Post # 395 – Pollsters are telling Marylanders they are unhappy. The economy and politics aren’t bringing out the smiling faces.

Years ago, on a bathroom wall a friend of mine told me he saw that someone wrote “apathy kills”, underneath it someone wrote, “who cares”. This may explain how voters may end up feeling about their election choices and where their future is in the state of Maryland. Voter turnout for the Maryland primary for most of the state was awful.

There are two types of people in the workplace when the economy is bad. The unhappy people will talk all the time about wanting to leave but don’t leave. The other group are people that don’t talk about leaving and one day all of a sudden, they’re gone. They moved, quit a job or were laid off and left quietly.

A poll conducted by Zenith Research for the Blended Public Affairs Partnership with Perry Jacobson found that slightly more than half of voters describe themselves as really struggling financially or just getting by. Voters in the majority expressed concern about being able to pay future bills over the next year. Voters in this survey want two things expressed in this survey, that Governor Moore to do something about the rising electric and utility bills along with creating jobs. (Ironically the first part of this survey Dan Cox loved and praised, but when the second part of the survey was done about how he was polling compared to Governor Moore, he criticized the methodology of the same survey he had only praised the day before.)

Voters are concerned about affordability. Those surveyed want increased taxes on the wealthy and on anything they feel that does not touch their lives. But political leaders should be scared by the primary turnout. That should be a batsignal. The voters are unhappy because they chose to stay home and not participate in the process. Dan Cox won the republican primary for governor and got about 75,000 fewer votes than he did four years ago. These uncompetitive elections and sense of apathy may keep a lot of people home in November. The redistricting constitutional amendment referendum that’s on the ballot may put turnout even more up in the air.

If you go down to Ocean City over the summer, one thing you’ll see is a lot less people. Many Marylanders can no longer afford that traditional family vacation down at the ocean. Frankly it’s cheaper for that family to take a similar vacation and go to the Carolinas where it’s much more affordable. Years ago, I was deciding between a vacation in Myrtle Beach or Ocean City and discovered that despite the extra 5-hour drive each way, it was cheaper for me to go to South Carolina than drive less than 3 hours to Ocean City and spend the week there.

Leaving a state is easier said than done and people can say I want to go to another state but there’s always a tradeoff. People talk about how cheap it is to live in West Virginia, but if you want to live in a state that’s always ranked between 45 and 50 in a variety of economic and quality life issues well that’s on you.

Marylanders don’t talk about moving to Virginia because they even know that has become more expensive. While people may say I’m moving to Pennsylvania, it depends where you end up in Pennsylvania. What is the economic trade off swap and commute if you are still working in Maryland.

Then there’s the people who talk about moving to Delaware. Yes, there’s no sales tax but if you have any type of snow, you are stranded for days until the sun melts it. Also, there’s an expression people use on the Delmarva Peninsula, “you cross the bridge for healthcare”.

People may talk about moving out of Maryland, but when they have a health care situation they get back to the I95 corridor real fast. Years ago, I saw my rheumatologist at Johns Hopkins, and he was running about 15 minutes late. When he came in, he apologized but explained that the patient he had just left had a few more detailed questions. He was coming in from Texas for his medical care. I was more than understanding because I felt privileged that I’m getting my medical care out of Johns Hopkins.

I’ve had more people tell me more horror stories about medical care on Delmarva than any other place. It’s not incompetency, it’s just that it’s a smaller population and over the last 10 years they have started to build up a lot of medical care on the peninsula. A few years ago, my wife was having dental pain so she started contacting dentist in the area to see if someone could do something about this. She called a few dentists, and everyone said either we’re not taking new patients or it’s a three month wait. She bought some stuff to deal with her cap, and when she returned from vacation saw her dentist. I had a doctor once tell me don’t get stuck on Delmarva if you have a major healthcare problem. (About a little over a year ago I had a medical incident in the middle of nowhere Nevada and got great medical care at a rural hospital.)

Affordability is a major campaign issue for Democrats. It started last year with the mayor of New York City race when Mamdani preached it and the message struck home. Right now, people feel Maryland has become unaffordable. People enjoyed that eight-year tax break under Governor Larry Hogan and not getting nickeled and dimed to death. In the last four years a lot more taxes and fees have been raised, frustrating a lot of people including myself. People want to pay their fair share of taxes, but with the rising BG&E rates people don’t feel they are paying their fair share of anything. People see BG& E as part of the affordability problem, a faceless corporation the politicians love getting campaign contributions from. No one ever brags about getting campaign contributions from the nuclear power industry. In January my BG&E bill increase from the previous January, and I was out of town for two weeks.

The governor can blame President Trump for some of these cuts to the federal workforce that have been devastating to the state of Maryland. But citizens don’t want to see you pointing the finger at Trump, they want to see you solve the problem. They may rationally know it’s Trump’s fault, but they know Trump won’t fix it so they’re depending on Governor Moore to go fix it. That’s reality. Bill Clinton was a master politician and when he said I feel your pain you felt like he really did.

Economics is a driving force in any political campaign but it’s also a driving force in people’s personal lives. I had a friend of mine about 20 years ago who was thinking of moving to the state of Maryland. He came down here one weekend and looked at the housing market and discovered that he could not buy as good of a house in Western New York that he currently had as one that he was looking at in Maryland. He turned down the job offer in Maryland and stayed in Western New York. Do the economics.

Maryland is a high-cost state. Things like The Blueprint are causing a lot of financial anxiety in Annapolis. How is the state of Maryland going to pay for it long term, and no one has come up with a real good answer. In my conversation with the Maryland Speaker of the House Joseline Pena-Melnik on Wednesday, she discussed that everything is on the table regarding taxes and cuts.

That’s all well and good, the election in many ways doesn’t matter because Cox is going to lose big time, but people still want to hear Governor Moore and Dan Cox say in specific language what they are going to do regarding the state economy.