District 12B House of Delegates Endorsement

It will come as a surprise to no one that I am not a big fan of Delegate Liz Bobo. I’ve known Liz since she was Howard County Executive back in the late eighties and I can honestly say that I’ve rarely agreed with her politics. Her tenure as county executive was so awful that the voters denied her a second term, a rare distinction for that office.

When Liz settled into the District 12B House of Delegates seat in 1995 she pretty much fell off my radar. Even when I lived in her district, I basically considered her harmless because she was largely an ineffectual legislator. After all this time in Annapolis she still doesn’t head a major committee.

I no longer consider Liz to be harmless. Over the past four years she has worked to polarize the community, supported institutional mediocrity at the Columbia Association and lost touch with the county she once tried to lead.

After fifteen years it is time for an effectual leader in 12B and I believe that to be Bob Wheatley. Bob is a business man and an environmentalist. As someone who has spent many a day plying the waters of the Chesapeake Bay in a blow boat he has experienced firsthand the degradation of the largest estuary in the United States and the third largest in the world. People who sail share a personal connection with the eco system when they are out on the water. It is one thing to talk about the environment from our landlocked HoCo perspective but it is another thing entirely to get out there and to see where decades of political inaction in Annapolis have bought us.

I look for different things in my state house politicians than my county politicos. In the state house I want representatives who pay more than lip service to protecting our states greatest resource, the Chesapeake Bay. I also like to see business people in the general assembly who know what it is like to run a business in this state and what is needed to create and sustain jobs. I happen to think that Bob Wheatley is that guy.

Bob Wheatley for the House of Delegates in District 12B.