites than I do from the local newspapers and my favorites sites were some of those mentioned in the article. Being a political guy, I tend to follow sites like Wordbones, FreeMarket, Columbia Compass, Columbia Now and Columbia Blog Project, but I do dabble occasionally in the others when something on HoCoBlogs strikes me as interesting.

Kudos to everyone mentioned in the article and hopefully the added notoriety brings you increased traffic and encourages you to keep things going. I know those profiles in the local newspapers gave me a leg up and brought people here who have never left. And I am sure yesterday’s article will do the same for everyone else.

Explore Howard has the raw numbers for the competitive races in teh Columbia Association races for the Columbia Council and Wilde Lake Village Board.

Wilde Lake
Phillip Kirsch 308
Linda Odum 298

Hickory Ridge
Gregg Schwind 135
Sharlene Ferguson 115

Long Reach
Russell Swatek 301
James Howard 164

Dorsey’s Search
Kathleen Dragovich 101
Dan Woodruff 78

Wilde Lake Village Board (Top 5 win)
Nancy Alexander 454
Helen Kolbe 430
Edwin Sroka 400
Vincent Marando 392
Bill Santos 381
Terry Kuhn 341

It may only be April of 2009, but we already have our first war of words between two candidates vying for the 2nd District Council seat in Howard County. It started with this dismissive statement by Democrat Calvin Ball as reported by Larry Carson in Sunday’s Baltimore Sun regarding his already announced challenger Anthony Jordan.

“I think it would be challenging for someone with limited experience and who may not really have done a great deal in the community to be successful,” said Ball, 33. The former Oakland Mills community organizer said he intends to run for re-election to a second full term.

Jordan responds to Ball’s attack on his blog, part of which I quote here.

However, I am disappointed that Councilman Ball so easily discounts my service to our country in the United States Air Force as “limited experience” and suggests that I have “not done a great deal” in the community to warrant a council seat. I don’t intend to get into the muck of attack campaigning over the next year and a half, but I hope the quote from Councilman Ball does not reflect a discounting of the experience and leadership that comes from serving in our military. I also hope that Councilman Ball respects all of the work that is done outside of the council chamber that may go unrecognized by someone in his position. This work is what makes our county such a great place to live.

You can read more of Jordan’s response here. Also, for those interested, Jordan does have a fundraiser coming up on May 2nd at Houlihan’s. More of those details can be found here.

about two months after the former First Lady Kendal Ehrlich came to Howard County, her husband and our former Governor Bob Ehrlich came back to what he jokingly referred to as the greatest suburb of Arbutus - Howard County.

The Howard County Republicans had the largest crowd I can ever remember at the Lincoln Day Dinner last night. Turf Valley had to add tables to the room just to handle to much larger than expected crowd.

Oh, and despite the prodding of his wife during her introductory speech, no announcement by Ehrlich whether he was going to run or not run….

I seriously wonder whether some reporters even read what they write to see if it makes any sense. This was a set of two paragraphs in an article by Dan Schwind in the Columbia Flier describing the final outcome of the bill to convict Maryland drivers of speeding using still cameras.

One objection to the Howard bill and similar localized speed camera bills in Prince George’s County and Baltimore, was that the jurisdictions would use them mainly to generate revenue.

The statewide bill negated those concerns by including a provision that requires any money generated by the cameras that is not needed to pay the cost of operating them to be given to Maryland State Police and the State Highway Administration.

So how exactly does the state taking the money and giving it to another state agency “negate” the concerns that the cameras are being used to generate revenue? If they really wanted to convince me this was not about the money, they should rebate any money above and beyond the cost of this program to the taxpayers of Maryland in the form of a rebate on their taxes. Take the amount of money in excess and divide it by the number of taxpayers in Maryland and let Marylanders deduct that amount from the taxes they owe or add it to the refund they will receive. Even if it is only $1 per taxpayer, at least that money would be going back to the people and not just sent to another agency in the Government.

But of course, that makes too much sense….

It is interesting when something from over two years ago becomes news again. Two years ago, fellow blogger Bill Santos was running for the Columbia Council from Wilde Lake and, during his election, Delegate Liz Bobo had sent out an email in support of Santos’ opponent which Santos had highlighted in a post on his blog. In his post, he had included the email address that the email was sent from - Delegate.E.Bobo@house.state.md.us. At the time, I made the following comment in response to Bill’s post.

