Josh Kurtz: Is this Barry Glassman’s moment? – Maryland Matters

The final Republican state comptroller in Maryland was one Phillips Lee Goldsborough, who served from 1898 to 1900, when William McKinley was president of the US. So the percentages undoubtedly favor Brooke Lierman (D), the Baltimore Metropolis delegate, within the normal election for comptroller this fall.

Not solely does Lierman have historical past and get together registration on her aspect, however she’s an indefatigable campaigner brimming with concepts for the workplace, who’s poised to make historical past as the primary lady elected independently to a statewide place in Maryland authorities. That reality alone will get lots of people excited.

Lierman’s Republican opponent, Harford County Government Barry Glassman, is probably the most stable and certified GOP nominee in a number of generations. Along with his eight years as govt, he has served within the Normal Meeting and native authorities. He’s a sheep farmer and in addition had a protracted profession working for BG&E. He’s well-known and effectively favored in Maryland political circles.

However all that might be blotted out by the flip the state Republican Celebration has taken this election, nominating seemingly unelectable candidates for governor and legal professional normal. That places the squeeze on Glassman, who should work out methods to distance himself from Del. Dan Cox, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, and former Anne Arundel County councilmember Michael Anthony Peroutka, the GOP candidate for legal professional normal, with out fully alienating base Republican voters.

You may think about a situation the place day after day, Glassman will probably be requested to reply for the acute positions and conspiracy theories espoused by his operating mates. It can’t be a cheerful circumstance for one of many few bipartisan completely happy warriors left in Maryland politics.

However might this in truth be an unanticipated alternative for Glassman, one which nobody actually imagined simply a few weeks in the past?

Contemplate an alternate actuality by which former State Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, the selection of the Gov. Larry Hogan wing of the GOP, received the Republican nomination for governor. All the eye, cash, and political vitality can be behind Schulz, who would certainly be a more durable normal election opponent for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wes Moore than Cox will show to be.

Beneath that situation, Glassman, like all Republican nominees for comptroller decade after decade, can be topic to the vagaries of the state’s typical partisan efficiency. The comptroller’s race can be overshadowed by the gubernatorial election, and Glassman’s arguments for himself would undoubtedly be ignored. He would possibly profit from the assets dedicated to Schulz’s marketing campaign and the notion that she had an honest shot of successful, however would very a lot be the second or third banana within the total Republican dialog.

Now, nonetheless, Glassman is a person on his personal, and that has its benefits and downsides. Sure, he might have undesirable poll mates within the eyes of many political professionals, however he additionally has a possibility to chart his personal course. Maybe among the GOP institution enthusiasm that might have been connected to Schulz’s marketing campaign can now be targeted his method.

Glassman can credibly argue that he’s the final sane Republican standing — and the one Republican standing in the way in which of Democratic hegemony in Annapolis. He can pledge to be a nonpartisan fiscal steward of Maryland’s treasury, and trace that Lierman’s agenda is just too woke and too pricey — and that she’ll attempt to use the job as a stepping stone to larger workplace. Some editorial boards will little doubt be conscious of this argument.

Glassman will want some Democratic validators, and there are most likely just a few of them on the market, principally older white males. He may have Hogan and a few of Hogan’s prime advisers on his aspect, and that may’t harm. However he’ll want the media to concentrate, which will probably be a problem with all of the Republican loopy to maintain tabs on.

You wouldn’t need to guess in opposition to Lierman within the normal election. However you would possibly need to take note of Glassman and the way he operates within the highlight. Sounding a warning in opposition to Lierman continues to be the longest of lengthy photographs, however it’s the one play he has.