Baltimore Mayor Dixon was convicted  Tuesday afternoon by a Baltimore City jury on 1, out of 7, counts stemming from a State Prosecutor investigation.   The count on which the jury found her guilty stemmed from gift cards provided by a city businessman, Patrick Turner.   Turner testified that he thought the gift cards he gave the mayor were itended to be given to poor people in the city. The State Prosecutor charged that the gift cards, amounting to about $600, were intended to be given to the poor but the mayor used them for her own personal gain.

   After more than a week of deliberations, the city jury either demurred or could not reach a decision on 6 other counts, including some contradictory counts that, in legal terms, meant that if one count was decided as guilty another count must be found to be innocent.  The jury’s decision only rendered a unanimous decision on  one count, which, in the grand scheme of  the case, was relatively small.

    So much of the state prosecutor’s case fell by the wayside–such as Ms. Dixon’s former boyfriend who was suddenly dropped from the prosecutor’s case after being initially touted as a future  key witness– that it is a legitimate question to discuss whether this case was about real “corruption” or possible misunderstandings, “where did I put that gift card” or other issues.

   Given the he said/she said testimony in this case, and the laughlingly small amount of money involved–about $600—it is a sorry commentary that the first female, black mayor of Baltimore city has been dragged through the mud and media of this case for so long. Mayor Dixon may not be perfect, but she is a lot less a “problem” than the several million dollars that have been spent to prosecute her.

  Cecil County women are better educated than men in the county but they earn significantly less money from their jobs than less-educated men, according to new three-year data issued this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

  The discrepancies in income are not easily explained by the cliched notions that women work part-time, or drop out of the work force, to care for children and family members. The statistics show that women living in Cecil County are working at about equal rates with men but their work is not being rewarded with equal pay. Women with higher education levels make less money than equally or  less-educated men.  But equally educated men and women only make similar salaries if they are employed by the federal government, where there are strong anti-discriminatory rules in place.

   The latest three-year evaluations by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Amercan Community Survey, issued this week, show that 14.6 percent of Cecil County women, age 25 or older, have a bachelor’s degree, in comparison with only 12.5 percent for men of the same age group. 

   The Census Bureau survey found that for Cecil County residents, aged 25 and over, all residents holding a Bachelor’s degree  had an annual income of $55,192– but the disparity between men and women was striking. For a male with a  Bachelor’s degree the annual income  was $70,549  but for a woman with the same educational credential the salary was just $44,762. In fact, a male with just a high school education made more –$45,323– than the college educated woman.

    And even among those Cecil County residents with graduate and/or professional degrees, the gender differences are stunning.  The Census Bureau statistics calculate that  local men with such credentials earn $80,289 a year while women with the same credentials earn just $47,807.

   So what might account for such differences?  The Census stats knock down the usual prejudices/stereotypes.  The study showed that in Cecil County, 59.3 percent of families had both mom and dad working full time, and 6.2 percent of families had mom working full-time while dad was not employed outside the home, and 20.8 percent of familes had dad working while mom stayed home.

     Overall, these new 3-year federal statistics indicate that Cecil County is, unfortunately,  yet again a backwater in the real world.

  The stark numbers do not reflect some Cecil County-centric issue such as the lack of  local jobs, driving times to job sites, etc. But the stats do show that there is a very real difference between male and female job compensation.

   The new U.S. Census Bureau “American Community Survey” finds that in 2008, 11.1 percent of Cecil County residents were age 65 or over.  But longer term state projections estimate the senior population will more than double and reach about 15.3 percent of the county’s overall population by 2030.

  Cecil County needs to start planning now for the infrastructre of transportation, health care and support services that these seniors will need within the next twenty years, especially in the more rural areas of the county where even the most basic services are all but non-existant.

    The new Census snapshot ranks Cecil County 10th out of 16 of the larger counties (and Baltimore City), with Allegany County having the highest proportion (18.3 percent) of residents age 65 or over and Charles County the lowest, with just 8.4 percent.

   Maryland planners project that Cecil County’s overall population will grow to 155,800 by 2030, with seniors age 65 and over accounting for 24,970– or about 15.3 percent of the total– up from an estimated 11,250 in 2010. (By way of comparison, in Florida, the land of retirement, seniors now account for 17.4 percent of the population.)

