Progressive Maryland

In 2002, Bob Ehrlich ran for office as a moderate, as a "compassionate conservative." But once in office, he changed his tune, governing as a conservative of the Tom DeLay stripe. Last week, he confirmed his hard-right credentials by vetoing Progressive Maryland's bill to raise the minimum wage, the Fair Share Health Care bill, and a slew of other commonsense, mainstream bills.

Gov. Ehrlich got rolling on Thursday of last week by vetoing the the Fair Share Health Care bill at an elaborate press conference in Princess Anne in Somerset County.   This bill would require that the largest employers in our state either provide affordable health care to employees or reimburse the state for doing so through Medicaid and other safety-net programs.  Ehrlich justified his veto with the claim that such a law would deter Wal-Mart -- the worst offender among big corporations that refuse to provide affordable health care -- from opening a planned distribution center in Somerset County.

Really?  Are we supposed to believe that giant multistate corporations would pass up the chance to earn huge profits in Maryland’s lucrative market of 6 million relatively affluent consumers if required to pay a little bit more on employee health benefits?  The modest extra amount in health care costs this bill would impose on these huge corporations (remember, Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world) might possibly cut into profits earned in Maryland, but certainly would not negate them.  Under this bill, affluent Maryland would remain a lucrative place to do business, especially for retailers.

The Governor's alarmist rhetoric obscures the obvious fact that the problem facing Maryland – and the Eastern Shore – is not the quantity of jobs, but instead the quality of jobs.  The unemployment rate in Maryland right now is only 4.3 percent; in the Salisbury area it is only 5.2 percent.  The Eastern Shore does not need any more poverty-wage jobs with no health care.  We need good-paying jobs with quality, affordable health care. 

Up until Thursday, Wal-Mart had said repeatedly that it always intended to build the distribution center in Somerset County -- regardless of whether the Fair Share Health Care bill became law or not.  And why not?  Of course, Wal-Mart wants access to Maryland’s lucrative market.  And of course Wal-Mart is happy to accept the estimated $5 million in taxpayer dollars being lavished on it to build that center.  In return for all those benefits, the least that the world’s biggest corporation should do is provide decent health coverage for its employees.  The Fair Share Health Care bill would have required that quid pro quo – but Gov. Ehrlich vetoed it.

In any event, Wal-Mart sheepishly announced right before the press conference that it is delaying construction of the distribution center for three or four years -- a decision it admits is unrelated to the Fair Share Health Care bill.

Once he brought out his veto pen on Thursday, the Governor kept it in motion throughout Friday, vetoing 24 bills, many of them popular and commonsense.  Foremost among them: Progressive Maryland's bill to raise the minimum wage in our state.  Evidently, Ehrlich agrees with the rationale of the Chamber of Commerce that only the marketplace, not government, should set wages.  By that logic, the United States would have no minimum wage at all -- just like Mexico, China, and Bangladesh.

On that same Black Friday, Ehrlich also vetoed the widely supported medical decision-making bill, which would have given people in committed relationships the right to visit each other in the hospital and make decisions for each other in the event of incapacitation.  And he even vetoed a bill to allow early voting -- a reform that would have brought Maryland into the national mainstream.

Click here now to tell your lawmakers in Annapolis to override the Governor's veto of the minimum wage bill. And click here now to tell them to override his veto of the Fair Share Health Care bill.

Overrides are great.  But they are hard work.  It is more efficient for progressives to simply unelect Ehrlich so we won't have to go through this rigamarole every year, as we argue in the Introduction to this newsletter.  Which brings us to the larger point of this essay: the need for progressives to break our addiction to endless blather about "issues" and instead focus on elections.

Over the past 40 years, American progressives have lost sight of a basic fact: if you want to change society in a democracy, you need to win elections.   Karl Rove understands this.  The corporate special interests understand it – that’s why they participate heavily in elections by writing big campaign checks.  But most liberals don’t get it.  Instead, liberals waste time – all too often in ad hoc coalitions -- on arcane policy analysis and toothless “advocacy” without any electoral component. 

As a result of our unilateral disarmament, progressives over the past 20 years have lost control of all four branches of the federal government plus a plurality of state governments.  In the few states we do control, progressives play defense and apologize for our beliefs. 

By contrast, Progressive Maryland is building a permanent organization that grows cumulatively stronger each time we fight to pass a bill or elect a candidate.  In non-election years, Progressive Maryland organizes grassroots issue campaigns to enact legislation, which, besides the public policy benefits of the new law, also gain us new members, funding, and know-how.  In the election year, the Progressive Maryland PAC rewards progressive lawmakers and punishes opponents.  Our electoral capacity makes it easier to lobby incumbents because they know our carrot and stick are much bigger than those of traditional, impotent liberals who only beseech them “to do the right thing”.

If you agree with the current liberal paradigm of paralysis-by-policy-analysis, supplication, and “a thousand points of light”, don’t join Progressive Maryland.  If you think it’s time for progressives to play as hard as our opponents, join us in building the grassroots machine that aims to transform politics in Maryland, in the process making our state a progressive beacon for the whole country.