Editorial

Year of the Politician

The Chinese call this the Year of the Dog, but Marylanders can rightly refer to 2006 as the Year of the Politician. Between now and November, we in the Free State will be besieged by office-seekers of every size, shape and aspiration in a full-court-press political year.

At Bay Weekly, we intend to deliver election information that helps you cut through the confusion to the action.

In this issue, we bring you a mini-interview with Doug Duncan, the Montgomery County Executive who asserts to us that no matter what they say about his slow-starting campaign for governor, he’s an underdog who finishes first.

Last week we featured two ought-to-be laws that would make us breathe better in Maryland, by cutting down smog and political chicanery.

Two weeks ago, we presented veteran Rep. Steny Hoyer in his own words — “unfiltered,” as the politicians like to say. This year, even the powerbrokers must submit to job re-interviews.

Before that we profiled Richard Hug, Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s money man and a busy fellow indeed given the certainty of this being Maryland’s most expensive gubernatorial campaign ever.

Stay tuned for a series of pieces about this year’s crop of county candidates in Anne Arundel and Calvert counties and beyond.

And we won’t forget the players in other races for Congress and a U.S. Senate campaign where just about everybody wants the seat of retiring Sen. Paul Sarbanes. Yes folks, the Republicans have a real shot here.

In our hand-crafted style, we want to tell you who these candidates are and what they want to do for us — and to us.

We’ll try to get beyond the canned slogans and the memorized stump speeches to train our sights on how these starry-eyed folks view the plight of Chesapeake Bay and its people.

We plan to separate the issues that matter to our families and our well-being and those that don’t, such as the inconsequential ruckus in Annapolis over defining marriage. We figure that if you need a politician to tell you what marriage is, you may need more counsel than we at Bay Weekly can offer.

So aspiring leaders, get ready to hear from Bay Weekly.

Readers, we ask you to tell us what you want us to ask this fresh crop of wannabes. Or in a letter to the editor, ask a question or two yourself.

For as they might well put it at the dawn of the Chinese New Year, it’s the Year of the Doggone Politician.