    The Census survey found that nearly 34 percent of seniors now living in Cecil County have disabilities, with “ambulatory difficulty” the most prevalent problem. As more seniors are unable to drive, their access to what few services exist becomes impossible.

    The county began operating “The Bus” a few years ago with regular,  scheduled routes serving the northern part of the county and primarily delivering passengers to Delaware for connections to the DART system and job sites. But for southern Cecil seniors, it takes advance scheduling to get to a doctor’s appointment in Elkton and senior services provided at the county’s office building on Route 40 are but a distant dream.

  Excellent, and expanding, medical services are available in Middletown, DE but there is no public transit from Cecil County.  As previously reported here, Christiana Care is planning to build an emergency hospital and, most likely, a full service hospital near Route 1 in Middletown.  How will the future seniors of southern Cecil County get there?

    Then there are the basics of food. There are no supermarkets and only a handful of shops offering the most basic groceries south of the canal. The vacant businesses in Cecilton are a natural location and county (and town) planners and economic development officials should prioritize bring these services to the area.

    One bright spot on the horizon is former Commissioner William Manlove’s farewell present to seniors: putting a seniors and community center facility in Cecilton into the Capital Plan shortly before he left office. So far, it has survived in the most recent Capital Plan adoped by current commissioners in April, 2009.

     The senior center is expected to cost $1.6 million, with $800,000 from the state and $558,000 from the county, plus the value of land expected to be donated by the town. So far, the county is projecting funds will be provided in Fiscal 2011 and Fiscal 2012. But with the current state fiscal crisis and tight county funds, don’t consider this a done deal.

     It is not too soon for seniors, and many future seniors who plan to grow old in this county, to insist that our County Commissioners and county departments start planning and delivering services to seniors, especially in the rural areas of the county.

    The just released interim U.S. Census estimated data, under the “American Community Survey” for 2008, provides a snapshot of just how Cecil County fares in comparison with the rest of the state in many areas, from income to education levels to senior citizen population to workers’ commuting distances.

   This is a treasure trove of information and data that is not easily digested in a moment. But our analysis of the new data provides some interesting information for citizens and our County Commissioners to keep in mind as they make decisions that affect all of us.

We all want to know where we “rank” in comparision with the rest of the state, given that Cecil County usually has either an inferiority complex or an assertive “so who gives a dam*” attitude about the rest of the state. So far in our analysis, Cecil County ranks #10 out of 16 jurisdictions in the state on both median household income and proportion of the population aged 65 or over. In other words, a bit below average…

The national Census Bureau report concluded that the state of Maryland was the richest in the nation, with median household income of $70,545 a year. (“Median” means the midpoint, with half the households above and half below that income level.) For Cecil County, the median income was $68,338, placing Cecil County at number 10 within the state—with 6 subdivisions poorer and 9 richer. (NOTE: this survey does not include smaller counties in the state, such as Kent, Somerset and Garrett.)

(See Chart Below)

    Frankly, we are a bit surprised that Cecil County even does this well.  The Maryland Department of Planning interim estimates of income for Cecil County, previously estimated for the same 2008 period, estimated a  much lower $63,850 median household income.  We will be contacting the statistical gurus at the Maryland State Data Center in the next few days for their evaluation of the new U.S. Census data versus their own lower estimates.

    One of the key indicators of future quality-of-life issues and community needs is the population aged 65 and over. The county’s planning study by the distinquished SAGE research group from Baltimore, as well as projections by the state Planning Department, estimate that Cecil County faces about a two-fold increase in the senior citizen population. So far, the new U.S. Census data only reflects where we are, not where we will be, but the data indicate Cecil County must seriously begin to plan for an aging population.

 (MORE ON THIS ISSUE IN OUR NEXT POST ON THE CECIL TIMES)

   As Cecil County copes with cutbacks in state funds, we are faced with choices on planning–and paying for– our future needs. One of the most important decisions for our newly elected school board– and County Commissioners– will be on prioritizing the long-proposed and much delayed “comprehensive high school”– otherwise known as a four-year School of  Technology.

