I want to welcome our new columnist for The Talbot Spy this week, Dan Watson. Dan, a resident of this county for twenty-five years after a successful career in real estate development, will be regularly writing on a variety of subjects focusing on Talbot County, but with a particular interest in local government and our environment—both the “built” and “natural” environment.

Many of our readers will remember Dan’s role as chair of Bipartisan Coalition For New Council Leadership, a political action committee, which successfully led a campaign to vote out the former President of the County Council. Before the 2018 election, Watson was an outspoken critic of many zoning and land use decisions made by the Talbot County Council. He has been a frequent contributor to the Spy since 2013.

As with the case with all of our columnists, the Spy does not support, nor endorse Dan’s unique point of view. Some readers will undoubtedly find fault with some of his positions, and therefore, it is critical for our readers to use our comment section, or a letter to the editor format, to give fair but civil rebuttals to Dan’s positions.

The Spy expects from Dan’s columns a thoughtful analysis, insight, and persistent vigilance on what’s happening in Talbot County a useful perspective of local government. But that can be a slippery slope. At its very best, these observations can be an irreplaceable tool that profoundly improves how our government operates. It can also, without doubt, eliminate, or put a spotlight on, perceived political corruption and biased discretion in the creation of laws and policy.

But at its very worst, even with the most well-intended practitioners, the act of vigilance can lead to painful consequences for a community. A hyperfocus on personalities in particular can and does lead quickly to overreaction, paranoia, and even unfair character assassination.

And yet, on balance, the Spy believes Dan’s eye on Talbot County has the potential to produce a meaningful dialogue for our community and readers. While these conversations might be painful to have, the Spy believes they are critically important for Talbot County’s continuous commitment in finding its “true north” in protecting our special quality of life.

In that spirit, we welcome Dan and his perspective on Talbot County.

Dave Wheelan
Executive Editor and Publisher

In the field of advertising, the old saying goes that it takes at least seven uniquely different exposures to a product before the consumer actually decides to purchase it. In the marketing of awareness and prevention of the opioid crisis, one should apply a multiplier effect of a 1,000 when the aim is to reach out to young people of the fatal consequences of a drug epidemic that killed 70,000 Americans last year.

Like other public health campaigns that have came before it, including such great successes as with the war against tobacco and AIDS, the strategy for drug awareness is simple; pound on the table as much as you can for as long as you can.

And that is the power and magic of the Purple project for the Mid-Shore this September.

Started last year in Talbot County by the Sheriff’s Office and the Tidewater Rotary with modest expectations, it turned out to be remarkably successful for reasons large and small as the community responded dramatically to “Talbot Goes Purple” through rallies, games, high school programs, and most importantly, the profoundly moving sight of entire towns lit up purple on almost every porch, storefront, street lamp, or dozens of other creative ways to show solidarity with oppied prevention.

As a result of this overwhelming response, Talbot Goes Purple became a model for other Mid-Shore counties to replicate, and it is profoundly moving that Caroline, Dorchester, Kent, and Queen Anne’s counties have formed community partnerships with their schools, businesses, and neighborhoods to join “Mid-Shore Goes Purple,” including the Spy, which will become, we hope, a portal for news and stories from the five different purple campaigns.

But how do we know all this purple in September is working? Is this the most effective way to reach potential users of opioids?

The answer is an unequivocal “yes,” at least from the perspective of someone who is on the battlefield; Talbot County Sheriff Joe Gamble. In his Spy interview to be broadcast today, Gamble points to data where deaths by overdoses have been reduced, and those receiving police-administered Narcan treatment (and therefore should be counted as lives saved) has increased.

Statistics like these remain the final test for how a county on the Shore is succeeding or failing on a drug epidemic, but one can not overlook the collateral benefits that have come with Talbot Goes Purple. From the creation of group homes for recovering drug users, the widespread training in the use of the life-saving Narcan, or the creation of student awareness groups at local schools, these examples demonstrate that Talbot’s collective response to the crisis is serious and sustained.

Our region has a long way to go before we are out of harm’s way with this horrific danger. The opioid crisis will take years, perhaps more than a decade, to be totally defeated. In the meantime, there can never been enough purple in September on the Mid-Shore and the Spy is proud to turn that color.

For information on how to help, volunteer, or just where one can pick up a purple light bulb for their home, please go here

When thinking about the Eastern Shore’s historical relationship with the 1st Congressional District of Maryland, it’s important to keep one thing in perspective. The Shore, until recently, had mostly been served by one of their own residents for more than 150 years. From the election of James Stewart from “Tobacco Stick” in Dorchester County in 1854 to the defeat of Frank Kratovil from Stevensville in 2010, the 1st was always considered to be an Eastern Shore seat.

