Every Thursday, the Spy hosts a conversation with Al From and Craig Fuller on the most topical political news of the moment.

This week, From and Fuller discuss the historic leadership era of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and majority leader Steny Hoyer and the political impact on the Democratic Party as they step down. Al and Craig also discuss the significant challenge GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy faces in finding enough votes to become the new Speaker of the House and at what cost.

This video podcast is approximately 14 minutes in length.

To listen to the audio podcast version, please use this link:

Background

While the Spy’s public affairs mission has always been hyper-local, it has never limited us from covering national, or even international issues, that impact the communities we serve. With that in mind, we were delighted that Al From and Craig Fuller, both highly respected Washington insiders, have agreed to a new Spy video project called “The Analysis of From and Fuller” over the next year.

The Spy and our region are very lucky to have such an accomplished duo volunteer for this experiment. While one is a devoted Democrat and the other a lifetime Republican, both had long careers that sought out the middle ground of the American political spectrum.

Al From, the genius behind the Democratic Leadership Council’s moderate agenda which would eventually lead to the election of Bill Clinton, has never compromised from this middle-of-the-road philosophy. This did not go unnoticed in a party that was moving quickly to the left in the 1980s. Including progressive Howard Dean saying that From’s DLC was the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

From’s boss, Bill Clinton, had a different perspective. He said it would be hard to think of a single American citizen who, as a private citizen, has had a more positive impact on the progress of American life in the last 25 years than Al From.”

Al now lives in Annapolis and spends his semi-retirement as a board member of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (his alma mater) and authoring New Democrats and the Return to Power. He also is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School and recently agreed to serve on the Annapolis Spy’s Board of Visitors. He is the author of “New Democrats and the Return to Power.”

For Craig Fuller, his moderation in the Republican party was a rare phenomenon. With deep roots in California’s GOP culture of centralism, Fuller, starting with a long history with Ronald Reagan, leading to his appointment as Reagan’s cabinet secretary at the White House, and later as George Bush’s chief-of-staff and presidential campaign manager was known for his instincts to find the middle ground. Even more noted was his reputation of being a nice guy in Washington, a rare characteristic for a successful tenure in the White House.

Craig has called Easton his permanent home for the last five years, where now serves on the boards of the Academy Art Museum, the Benedictine School, and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  He also serves on the Spy’s Board of Visitors.

With their rich experience and long history of friendship, now joined by their love of the Chesapeake Bay, they have agreed through the magic of Zoom, to talk inside politics and policy with the Spy every Thursday.

After the 2020 election, the Spy began a short series with both Republican and Democrat party leaders on the Mid-Shore to hear their take on the voter results from their respective county. We continue this year and begin with Patrick Firth, the chairman of the Talbot County Democratic Central Committee.

Patrick talks about the local results of the three major statewide offices, the Harris-Mizeur, race for the 1st Congressional District, the Talbot County state’s attorney content, and his opinion of the Talbot County Council election and the impact of the Talbot Integrity Project  (TIP) on those results.

This video is approximately 16 minutes in length.

 

The beloved Twigs and Teacups is back open at 111 S. Cross Street just in time for the holidays.

The popular gift shop known for its quirky array of treasures had been temporarily moved to High Street while renovations took place.

For Paul, Jayne, and daughter Erin Heckles, it has been a year of decisions, toil, and patience as they and their building team headed by Taylor Loughry Construction gutted the 1922 brick building, removing the warren of unused second-floor offices and opening up the ceiling to its original rafter structure.

“We’ve been kind of the Three Musketeers through thick and thin, and we are just happy to share this with you,” Paul Heckles said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Originally built by the Gill brothers for their ice cream factory, Heckles notes that the original plan called for the second floor to remain open for community dances and other social events. This tradition continued for 25 years or more. Today it has been opened as their second-floor gift display area, complete with an elevator.

After the Gill brothers, a succession of owners used the space for various businesses until 1997, when April Marshall moved her small Twigs and Teacups gift shop into the building from across the street.

“It was April who brought together Twigs and Teacups and this location and created a cherished home away from home in Chestertown for almost three generations.”

The Spy met with the Heckles last week to talk about their year renovating the building and continuing the legacy of one of the region’s most charming gift shops.

The Heckles’ original intention was only to renovate the front of the building. “It was like peeling an onion,” Heckles says. One thing led to another until the structure was down to its shell.

A year later, the newly designed front entrance opens into the new Twigs and Teacups, and while you might be amazed by the dramatic change, you will still feel its intimacy and find that unique gift for that birthday party you almost forgot.

This video is approximately six minutes in length. To find out more about Twigs and Teacups please go here.