   By way of history, the current School of Technology is  a part-time ‘trade” school, offered on a part-time basis to juniors and seniors at regular, comprehensive high schools in the county.  In late 2006, a previous Board of Commissioners– after listening to the Chamber of Commerce, BEPAC and economic development officials as well as parents– manned up and pushed the “comprehensive high school” into top priority planning funds under the county’s Capital Plan.  Thanks to former Elkton High School Principal Nelson Bolender (and then County Commissioner) for leading the initiative, along with former Commissioner Harry Hepbron, a self-made businessman who had long advocated education and technical training to promote job development.

   But under our new Board of Commissioners, a new, expanded School of Technology has been put on the back burner.  This is despite the fact that only about 16 percent of Cecil County adults had four-year college degrees in the last census (and maybe up to 19 percent, thanks to newcomers in the northern part of the county, under 2008 estimates by the state.)  So where are the jobs, and the requisite training, for the many Cecil County young people who do not have the money, inclination, or smarts to pursue a four-year college degree?

   This all becomes a crucial issue right now as the elected Board of  Education is facing an imminent decision on whether to support an improved School of Technology– or bow to some demands for  nickel and dime capital improvements to local schools.

   We are pleased that the Cecil Whig actually addressed this issue, in a news report earlier this week, reporting that the School Board is considering several options on the tech school proposal. The School Board has to decide whether to place the tech school at the top of its school construction priority list– so as to request state school construction funding– or whether to lower it to 5th on the priority list (a guarantee that the state of Maryland will do nothing to help advance the project, given the current budget crisis).

   The final option for the county school board would be to drop the new tech school off its priority list entirely– a prescription for killing the school entirely.

     Now, about our stove….

    If you think you have nothing at stake in this debate, you should look in your kitchen.  Do you have a new stove, with lots of electronic bells and whistles and LCD’s? How about your frig?  Have you tried to get them repaired recently, especially if you live in a rural area of Cecil County? Well, we have.

   To make many days of phone calls, web searches and other angst short, our stove cannot be repaired because we live in Cecil County. No one available, or a three- week wait, we were told. Oh, so you are close to the Delaware line? No, we can’t service you because you are in Cecil County.

    Let’s face it: not everyone in Cecil County is a rocket scientist. If they were, they would not live here because there are no jobs for them.  But we have a  serious need for skilled tech and repair services that people desperately need, but the future tech workers need the training to do these jobs.

    If the School Board could approve spending for Chinese language instruction a few years ago– so how many people really benefit from that– why won’t they approve funds for a new, expanded tech school? It isn’t fair to spend funds on a limited use program like that while the vast majority of students, who need technical training for the jobs of the future, are left out.

    So contact the School Board and the Cecil County Commissioners to support putting a new four-year School of Technology/ or “comprehensive high school” at the top of the capital priority list. You owe it to the kids of this county– and to your stove!

———————————

UPDATE:  We finally got our stove fixed, thanks to the online website of www.sears.com

  We bought our stove from Lowes, which basically did nothing to help us, and after many hours on the phone with Kitchenaid, we were told we were on our own. But Lo and behold, Sears came through for us, even though we did not buy our stove from them.

   No, we don’t get paid anything by Sears, but we must tell other Cecil County residents that you can, no matter how rural the area in which you live, get appliance services from Sears via an online appointment and toll free phone service!

   Oh, and when our wonderful Sears guy came to repair our stove, he told us he got his training at a Technical High School, plus subsequent on the job training. He agreed that we must have more Tech School programs and training to help our kids and consumers to get the help they all need!

   Our spies around the county tell us that State Sen. E.J. Pipkin, R-Upper Shore, was in full campaign mode on Route 213 in Cecil County on Wednesday morning, waving from a pick up truck with aides holding signs declaring, “Pipkin for State Senate.” Now that would seem like the declarative statement many have been waiting for to answer the question: what is E.J. running for in 2010?

   But, no, like that movie ‘international man of mystery,’ Sen. Pipkin’s  signs do not necessarily reflect his intentions, according to an aide.

   “This was part of the Senator’s listening tour,” said Katie Nash, Pipkin’s Chief of Staff. “He’s continuing to listen to citizens,” she said, after doing similar roadside waves in Queen Anne’s County on Tuesday.  He will also be in Kent County on Thursday, waving signs to protest the Governor’s proposed closing of the Upper Shore Mental Health Center, she added.