I’d be curious if there is any ethical issue with Ms. Bobo using her official Government email (which it appears she did from what you show) for political purposes such as this? Granted this was a non-partisan race and I don’t have a problem with her advocating for a particular candidate (the merits of her argument aside), but it still seems somewhat questionable to me that she would use her official State Delegate email for this purpose…

I made the comment and never heard another word about it. Even Santos, in response to my comment, said he didn’t even think about the email address Bobo used to send the email attacking him. And I forgot about it until I read this story on Explore Howard.

A former Columbia Association board member has filed an ethics complaint against state Del. Elizabeth Bobo claiming she improperly used her state office and e-mail to influence CA elections.

Jud Malone, president of Columbia Tomorrow, a local group supportive of General Growth Properties’ downtown redevelopment plan, filed the complaint March 26 with the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Legislative Ethics. In his complaint, he cited e-mails from 2007 and 2008 in which Bobo, a Columbia Democrat, endorsed candidates in CA elections using her official state e-mail.

In his complaint, Malone cited ethics rules against using the legislature’s e-mail system for non-public purposes and to influence campaigns.

By the way, Malone is not some Republican trying to go after a Democrat for partisan political purposes. According to the State Elections Campaign Database, Malone has donated money to Democratic County Councilman Calvin Ball, County Executive Ken Ulman, and Democratic Delegate Shane Pendergrass. As far as I can tell, he has never donated to a Republican in Maryland. Unfortunately, you have to search for the donations yourself as the website does not allow for direct links to individual donation searches.

Okay, I have written this post a couple of times in draft form, but I am glad I actually talked to someone with ties to the Board of Elections whom I trust who told me the real story behind the failed petition drive and why the Board of Elections ultimately decided to invalidate the referendum petition filed by pro-union forces and Mark Norman, and why this is really just a sad case of a Government screw up where everyone comes out looking bad.

My first impression when I heard about this after getting home on Sunday was that Norman and his pro-union thugs helping him out with the petition drive was that they just screwed up and they are to blame for their own failure. I wanted to believe this personally because I have always thought this entire fight was more of a case of the unions being upset about a non-union store, Harris Teeter, entering the county than about anything else. And they were able to use Mark Norman as a cover to advance their pro-union agenda.

But after my discussion tonight, I have much more sympathy for Norman and what happened to him. From what I understand, Norman did everything he could do to make sure his petition was proper and legal within the law and was given assurances by the Board of Elections that everything was fine. It wasn’t until this past week when the Board of Elections became aware of the state law on the requirements for signatures that they decided that they had to follow it and. Talking with this person tonight, it was clear they were not happy about the decision they had to make, but in the end, they had no choice and could have been sued themselves for knowingly violating a law once they were aware of it should someone who is opposed to the referendum pressed it. So despite the fact that the Board of Elections had told Norman one thing all along, they basically had to change their stance and rule his petitions invalid. There was no conspiracy or attempt to just help the developers by the Board of Elections, it was just a case of the Board of Elections having to follow the law as they know it. By the way, this person said they hope Norman eventually is able to get his petition validated, even though they do not support it them self, and on the ballot. However, the way the law is written right now, they feel the Board of Elections made the only decision they were legally able to make.

So here is my final conclusion - I am opposed to the referendum and find Mark Norman’s tactics of teaming up with union thugs to push forward his personal agenda onto the ballot to be absolutely disgusting. I believe Norman was screwed over by the Howard County Board of Elections (albeit not intentionally) and can fully understand his anger. I believe the standard for signing a petition is way too strict, especially in light of the fact that voting in this state still does not even require a valid form of photo ID. But in the end, the law is the law and the law clearly states the requirements of what constitutes a valid petition signature and, despite the fact that Norman might have been ultimately screwed, the written law has to win out in the end here, the Board of Elections made the right final call, and the petition should be thrown out.

My hope is the petition law is fully overhauled so that it more straightforward what constitutes a valid signature and that if someone wants to sign a petition to bring an issue to referendum, someone can do it without being rejected on a technicality.