 

Many of us have leaped down the genealogical rabbit hole as rainy-day detectives searching for clues to identify our forebears, only to be hampered by duplicate names, confusing archives, and contradictory family stories.

For author Edward Ball, an investigation into the Ball family history led to a National Book Award for his 1998 Slaves in the family, additional recognition for his current book, Life of a Klansman, along with his current position as Patrick Henry Fellow at Starr Center for the American Experience at Washington College where he is at work on his third title about other members of the Ball family.

The Ball family history harkens back to the rice plantations of 17th-century Charleston, South Carolina. Up to the Civil War, six generations of the Ball family enslaved more than 4,000 people on more than a dozen plantations.

After hearing much about his ancestors during Edward’s childhood, complete with visits with his father to the vestiges of some of the old family houses, the young writer began to look closer at his legacy and ask questions that would change the trajectory of his life: who were these individual humans that had been enslaved?

Determined to challenge the silence shrouding the topic in his family, Ball set off on an investigation that would send him into a three-year search through thousands of Ball family records across the country to archives and oral histories, and even to Africa.

Eschewing the idea of “guilt of the past,” Ball sought to demythologize the family’s self-identification as compassionate overseers, saying in a New York Times article by Drew Faust that “Rather than responsible, I felt accountable for what had happened, called on to try to explain it.”

Along with documenting the white slave-owning family, the centerpiece of that accounting became a search for descendants of the Ball family enslaved people. Often, living descendants were unaware of their lineage, while others added to the historical narrative from family oral traditions linking them to one of the Ball Plantations.

In his 2020 book Life of Klansman, Edward Ball explores the matrilineal side of his family and another great-great grandfather, Constant Lecorgne of New Orleans. Lecorgne, a Confederate discharged for misconduct, was the Klansman in the family and a primary resident evil during the white supremacy backlash to Reconstruction’s promise of rights to formerly enslaved people as Southern states moved into the Jim Crow era.

Ball says that a series of horrific murders—Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Dylan Roof—compelled him to look at Lecorgne through the lens of contextual post-Civil War history to see if he could identify and confront the roots of white authority and privilege.

Ball sees ex-Confederate Lecorgne as part of the virulent strain of white supremacy that rose during the Reconstruction and still echoes sometimes loudly, sometimes as inaudible as a rattlesnake in repose, waking to bite us in your everyday lives. Readers will be hard-pressed to find a difference between the life of Klansman Constant Lecorgne and the white identity movements of today.

Katy Shenk at the Starr Center adds, “We’re delighted to have a writer of Edward’s stature here in residence, whose work speaks to contemporary concerns while chronicling the past. Already, he has embraced life in Chestertown to the fullest and is a valued member of the Starr Center and Washington College community.”

The Spy sat down with Edward Ball to talk about his extraordinary investigation into the Ball family, Constant Lecorgne, and what accounting for the past can mean for us today.

This video is approximately fourteen minutes in length. More about the Starr Center for the Study of the American experience may be found here.

 

Every Thursday, the Spy hosts a conversation with Al From and Craig Fuller on the most topical political news of the moment.

This week, From and Fuller discuss the results of the Midterm election that took place on Tuesday in Maryland and key battleground states. Al and Craig also discuss the political future of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

This video podcast is approximately 28 minutes in length.

To listen to the audio podcast version, please use this link:

Background

While the Spy’s public affairs mission has always been hyper-local, it has never limited us from covering national, or even international issues, that impact the communities we serve. With that in mind, we were delighted that Al From and Craig Fuller, both highly respected Washington insiders, have agreed to a new Spy video project called “The Analysis of From and Fuller” over the next year.

The Spy and our region are very lucky to have such an accomplished duo volunteer for this experiment. While one is a devoted Democrat and the other a lifetime Republican, both had long careers that sought out the middle ground of the American political spectrum.

Al From, the genius behind the Democratic Leadership Council’s moderate agenda which would eventually lead to the election of Bill Clinton, has never compromised from this middle-of-the-road philosophy. This did not go unnoticed in a party that was moving quickly to the left in the 1980s. Including progressive Howard Dean saying that From’s DLC was the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

From’s boss, Bill Clinton, had a different perspective. He said it would be hard to think of a single American citizen who, as a private citizen, has had a more positive impact on the progress of American life in the last 25 years than Al From.”

Al now lives in Annapolis and spends his semi-retirement as a board member of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (his alma mater) and authoring New Democrats and the Return to Power. He also is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School and recently agreed to serve on the Annapolis Spy’s Board of Visitors. He is the author of “New Democrats and the Return to Power.”