   (As we were writing this post, we received an automated “robocall” from Pipkin urging us to call the Governor to protest the proposed closing of the Kent County facility as part of the latest budget cuts.)

   Although the signs said “Pipkin for State Senate,” that doesn’t necessarily mean he is indeed running for re-election to that post, the aide said. So he might still be looking at the Republican nomination to run against incumbent Democratic Congressman Frank Kratovil in the 1st District, or challenging Democratic incumbent state Comptroller Peter Franchot.

    If Pipkin does not seek re-election to the state Senate, we’d put our bets on the Comptroller slot. Republican State Sen. Andy Harris– who beat both Pipkin and former Rep. Wayne Gilchrest in the 1st District Congressional Republican primary two years ago– is already fund-raising for a general election re-match with Kratovil and has strong backing from the national Republican party. 

   Pipkin usually self-funds most of his campaigns, but given the uber price tags of the last 1st District Congressional race, there’s only so much self-funding a candidate can do. Federal campaigns are much more restrictive in donation rules than Maryland election law so it is virtually impossible to shift state campaign funds to a federal contest.

      So far in the 2010 state election cycle, Pipkin has raised a modest $60,348, with expenditures of $43,773. Most of his donations– 38 percent– came from Political Action Committees based in Maryland with 32 percent coming from  individual donors, according to state election records.

    Comptroller Franchot has been running a non-stop re-election campaign almost since the day he was elected but  it is not a job that most voters pay a lot of attention to until shortly before the election.  It’s a post that could be a good fit for Pipkin, with his Wall Street financial background, and the fact that it really doesn’t require a lot of heavy lifting  day in and day out. 

 But it’s a job that does require a lot of campaigning and PR– remember Willie Don Schaefer, and before that Louie Goldstein? Not many voters had the slightest idea what they actually did in the job but they sure did campaign a lot.  Pipkin has shown he likes campaigning, a lot, and the Comptroller job might suit his style and aspirations.  A statewide win for the Comptroller slot would position him for a potential gubernatorial or U.S. Senate bid in the future.

   But he’d have his work cut out for him challenging Franchot, who is very popular in his home base in the populous Montgomery County  and other suburban areas of the state where Pipkin barely registered on the political pulse in his last statewide race against U.S. Sen. Barbara Milkulski.

    Meanwhile, as Sen. Pipkin waves signs that may or  may not signal his intentions, other Republicans are left in the lurch on whether they can aspire to his state Senate seat or not.  Del. Richard Sossi, R-36, has signaled his interest if Pipkin moves up or on. Sossi is one of the most visible members of the Cecil County delegation, even though he doesn’t actually live in the county.  Last time we checked his Twitter schedule, we were exhausted just contemplating all those community meetings he attends.

   We put our little blog in its crib to take a long winter’s nap after the November elections, thinking we had done our part to inform voters with original reporting on issues and campaign finance that the public should know about — but had not been reported in our local newspaper or the regional press. We thought our work was done; after all, we don’t get paid for this and wordpress doesn’t allow advertising on blogs it hosts for free.

   A lot has happened since we began our nap.

  The Whig has been castrated even more by its Australian ownership, with the firing of the few people who had any knowledge of Cecil County history and issues, as part of a cost-cutting scheme. The Baltimore Sun, which only rarely covered Cecil County in recent years, suffered the Calvert Street Massacre in which a third of the news staff was summarily dismissed as the latest insult imposed by its Chicago real estate magnate owner.  And the Cecil County blogging landscape turned into a mudwrestler’s haven. (With the exception of our favorite www.someonenoticed.wordpress.com blog hosted by the erudite and always interesting Mike Dixon.)

    So we think it’s time for The Cecil Times to wipe the sleep from our eyes, put on the coffee pot and fire up our keyboard. We will soon pick up where we left off:  looking at important election issues and campaign finance matters. We all just recovered from the last election but the next election season is already upon us: campaign 2010 is already underway.

    See you on the blog or around the Cecil County neighborhoods.