That is what I take away from this front page article from The Washington Post about the failure of Ken Ulman’s “Healthy Howard” program.

Officials in Howard County thought their low-cost health-care program would be an easy sell in a community where an estimated 15,000 adults are without coverage. But nearly four months later, they are struggling to get people to enroll.
….
As a result, the programs have stepped up their marketing efforts. Howard officials plan to increase outreach efforts to local college students and small businesses. They are even resorting to cold cash — offering some nonprofit community groups $20 for each person they help recruit for the program.

This program has been such an unmitigated disaster that Ulman is now bribing community groups to beat the bushes to find someone, anyone, to sign up for this program. Unreal. The County spent $500,000 for this program and have found a grand total of 109 people to sign up. In other words, it has cost the county $4,587 per person to sign someone up for a health plan. And this is all coming during a time when the county is claiming they could save $220,000 by forcing the layoff of two state employees in the Soil Conservation District. I have an idea, how about dropping this failed program and saving the County even more money - $500,000. It even gets worse.

Still, Peter Beilenson, the county’s health officer, said the process has been successful because more people now have health care. He said officials will expand their outreach to community college students and small businesses. The county also recently changed the program requirements to allow the newly unemployed to enroll sooner than previously permitted.

I could have sworn the reason they had the waiting period after was to prevent small companies from just dropping coverage and telling their employees enroll in the “Healthy Howard” program. I guess when your program is such an unmitigated failure, you will do anything to save it including completely undercutting whatever original reasons for the rules you had for the program in the first place….

Bribing people to find enrollees and changing rules in the middle of the game…par for the course for a Government program I guess….

Tonight, while the rest of the country was watching Barack Obama tell you how he is going to save the world, I got to hear First Lady Kendal Ehrlich as the guest speaker at the Howard County Republican Women Club meeting earlier this evening.

She said it was her first real political event since the 2006 election and it was clear she hasn’t lost the passion. I won’t get into what she said since I am not sure whether her comments are supposed to be for public consumption; but ff course, she was asked whether her husband Bob Ehrlich was entertaining another run for office and she didn’t give a hint one way or the other which way he was leaning. And when asked whether she would run herself, she said she has two kids to raise….

Explore Howard reports what I had heard from HCCA and what Freemarket also heard from his sources, that Ken Ulman is giving up on his attempt to takeover the review for Soil Conservation.

County Executive Kenneth Ulman has withdrawn a controversial proposal to transfer some plan review duties from the Howard Soil Conservation District to the county.

The action, which required state legislation, was set to be considered by the county’s state legislative delegation at its meeting today. But after some lawmakers and others questioned the bill, Ulman decided to pull it.

Warren Miller, as quoted in the article, asks a similar question I asked when I first heard about this issue.

State Del. Warren Miller, a Woodbine Republican who had also criticized the bill, said the county should look elsewhere for budget cuts, perhaps in the Department of Planning and Zoning. If staff members there would have been able to absorb the extra work, he said, the office might have too many workers.

“It begs the question: ‘What are all those people doing?’ ” he said.

So the question now goes to Ulman, what are those people doing? Now that he has both admitted the Planning and Zoning Department has too many employees and claimed that this move was entirely a budgetary move, will anyone in the Planning and Zoning Department be laid off to save the $220,000, which supposedly was the purpose of this bill according to Ulman flacks at the hearing, was supposed to save?

Just the raw numbers of contributions, expenditures, and accounts over the past year according to reports submitted January 21stm 2009 for the sitting incumbents in Howard County.