For Craig Fuller, his moderation in the Republican party was a rare phenomenon. With deep roots in California’s GOP culture of centralism, Fuller, starting with a long history with Ronald Reagan, leading to his appointment as Reagan’s cabinet secretary at the White House, and later as George Bush’s chief-of-staff and presidential campaign manager was known for his instincts to find the middle ground. Even more noted was his reputation of being a nice guy in Washington, a rare characteristic for a successful tenure in the White House.

Craig has called Easton his permanent home for the last five years, where now serves on the boards of the Academy Art Museum, the Benedictine School, and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  He also serves on the Spy’s Board of Visitors.

With their rich experience and long history of friendship, now joined by their love of the Chesapeake Bay, they have agreed through the magic of Zoom, to talk inside politics and policy with the Spy every Thursday.

Periodically, the Spy sits down with community leaders at the end of their long successful careers to capture those professional lives and times. Beyond the genuine historical value of these interviews, it is a moment for these very gifted stakeholders to offer some wisdom and outlook after decades of experience and challenges.

This time around, we asked Scott Patterson, the State’s Attorney for Talbot County, to stop by the Spy studio to participate in the project. After half a century of being on the front row of Maryland’s judicial system, first in Montgomery County, followed by Anne Arundel and since 1983, Talbot County, Patterson has chosen to step down as State’s Attorney in January of 2023.

And during this long tenure, Democrat Scott Patterson has seen a thing or two about crime, our courts, and how society must hold people accountable for doing bad things. In our interview last week, he talked candidly about the ongoing challenge of making sure that his team of lawyers and staff are committed to doing the “right thing” while also fighting for funding to recruit the top professionals that Talbot County needs to maintain high levels of excellence. Scott also talks about his concerns about the legalization of recreational cannabis, gun control, the impact of the George Floyd murder, and the scars experienced by police officers in the wake of the “Defund the Police” movement.

Finally, Scott notes how proud he is of his colleagues and their collective work to make it one of Maryland’s most productive State’s Attorney offices. While as a private citizen, Patterson has endorsed Joe Coale to succeed him in the fall election, he ends with the conviction that whoever replaces him in that office, it will continue with the high standards he expected during his watch.

This video is approximately ten minutes in length.

Every Thursday, the Spy hosts a conversation with Al From and Craig Fuller on the most topical political news of the moment.

This week, From and Fuller make their political predictions for elections in statewide races, the 1st and 6th Congressional districts in Maryland, Senate races in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona, and North Carolina, who will control of the the House of Representatives, and the surprisingly tight governor’s race in New York.

This video podcast is approximately 32 minutes in length.

To listen to the audio podcast version, please use this link:

Background

While the Spy’s public affairs mission has always been hyper-local, it has never limited us from covering national, or even international issues, that impact the communities we serve. With that in mind, we were delighted that Al From and Craig Fuller, both highly respected Washington insiders, have agreed to a new Spy video project called “The Analysis of From and Fuller” over the next year.

The Spy and our region are very lucky to have such an accomplished duo volunteer for this experiment. While one is a devoted Democrat and the other a lifetime Republican, both had long careers that sought out the middle ground of the American political spectrum.

Al From, the genius behind the Democratic Leadership Council’s moderate agenda which would eventually lead to the election of Bill Clinton, has never compromised from this middle-of-the-road philosophy. This did not go unnoticed in a party that was moving quickly to the left in the 1980s. Including progressive Howard Dean saying that From’s DLC was the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.

From’s boss, Bill Clinton, had a different perspective. He said it would be hard to think of a single American citizen who, as a private citizen, has had a more positive impact on the progress of American life in the last 25 years than Al From.”

Al now lives in Annapolis and spends his semi-retirement as a board member of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (his alma mater) and authoring New Democrats and the Return to Power. He also is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School and recently agreed to serve on the Annapolis Spy’s Board of Visitors. He is the author of “New Democrats and the Return to Power.”

For Craig Fuller, his moderation in the Republican party was a rare phenomenon. With deep roots in California’s GOP culture of centralism, Fuller, starting with a long history with Ronald Reagan, leading to his appointment as Reagan’s cabinet secretary at the White House, and later as George Bush’s chief-of-staff and presidential campaign manager was known for his instincts to find the middle ground. Even more noted was his reputation of being a nice guy in Washington, a rare characteristic for a successful tenure in the White House.

Craig has called Easton his permanent home for the last five years, where now serves on the boards of the Academy Art Museum, the Benedictine School, and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.  He also serves on the Spy’s Board of Visitors.

With their rich experience and long history of friendship, now joined by their love of the Chesapeake Bay, they have agreed through the magic of Zoom, to talk inside politics and policy with the Spy every Thursday.