   –The Cecil Times

  The unofficial returns for Cecil County in the Tuesday election show some interesting patterns in party-line voting from the top to bottom of the ballot, with the exception of the too-close-to-call 1st District race for Congress between Democrat Frank Kratovil and Republican Andy Harris.

 Countywide, Republican presidential candidate John McCain carried Cecil with 56.41percent of the vote to Democratic President-to-be Barack Obama’s 41.28 percent. Independent Ralph Nader won 1 percent of Cecil’s vote.  McCain carried all but 4 of Cecil’s 19 election precincts.

 Kratovil won 18,643 votes to Harris’ 17,992, giving Kratovil 49.2 percent of Cecil County votes to Harris’ 47.5 percent. Kratovil had a majority in all but 8 of the county’s 19 election precincts, with Harris’ support concentrated in the western areas of the county. Kratovil also carried every county on the Maryland Eastern Shore, while Harris carried the Western Shore areas of Harford, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties included in the district. The state election board reported Kratovil ahead by just 916 votes district-wide, so the contest won’t be decided until absentee and overseas ballots are counted.

   Locally, the 5th District County Commissioner race put Republican Robert Hodge ahead by just 328 votes over Democrat Sharon Weygand, with all 19 county precincts reporting. Absentee votes might still alter the outcome. The local elections board reported Hodge received 18,166 votes, or 49.54 percent, to Weygand’s 17,838, or 48.64 percent of the vote. There were 669 write-in votes– most of which probably went to Tom McWilliams.

    The 1st District County Commissioner race predictably went to Republican Jim Mullin, with 20,663 votes, or 57 percent, to Democrat Pamela H. Bailey’s 15,373 votes, or 42.4 percent.

   County commissioners are elected by all voters in the county, not just those living in the districts the commissioner will represent. So voting patterns in each of the county’s 19 precincts are illuminating: if a precinct went heavily for Republican presidential candidate McCain, voters tended to vote Republican in the local contests. And precincts favoring Democrat Obama tended to vote Democratic locally.  

  Just four Cecil County precincts went for Obama: Thomson Estates, Holly Hall, Cecil Manor and North East Elementary. In each of those precincts, Democratic candidates for commissioner pulled in their highest margins. In other precincts with heavy McCain support, Republican commissioner candidates racked up strong margins over Democrats.

   The Cecil Manor precinct had the highest proportion of pro-Obama votes, with 65.55 percent to McCain’s 31.36 percent. Fifth District Democrat Weygand followed suit, racking up her highest 66.86 percent of the precinct tally to Republican Hodge’s 31.83 percent. First District Democrat Bailey made her best showing, with 65.41 percent to Republican Mullin’s 34.59 percent. In Holly Hall and North East Elementary precincts, the Democratic commissioner candidates racked up healthy margins over their GOP opponents, too. Thomson Estates, while giving Obama 51.74 percent of its votes, gave Democrat Weygand 55.82 percent of its votes while Democrat Bailey actually lost by just 9 votes.

   On the Republican side, Conowingo was McCain country, giving him 69.56 percent of the vote to Obama’s 27.47 percent. Republican Hodge racked up his highest proportion, 60.87 percent. The Rising Sun banquet hall precinct gave McCain 68.74 percent of the vote, to Obama’s 29.3 percent. Republican Hodge pulled in 60.38 percent of the vote in his commissioner race, to Democrat Weygand’s 38.25 percent.

   So when some folks say party labels don’t matter in local county contests, that may not be the case in a presidential election year.

   It is also important to note the numbers of Cecil County voters who cast ballots for president but did not cast any vote at all in the two commissioner races.  There were 39,558 votes cast for president by county voters, but 3,495 voters did not pick a candidate in the 1st District commissioner race and 3,009 voters left the 5th District commissioner contest blank. That usually means voters are clueless about the local candidates and issues in their campaigns so they don’t vote at all on the local sections of the ballot.

  The Republican and Democratic opponents in the Fifth District contest for Cecil County Commissioner have raised comparable amounts of campaign contributions, while write-in candidate Tom McWilliams has a secret weapon: his wife’s home cooking, according to campaign finance reports filed Oct. 24.

    But some supporters of the two major candidates might be surprised at just who is donating to them.