And, for the most part, the Shore had taken that responsibility seriously by electing men (no woman has yet to serve) of strong moral fiber and, at times, real political courage.

From Cecil County’s abolitionist John Creswell in 1862 to Easton’s Harry Covington, the founder of Covington & Burling, former Secretary of the Interior Rogers Morton, and more recently, Kennedyville’s thoughtful and independent Republican Wayne Gilchrest, the Shore has a record of sending some of their very best and brightest to Washington.

But that all ended in 2010.

The moderate Democrat Kratovil could not survive the anti-Obama wave that election year. While Kratovil did not vote for the Affordable Care Act, a key issue in that election, GOP conservative Andy Harris was able to attract enough new voters from the far right, many of whom were motivated by such grassroots movements as the Tea Party, to win with 54% of the vote.

The 2010 loss was a big deal for the Eastern Shore beyond the loss of Queen Anne’s Frank Kratovil. It was also the year that a decennial census took place which would make up the data used to help Maryland draw new Congressional districts for the 2012 election year.

With Democrats holding both legislative houses and the Governor’s office in Annapolis, senior party leaders drew up new boundaries in Maryland that many critics felt were designed to secure more congressional seats in Congress for Democrats. By moving high concentrations of predictably Republican voters from Carroll, Baltimore, and Harford Counties into just one district, the theory went, the odds improve for the Democrats in the other districts.

And that one district happened to be the 1st Congressional District.

Now separated from the Shore’s historically-linked sister counties of St. Mary and Anne Arundel, the new 1st arches across the top of the Chesapeake and moves west while cutting into Carroll, Baltimore, and Harford Counties to guarantee this super-safe Republican seat.

While the courts are now reviewing the constitutionality of that new districting plan, by November 2012 the results were clear. Congressman Harris beat his Democratic opponent with now 70% of the vote, which eventually placed it on the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voter Index as the 86th most reliable Republican district in the United States.

With that kind of outcome, Maryland GOP leaders would normally not worry too much about an upcoming mid-term election, but then Donald Trump became president.

The political maverick had accomplished what experts said was impossible in 2016 by defeating more than a dozen Republicans in GOP primaries and ultimately Hillary Clinton in the general election. With majorities of both the House, and now the Senate, the Trump mandate, however modest it was, based on an electoral college victory rather than the popular vote, was seen by the winners as a rallying cry for significant social and economic change in Washington.

Some of that change has now taken place. The Trump administration has wasted little time in the dismantling of the EPA, cut thousands of regulations, provided significant corporate tax relief, introduced an “America First” foreign policy, and dozens of other actions, large and small, that cumulatively may add up to be the largest deconstruction of the federal government in our history.

If those changes turn out to be what the voters truly wanted, the Republicans would have much to crow about as they enter into the 2018 midterms, and that would include Congressman Harris.

But these policy victories have come with unprecedented collateral damage. Since taking office, the new president has used his bully pulpit to literally bully his opponents, foreign leaders, ethnic groups, a national war hero, and even celebrities through his Tweeter feed and in public appearances. He is also considered to be by most Americans, including members of his own party, highly capricious in judgment and lacking moral authority, while at the same time is the primary story of a federal investigation of 2018 campaign collusion and obstruction of justice. The fact that he is also being sued by two women he may have had affairs with would make even the most objective onlooker believe the President is a major liability in the fall election.

For Congressman Harris, this is especially problematic since he has not only been a steadfast defender of the President, his own moral compass was thrown into question when he endorsed Alabama’s Roy Moore for the U.S. Senate well after credible reports showed the former judge’s history of having intimate relationships with underaged girls.

With all that in mind, the Spy now believes that, despite the remarkable political engineering it took to guarantee a safe Republican 1st District, the projected outcome in November is hardly certain.

That is why the Spy will be taking a special interest in the 1st District throughout the rest of the year. Over the next six months, we will be profiling Democrats and Republicans from most of the counties that make up the 1st to understand these very different communities and the people that live in those communities.

We start today with our profile of Carroll County through the lens of the member of the Democratic Central Committee there. The following month will be an active Republican in another county. Our stakeholder interviews will alternate between the two parties until the election takes place.

While the Eastern Shore may never return to a time when their U.S. Congressperson is from the Eastern Shore, and we hope that is not the case, that will not limit the Shore’s real interest in the 2018 election. We can only hope that our Spy coverage will only help further a thoughtful and civil conversation about how it will be represented in the future.