Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) is back on the warpath, launching two television ads that attack the Maryland General Assembly.
The ads are very reminiscent of the surgical attacks Hogan ran against his Democratic challenger, Benjamin T. Jealous, in 2018.
The ads come from one of the governor’s political entities, Change Maryland Action Fund. One 30-second spot, called “Another Life,” accuses lawmakers of bottling up the governor’s anti-crime agenda.
The ad intersperses pictures of crime scenes, Democratic lawmakers, and Hogan in the State House and on the streets of Baltimore. “This is a crisis,” a narrator intones.
“Contact your legislator. Tell them to pass the governor’s crime bill, now. Because every day we don’t — another life is lost.”
The second ad, called “Crushing,” accuses Democratic lawmakers of “crushing our recovery under the weight of $2.6 billion in massive tax hikes.”
That’s a reference to a plan floated by some House Democratic leaders to drop the sales tax by a penny but extend it to many services that have not been subject to the tax. That proposal will be the subject of a public hearing in Annapolis on Monday.
Hogan’s ad even takes a gratuitous swipe at his predecessor, former Gov. Martin J. O’Malley (D), flashing O’Malley’s image on the screen and saying the Democrats’ sales tax proposal is “the largest tax hike in Maryland’s history. Yep, that’s larger than all the taxes under this guy. Combined.”
The ad concludes by saying that Hogan’s victory in 2014 represented change. “Don’t let this $2.6 billion tax hike destroy it.”
Click here to see the crime ad.
Click here to see the tax ad.
Josh Kurtz
Founding editor
Founding Editor Josh Kurtz is a veteran chronicler of Maryland politics and government. He began covering the State House in 1995 for The Gazette newspapers, and has been writing about state and local politics ever since. He was an editor at Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, for eight years, and for eight years was the editor of E&E Daily, which covers energy and environmental policy on Capitol Hill. For 6 1/2 years Kurtz wrote a weekly column on state politics for Center Maryland and has written for several other Maryland publications as well. Kurtz regularly gives speeches and appears on TV and radio shows to discuss Maryland politics.
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