   McWilliams, a perpetual candidate who has previously run unsuccessfully for Commissioner and a school board seat, lost the Republican primary to Robert Hodge, a local businessman and farmer. McWilliams is waging an uphill struggle as a write-in candidate in the November election and has held yard sales and picnics, raising just $886 in direct contributions and $1,050 in fundraiser ticket purchases. He also loaned his campaign $6,000 in October. McWilliams lists $372 in in-kind donations, such as food and drinks for fundraising events. While several people donated appetizers valued at $10, his wife’s culinary contribution was valued at $50. A smart husband knows to compliment his wife’s cooking, even in politics.

     Hodge reports raising a total of $21,405, including loaning his campaign $3,000. His Democratic opponent, Sharon Weygand, reports raising a total of $19,637, with no loans. The candidates are running for the seat now held by Commissioner Mark Guns, who decided not to run for re-election.  Hodge has had a high-profile candidacy all year, with many paid billboard sites on highways around the county.  Weygand seemed to have a lower profile–waving hand-held signs on Route 40– so it is perhaps surprising to see that she raised so much money and had no loans, according to the October reports.  There could still be a last minute infusion of cash on both sides in the last week or so before the election, but we won’t know the final contributions tally until after the election when new reports are filed.

     Weygand’s largest chunk of donations– $3,000– came from two entities related to the Stewart’s land development business: $1,500 from Stewart Associates Land Development, Inc.,  and $1,500 from York Building Products Co. Both firms have the same address in York, PA and are part of the Stewart Companies. Stewart’s, one of the largest landowners in the county, is banking heavily on approval of the statewide slots referendum and has signed an option deal with Penn National gaming that wants to develop a slots facility on Stewart land in Cecil County. York Building Products operates three sand and gravel production sites in Cecil County.

   The Stewart-related donations amounted to more than a quarter of Weygand’s $11,555 in contributions from individuals and businesses. That might surprise some of the no-growth folks who made small donations to her campaign, too.

 Other major donations to Weygand include $1,000 from Klines Live Fish Co. in Chesapeake City; $1,000 from Hutton Farms in Elkton, and $500 from Alice Arbuckle, who ran unsuccessfully for County Commissioner in the last local election and famously advocated county-hosted camel races as a tourist attraction. Weygand also received $345 from the husband (Ron) of County Commissioner Rebecca Demmler,  $200 from former County Commissioner and restauranteur Phyllis Kilby, $100 from retiring County Commissioner Bill Manlove, $80 from Commissioner Wayne Tome and $20 from Commissioner Brian Lockhart. 

    Weygand also received a $1,000 donation from the Political Action Committee (PAC) associated with Lodge 2, Cecil County Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed her candidacy; $500 from the county’s Democratic Central Committee; $750 from the county Democrat Club and $100 from the campaign of Frank Kratovil, the Democratic nominee in the 1st District Congressional contest.

    Weygand did not disclose individual identities for most of the ticket purchasers for her fund-raising events, tallying a total of $5,613 in ticket sales.

   On the Republican side, Hodge reported individual and business donations of $7,140– actually, less than Weygand’s $11,555. Unlike Weygand, Hodge reports amounts and identities for ticket purchases by individuals and businesses, totaling $6,465.

    Hodge’s largest individual donation of $1,000 came from Railroad Associates Corp. of Hershey, Pa. A local business, Graphics Inc., gave $500 plus $500 in ticket purchases, for a total of $1,000. Norman Wehner, a local property owner active with the county landlord’s association, donated $500 plus purchased fundraiser event tickets worth $100. James Buckland, an executive with Artesian water that recently won County Commissioners’  approval for its takeover of county water and sewer facilities, bought Hodge fundraiser tickets worth $150.

 Most of Hodge’s donations were fairly small and many came from recognizable Republicans around the county. Business entities donating included Perrin Accounting of North East ($500 in donations), Priapi Gardens in Cecilton ($200 in ticket purchases); Kingfisher Environmental  Services, Inc., of Elkton ($200 in ticket purchases.) There were also fundraiser ticket purchases from some individuals involved in real estate, such as $250 in tickets bought by Harlan Williams and his wife.