District	Candidate	Got	Spent	Has	Owes
COUNTY
Executive	Ulman (D)	$269,964	$97,613	$303,610	$0
CC 1	Watson (D)	$20,365	$2,652	$39,726	$0
CC 2	Ball (D)	$24,715	$10,249	$33,844	$0
CC 3	Terresa (D)	$26,811	$9,190	$18,113	$0
CC 4	Sigaty (D)	$0	$0	$3,845	$500
CC 5	Fox (R)	$600	$62	$21,708	$0
DISTRICT 13
Sen 13	Robey (D)	$11,277	$2,770	$26,566	$45,000
Del 13	Pendergrass (D)	$41,849	$6,617	$50,909	$0
Del 13	Guzzone (D)	$40,582	$18,822	$94,677	$0
Del 13	Turner (D)	$15,022	$1,390	$21,508	$0
Slate 13	Team 13 Slate	$22,535	$8,537	$38,108	$1,000
DISTRICT 12
Sen 12	Kasemeyer (D)	$34,555	$13,151	$58,607	$0
Del 12A	Malone (D)	$42,760	$24,132	$50,132	$0
Del 12A	Deboy (D)	$20,365	$10,892	$19,382	$0
Del 12B	Bobo (D)	$12,988	$5,882	$46,808	$0
Slate 12A	Team 12A Slate	$0	$0	$214	$0
DISTRICT 9
Sen 9	Kittleman (R)	$52,275	$21,187	$44,588	$0
Del 9A	Miller (R)	$17.876	$13,346	$12,925	$0
Del 9A	Bates (R)	$13,200	$7,574	$20,526	$0
Slate 9A	Bates/Miller	$14,638	$7,099	$7,837	$0

And people wonder why incumbents have such an easy time winning….

The Baltimore Sun had an article Sunday about the attempt by Ken Ulman, in the words of many of the opponents, to perform a “hostile takeover” of the Soil Conservation review process. Now before I get to the issue in general, I really take exception with the way Larry Carson went after Delegate Warren Miller in this article. His first dig at Miller was this excerpt.

At one point, the disagreement produced an unusual exchange - Wacks lecturing conservative Republican Del. Warren E. Miller on the value of small savings.

“What percentage of the county budget is $220,000?” Miller asked.

Wacks replied that it was negligible.

“We’re headed into proverbial lean times, not just for a year or two,” he said. “These small pieces add up.”

Of course, what Carson refuses to include in his description is the massive increases in county spending over the previous number of years that have caused the county to now have to find ways to cut spending in the first place. Wacks should be the last person “lecturing” anybody about the value of small savings.

Now I actually attended this meeting on Wednesday night but knew nothing about this issue until that night, so I was listening pretty closely to it and found the debate on each side interesting. To the issue at hand, apparently it came down to the County claiming this move would save the County $220,000, since the County would not have to pay the state of Maryland anymore for Soil Consevration review. Apparently in the past, the county made a deal with the state that the county would collect the fees for the soil conservation review and pay the state to do the actual review. Throughout the testimony from the County minions, they kept saying the County Planing Department has the resources to do this work and could easily take it on without any problems. Sounds great, huh?

I have a stupid question. If the Planning Department has enough resources to take on the work that apparently two full-time employees are currently doing, doesn’t it beg the question as to whether the Planning Department has too many resources right now? Instead of forcing the state to lay off two employees who have been doing this particular task for years and change from a system that 22 other counties are currently operating without problems, can we instead take a look at whether we have too many people currently working in the Planning Department. Clearly if the County claims they can easily take on this work, haven’t they basically just admitted they have too many people in their Department to begin with.

Just something to think about. i got these budget numbers from a state employee, so I have not verified them completely, but according to the numbers I got, here are budgets for the Planning Department over the past three years:

FY 07
Approved Budget: $5,851,573
Full Time Equivalent Employees: 64.88

FY08
Approved Budget $6,482,315
Increase over FY07 10.77%
Full Time Equivalent Employees: 68.88

FY09
Approved Budget $6,770,077
Increase over FY08 4.44%
Full Time Equivalent Employees: 69.88

So in just two years, the county has added nearly one million dollars to the budget of the Planning Department and five additional employees. And now the County is claiming they have enough resources to assume the work of two full-time employees. Before trying to force the state to lay off two employees, shouldn’t the county have to explain why they hired at least two of these people since they seem to be just sitting around doing nothing.

Which then leads to what was pointed out by the opponents of this bill from the start, whether this move is truly a “budget” move to save money or a political attempt by Ulman to put the approval of soil conservation under his control instead of an independent organization. One other claim by the Ulman flack Cheston at the hearing was this was something that was in his transition report. Correct me if I am wrong, but Ulman has been County Executive for two plus years now. Why did it take this long to come around to this idea and why file this bill late instead of with the other bills at the normal bill filing time? Was Ulman trying to do this under the cover of darkness hoping to sneak through a bill to give himself more control of the development process?

