AAMP!itude

past Hoyer sighting

I don't get around much, like I used to... but I did recall seeing Steny Hoyer at an event, 2 summers ago.

I drove down to southern Maryland, one day, and Hoyer was there. I think he made a short speech.
I snapped a picture of him sitting next to the podium:

Below, I've tried to enlarge his figure, so you know I'm not making this up.

I figured his picture might come in handy, some day.

With him becoming the incoming Majority Whip in the House, there've been several newspaper articles profiling his career. They've jogged my memory of him.

I vaguely remember when he entered Congress, succeeding the stricken Gladys Noon Spellman in representing a Congressional district covering mostly Prince Georges county, at the time.

She'd fallen into a coma, a condition that I don't know if she never came out of.
(I recall reading somewhere a tasteless joke that arose at the time. It started off, something like this: 'what is the state vegetable of Maryland?...')

Her memory was honored when the Baltimore-Washington Parkway (MD-295) was named after her. (I think there's a sign in the divider, indicating this at the southern end, as you're entering it in PG county heading northward. But I don't know if there's one at the northern end.)

political notes

I was the last voter in line, Tuesday night. It was a new polling place for me, as I had moved from the other side of town about half a year ago.

The voting process required you to first get a smart card loaded with your identity code (or something like that), before you could stand in a long line to await your turn with one of 20 (?) touch-screen Diebold voting machines.

It gave me time to review the sample ballot I'd received in the mail. By the time I reached a machine, I was all set to race through the menus and choices. I managed to finish before a few others, even though I was the last to get to a machine.
Viewing the election results, I see that some of my votes were cast for the winning candidate or measure, but many lost.

Ah well, i've found voting to almost be like a game of chance. Especially if you don't know the local voter's mindset and demographic backgrounds. (Not that I care to always vote with the majority, but it's always interesting to compare one's votes with the election results.)

I first started voting when I lived in San Francisco. I spent hours trying to prepare for the moment of casting many votes. (They've got lotsa local and statewide propositions to wade through.) So I was interested in comparing my efforts to the outcomes.

SF was mostly liberal or leftist. (I'm sure it still is.) On statewide measures, I found that liberal/leftist Bay area votes would be negated or defeated by votes from more conservative parts of California, like the San Joaquin valley.

Here in my part of Baltimore County, I'm guessing the electorate tends toward Republican, since the Republican Congressman and Republican State Senator and Republican State Delegates were re-elected. Yet the electorate in Maryland is overwhelmingly Democrat, so statewide offices were usually won on Tuesday by Democratic candidates.

It'll be interesting to see how certain winners turn out:

Sen.-elect Ben Cardin -- I used to live in his Congressional District and have seen him, live, a few times.

Pat McDonough -- re-elected member of the State House of Delegates... has sought passage of laws making English the official language of the state or county. This kind of grandstanding generally turns me off, but it would have a silver lining if it set up ways to fund and organize English language classes.

Nancy Pelosi -- of course, she represents SF, but she grew up in Baltimore, in Little Italy. Her father was a Congressman, and then became Baltimore's mayor (1947-59).
Today's Baltimore Sun has a brief article about her childhood, and reactions by old friends to her upcoming House speakership.

(I suppose Republican propaganda has tried to paint her as representing immoral San Franciscan values, but maybe a better yardstick might be gritty Baltimoron perseverance.)