    Hodge also received $2,500 from Republican clubs and $2,200 from the county’s GOP central committee. Del. Dick Sossi (R) bought a $25 fundraiser ticket, as did Republican commissioner 1st District candidate Jim Mullin. Commissioner Rebecca Demmler– a fellow Republican and the chief donor to Mullin’s campaign, giving him $2,500– anted up just $50 for Hodge fundraiser tickets.

   Which just goes to show: in politics, it isn’t always just about politics or party labels.

    We’re BAACK– Sorry to have taken a hiatus, but we were sick and tired,  and mostly sick. So since we don’t get paid for this,  it has taken us a while to report and write what our local “newspaper” with full time paid employees hasn’t: new campaign finance reports– filed 10/24/08– for local County Commissioner candidates. First, we’ll look at the 1st District Commissioner race between Republican Jim Mullin and Democrat Pamela H. Bailey.

     There’s not much to report on Pamela Bailey, who has not filed a detailed campaign finance report.  According to Cecil County election officials, she filed an affadavit saying she would not be raising or spending over $1,000, so she does not have to file a full report either on paper locally or online with the state Board of Elections.  In that case, we are surprised to see so many printed yard signs around her home base of Earleville. As she has stated to the public, she already has a full-time job as a secretary at the School of Technology and two part-time jobs. So who knows how much time she has to spare for fundraising, campaigning or actually serving as a County Commissioner.

    Without a serious opponent, Republican Jim Mullin of Earleville seems to be a shoo-in in the 1st District. But looking at his campaign finances, there is a very interesting angle: current County Commissioner Rebecca Demmler is his biggest donor. Could it be payback for the financial support Mullin gave her when she was running for County Commissioner in the last local election? Or could it be “pay it forward,” with Demmler donating to a pal she expects will vote along with her as a Commissioner?

    In his pre-general election report, Mullin states he has raised a total of $10,294 in individual, party committee and Political Action Committee donations.  He has also made a personal loan to his campaign of $8,550, which is counted as a separate line item in addition to the $10,294 in donations.

    But the telling category is the sub-set of individual and business donors, amounting to $7,094. Of that figure, current County Commissioner Rebecca Demmler made an outright donation of $2,000 on 5/03/08 and $500 on 9/15/08, for a total of $2,500– or nearly a third of all donations. Mullin also does not report individual identities of purchasers of tickets to his fundraisers– listing instead, a ”lump sum” of receipts from two campaign fundraisers, amounting to a total of $1,429. So there is no way of telling whose other donations might be included under this anonymous category.

    Mullin also received a $1,000 Political Action Committee (PAC) donation from the Cecil County Lodge #2, Fraternal Order of Police in Elkton, on 9/25/08. But drilling down in his expenditures, you find he made a “transfer” of funds  of $280 out of his campaign treasury previously, on 7/24/08, to the same FOP lodge, “including ticket purchases.” So the net FOP cash into the Mullin campaign amounts to $720. The ‘transfer’ from Mullin to the FOP occurred before the FOP donation to him.

    Mullin also received $2,200 from the county’s Republican Central Committee. (Funny, but we didn’t see a Mullin donation to fellow Republican Robert Hodge, who chairs the GOP central committee and is running in the 5th Commissioner district, beyond a puny $25 fundraiser ticket.)

   It is also telling who hasn’t yet donated to Mullin’s campaign. No members of the local Republican state legislative delegation whose districts coincide with Mullin’s local turf–Del. Michael Smigiel, Del. Dick Sossi or Mr. Moneybags State Sen. E.J. Pipkin– have donated to Mullin. That is probably because they know a sure thing when they see it and are saving their cash for their own  re-election efforts, or other Republican candidates with more contested campaigns this year.

   But we are struck by Commissioner Demmler’s investment of such a large amount in the sure-thing candidacy of Mullin.  Both Demmler and Mullin are Republicans, but more than party loyalty is at work here, as we will document subsequently. (Demmler has made a hiccup $50 ticket purchases donation to fellow Republican Robert Hodge, running in the 5th District Commissioner race, while her husband has donated lots more to 5th District Democratic opponent Sharon Weygand and he also made a donation to write-in candidate Tom McWilliams in that 5th District contest. More on that in our next posting.)