CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Nov. 16, 2009 – 4:46 a.m.
Freshman Navigates Different Shores
By John McArdle, CQ-Roll Call
EASTON, Md. — They call it “book club” but the only pages that get read are the ones on the drinks menu.
The all-male group — they devised the “book club” title as a cover in case their wives and children ask where they’ve been — is made up of friends from this small Eastern Shore town who gather most weekday nights at Legal Spirits Tavern to blow off steam after a long day of work.
As the half-dozen or so club attendees gathered around the bar the night of Nov. 11 and sipped their drinks amid the eclectic decor of stuffed wild game heads and portraits of famous gangsters, the topic of conversation drifted to the recent House passage of a health care overhaul bill and, more specifically, Rep. Frank Kratovil Jr. ’s vote against it.
The general consensus seemed to be that the Maryland Democrat did right by his conservative constituents in opposing the bill. But these men remain wary of their freshman congressman and the party he represents.
“I sent [Kratovil] an e-mail,” said Steve Wheeler, a local entrepreneur and founder of the Web site capitalismordie.com, who was drinking dark rum on the rocks with two limes. “I said I intended to vote [for the Republican candidate in 2010]. However, if you’re truly going to be fiscally conservative, you could earn my vote.”
In a district that went decidedly for Sen. John McCain , R-Ariz., in the presidential race and had been represented by a Republican for nearly two decades, Kratovil is going to have to win over more than a few conservative voters — and not alienate his Democratic base — if he hopes to return for a second term.
Kratovil is, in many ways, still introducing himself to his constituents in his sprawling 3,700-square-mile district, which includes all of Maryland’s Eastern Shore and sections of the western shore.
Parts of the 1st District lie less than a half-hour drive from Washington, D.C., but most of its residents feel far removed from the world of Capitol Hill.
“I hope he doesn’t get swallowed up there in D.C.,” said Queenstown resident and Vietnam War veteran Jerry Studuck, a self-described Democrat who attended a Veterans Day event in Federalsburg where Kratovil made an appearance. “I hope he doesn’t get caught up in the cliques down there.”
Kratovil, 41, is a former Baltimore public defender whose only previous political experience was winning the Queen Anne’s County state’s attorney post in 2002 and 2006. On the campaign trail last year, he touted his fiscally conservative views, and after coming to Capitol Hill, he joined the Blue Dog Coalition of conservative Democrats.
Kratovil’s Republican opponents view his affiliation with the group as little more than an attempt to find political cover in a tough district. They point to his votes earlier this year for the final version of the stimulus bill (PL 111-5) and for environmental cap-and-trade legislation as evidence of where his heart truly lies.
“He had to ask [Speaker] Nancy [Pelosi] for permission to vote [no] on the health care bill,” said Wayne McNeir, a Marine Corps veteran who served in the color guard at a Veterans Day service at the Crownsville Veterans Cemetery, where Kratovil made brief remarks.
But not everyone is as cynical of Kratovil’s motives.
Crownsville resident M. Hall Worthington, who came to the ceremony with a chest full of medals from his 35 years of service in the Army and National Guard, praised the congressman for voting against the bill. Worthington, a Republican.
“I kiss him for [voting against the bill] ... Anybody I talk to expresses the fact that it’s only going to hurt,” Worthington said.
While he’s earned mixed reviews from conservatives, Kratovil’s no vote on the health care bill has been panned in some Democratic circles. Last week, representatives from Eastern Shore branches of the NAACP met with him to see what they could do to nudge him toward voting for the final version of the bill.
Kratovil said he’s undecided about how he’ll vote if the bill returns to the House floor after going through a House-Senate conference.
“Everybody on so many of these debates comes to the table already decided where they are going simply based on ideology,” Kratovil said. “They come and say vote against it regardless of what it is or vote for it regardless of what it is.
“Ultimately, substance does matter,” he said. “If I believe the bill substantively addresses the problems that it seeks to address, if I’m convinced the good outweighs the bad and it moves us forward, I’ll vote for it.”
Local vs. National Geography
At a gathering of the Mid-Shore League of Republican Women, GOP state Sen. Andy Harris — who came about 3,000 votes shy of beating Kratovil in 2008 and is running again next year — offered a theory about why the congressman came out against the health care bill a day before the vote was scheduled to take place.
Harris, a third-term state senator who is being touted this cycle by the National Republican Congressional Committee, said he believes Kratovil was chastened by Republican gains in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections.
“It is just striking that he took three months to figure [his vote] out and he figured it out 36 hours after the votes in Virginia and New Jersey,” Harris said. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Harris said time is working in his favor as he looks toward next year’s rematch.
Along with a better national political environment than the one Republicans faced in 2008, “now [voters] actually know what Frank Kratovil’s record is,” Harris said. “This evens up the race. Last time it was a little one-sided. It was someone who actually had a record against someone who made a lot of promises. This time it’s two people with records, and I think those records are starkly different on the issue of fiscal responsibility.”
But Harris may still face some of the same problems that hobbled him in 2008.
Former Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest — whom Harris beat in a nasty primary and who went on to endorse Kratovil in the general election — is already getting involved in the 2010 race. He sent out a fundraising letter for Kratovil in mid-September.
And Harris continues to have an Eastern Shore problem.
He hails from Cockeysville, near Baltimore, and his western shore roots don’t sit well with some on the other side of the district, where the majority of voters reside.
Harris, who works as anesthesiologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, has concentrated more of his campaign team on the Eastern Shore and has begun working part-time at Eastern Shore medical facilities. He spent part of his Veterans Day working at the Memorial Hospital at Easton, and made sure to mention it in his remarks to the GOP women’s group.
Back at the Legal Spirits Tavern, Wheeler explained that Harris is perceived “as a western shore entity.”
Like Gilchrest, Kratovil is viewed as someone who knows and cares for issues that are near and dear to the Eastern Shore community, such as the environment.
Wheeler said he continues to struggle with the issue of “who represents your local concerns and who represents your national concerns. ... I would have no difficulty having [Kratovil] as a state delegate.”
CQ Politics rates the race a Tossup.
Comments
The underlying tone of the article suggests that should "western entity" Harris again become the nominee, Kratovil, with his apparently stronger eastern connections, would have a slight edge, at least were the '10 election a fairly neutral one at the local level.
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