Annapolis Republican Larry Hogan won a decisive upset victory Tuesday in Maryland’s gubernatorial election.

GOP INCREASES MARGIN IN U.S. HOUSE OF REPS.;
LT. GOV. ANTHONY BROWN CONCEDES DEFEAT

Presidential aspirant O’Malley nowhere to be found

‘THE BIGGEST UPSET IN THE COUNTRY!’
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
In an election that just weeks ago wasn’t even expected to be close, Annapolis businessman Larry Hogan won a decisive victory Tuesday to become only the third Republican Governor of Maryland in 56 years and the seventh since the Civil War by defeating Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, 52-47 percent, with virtually all of the state’s polling places reporting.

Upon declaring victory at his campaign headquarters in Annapolis, Hogan graciously thanked Brown and outgoing Gov. Martin O’Malley “for their eight years of service” to the people of Maryland, then said he would “begin tomorrow” to clean up what he termed “the mess in Annapolis” and restore integrity to state government.

Hogan also pledged that he and Lt. Gov.-elect Boyd Rutherford — who will become the Free State’s third consecutive African-American lieutenant governor — would “roll back as many of the 40 tax increases” instituted by the O’Malley Administration “as we can.”

As Brown delivered his concession speech to a disappointed crowd of supporters, which included Maryland Reps. Elijah Cummings (D., 7th), C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D., 2nd) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D., 5th), Governor and presidential aspirant O’Malley was conspicuously not in attendance.

Hogan received more than 847,000 votes to Brown’s 770,500. In his victory statement he noted that it was “the biggest upset in the country!”

On the national level the Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate, winning at least one more than the six seats needed for a GOP majority and catapulting Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky into the post of Majority Leader, succeeding Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada.

Earlier in the evening the 72-year-old McConnell won reelection to his Senate seat by defeating his 35-year-old Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes, in one of the most expensive and hard fought contests of the campaign cycle.

The Republicans also increased their margin in the U.S. House of Representatives but with an influx of more conservative members than before.

ANTI-DEMOCRAT, ANTI-WHITE HOUSE PROTEST BY INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Seen as an anti-Democrat, anti-White House protest by independent voters, it was the worst midterm election loss for any U.S. President in the last half-century and puts in question President Barack Obama’s prospects for governing effectively in his final years in office.

“Let’s put Maryland on a new path,” Hogan declared in victory Tuesday night. “We will change Maryland for the better.”

As he received a hug and kiss on the cheek from his father, Lawrence J. Hogan Sr., a former congressman and Prince George’s County Executive who lost running for governor in 1974, the younger Hogan noted to loud applause, “It’s taken 40 years to elect a Larry Hogan Governor of Maryland.”

And it’s the “largest mandate for change in Maryland in 63 years,” he added, since Theodore R. McKeldin took office in 1951 as the state’s fourth Republican governor since the end of the Civil War.

Maryland’s voter registration is more than 2-1 Democratic.

On Monday, usually correct political prognosticator Nate Silver at the “FiveThirtyEight” blog said there was a 94 percent chance Brown would win and predicted that the most likely outcome was that he would prevail by 9.7 percentage points.

In the race for Attorney General, Democrat Brian Frosh won easily over Republican Jeffrey Pritzker, and Peter Franchot was reelected State Comptroller with 62.5 percent of the vote.

6th DISTRICT CONGRESSIONAL RACE UNDECIDED

The only Maryland election in question is the 6th Congressional District race involving first-term incumbent Democrat John Delaney, who faced a strong challenge from Republican Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, in a race that few predicted would be competitive.

Two years ago Delaney defeated 10-term Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett by a 59-38 percent margin after the district was significantly reconfigured.

Maryland’s seven other incumbent congresspersons were reelected easily.

Election Night tallies gave Delaney 89,318 votes to Bongino’s 87,152, or 49.6 to 48.4 percent, with Green Party candidate George Gluck getting 3,503 votes, or 1.9 percent.

However that race won’t be decided until more than 6,000 absentee ballots have been counted.

If Bongino pulls it out, he will become the state’s second Republican congressman, joining Andy Harris, who was reelected in the 1st Congressional District with over 70 percent of the vote.

In Baltimore County, Democrat Kevin Kamenetz easily won reelection to a second term as County Executive.

And in New Hampshire it was noted that former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who pulled a major upset to replace the late Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate in 2010, became the first man to be defeated running for the Senate in two different states by two different women.

But in Massachusetts, a state that’s even more “blue” than Maryland, Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker pulled off a Hogan-like upset — albeit by a much closer margin of victory — by defeating Democrat Martha Coakley, 48.5 to 46.6 percent, winning by just 40,361 votes out of a total of more than two million cast.
 
To read Voice of Baltimore’s pre-election coverage of the Md. gubernatorial campaign,  click here.
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org