Freemarket has some thoughts on this same issue, although he disagrees with me on whether this function should remain with the state or be shifted to Ulman’s control.

This is the second in a series of posts looking back at the 2008 election results in Howard County looking at trends and other assorted numbers that may give some information about future elections. One thing about elections is that they can give a glimpse of the true ideological make up of a district even more than the actual partisan breakdown of the registered voters can. A glaring example of this is in the south where numerous states have majority Democratic party registration but regularly vote Republican in federal elections. In other words, the partisan breakdown of the voters has absolutely no bearing on how the voters think and vote.

The second set of numbers look at the five councilmanic districts in Howard County. I took the results from the Howard County Board of Elections and broke them out by Legilsative District.

DISTRICT	Obama	McCain
1	52.79%	45.12%
2	67.08%	30.97%
3	68.82%	29.39%
4	69.52%	28.88%
5	43.42%	54.69%

As is expected, Democrats continue to dominate in Districts 2, 3 and 4, showing that these voters still lean heavily to the Democratic candidates. District 5 still showing a double-digit edge for McCain bodes well for an easy re-election for Greg Fox should he run again (and I assume he will). That leaves District 1 as the best opportunity for Republicans to gain a seat in 2010 to bring the County Council a little closer to parity.

Once again, I have to mention one caveat to these numbers is the voters in each who voted by absentee ballot or by provisional ballot are not included. For some inexplicable reason, the Howard County Board of Election refuses to break down these voters by their respective district and include them among the voters for each precinct. We are also now in a new year and the Howard County Board of Elections still lists these results as “unofficial”. What on earth are they waiting for?

This will begin a series of posts looking back at the 2008 election results in Howard County looking at trends and other assorted numbers that may give some information about future elections. One thing about elections is that they can give a glimpse of the true ideological make up of a district even more than the actual partisan breakdown of the registered voters can. A glaring example of this is in the south where numerous states have majority Democratic party registration but regularly vote Republican in federal elections. In other words, the partisan breakdown of the voters has absolutely no bearing on how the voters think and vote.

With that in mind, this first post will look at the breakdown by Legislative District. I took the results from the Howard County Board of Elections and broke them out by Legilsative District.

DISTRICT	Obama	McCain
9A	47.85%	50.18%
12A	52.93%	44.71%
12B	72.98%	25.30%
13	64.95%	33.27%

Now right off the bat, the numbers in District 12A are meaning less in the grand scheme of things since most of this district is located in another county, so the numbers strictly from Howard County really don’t give any indication for this district as a whole. And really no surprise in Districts 12B and 13 considering they include all of Columbia.

The numbers that surprise me the most and shows the gains Democrats making in the county are the numbers in District 9A. Now we can look at these numbers in two ways. For McCain to only get barely over 50% in the district where Republicans are the strongest in Howard County shows Democrats may be looking to make this a major battleground next year. Just two years ago, Governor Ehrlich won this district with 58% over Governor O’Malley. Now some of this can be attributed to the Obama wave across the county, which saw Obama getting nearly 60% of the vote, compared to the razor thin margin (50%-49%) O’Malley won Howard County two years ago. Of course, one other way to look at it is that the shift to Obama in this district underperformed the countywide shift to Obama from O’Malley by 2%. Either way, this district is going to be a lot more competitive next year than it was two years ago and I expect Democrats to field two candidates this time around to take on Gail Bates and Warren Miller.

One caveat to these numbers is the voters in each who voted by absentee ballot ro by provisional ballot are not included. for some inexplicable reason, the Howard County Board of Election refuses to break down these voters by their respective district and include them among the voters for each precinct. In addition, these results are still listed as “unofficial”, which is absolutely mind-boggling. How is a technologically advanced county as this one incapable of posting the official results of this election nearly two months after the election has been completed. What on earth is taking them this long? Just another complaint in a long string of complaints I have about the complete inefficiency of the Howard County Board of Elections.

Anyway, later this week and next week, I will be posting a breakdown of the 2008 election by County Council district to see how each district voted and what it possible means for the future races at this level.