Tracking the Herd of
Elephants Handicapping a crowded field of Anne Arundel Republicans competing
for their party’s county executive nomination
In the high-stakes competition for Anne Arundel County executive, a herd
of elephants is racing to bring the county’s top job back to the GOP
after eight years of Democratic control.
The top elephant wins the right to race in the November general election
against Sheriff George Johnson or Dennis Callahan, Anne Arundel County’s
director of recreation and parks, the pair of contestants for the
Democratic nomination.
Between now and Primary Day Sept. 12, elephants and donkeys will be
traipsing through our neighborhoods, rapping on our doors and popping up
at carnivals and crab feasts. Hardly a week goes by when the county exec
wannabes aren’t speaking at a community forum, where you can grill them
yourself.
Chasing this herd, we’ve visited them on the job, followed them to
forums and fundraisers and listened as they trumpeted their virtues and
taken tusk to their foes.
Two in the jostling herd, Delegates David Boschert of Crownsville and
John Leopold of Pasadena, are colleagues, among the 20 members of the
Anne Arundel delegation to the General Assembly.
But in this legislative session, collegiality wore thin under the
cutting edge of traded accusations. Leopold accused candidate Boschert
of “blatantly false patterns of unethical behavior.” Boschert, for his
part, assailed candidate Leopold for meager fundraising.
Another aspirant, Phil Bissett, of Edgewater, regarded in some quarters
as the frontrunner, used to work the same General Assembly job. He’s had
the advantage in recent months of being a full-time campaigner after
giving up his job as director of MARC, Maryland’s commuter rail and bus
system.
Republicans four and five are educators. Tom Angelis, of Davidsonville,
earns his living at Baltimore’s Francis M. Wood High School.
“It’s an alternative school,” says Angelis, “the last stop before these
14- to 20-year-old students are asked to leave the system. Most are
fairly dysfunctional. It’s a challenge.”
School business occupies still another candidate. Greg Nourse of Glen
Bernie is the county’s assistant school superintendent for business
services. He’s viewed as a long shot, hoping to parlay skill in managing
a single — albeit huge — county department into a shot at administering
the whole county.
Four years ago, just 25 percent of Anne Arundel’s registered Republicans
voted when Bissett topped Angelis for the GOP nomination. This time
around, with no Democratic incumbent, insiders are predicting a bigger
turnout of the 117,000-plus registered Republicans.
Bob Duckworth, Anne Arundel County circuit court clerk and a Republican
who considered making the race, said that he believes that none of the
candidates is the clear leader, “though some people would like to say
otherwise.”
Here’s Bay Weekly’s first look a the GOP field.
Phil
Bissett
‘Winning his party’s primary once has given Phil Bissett, left, endless
energy and dreams.’
‘Tickling’ Past Supporters
Bissett, a veteran political operative who’s appeared on the ballot
every four years since 1994, has a yen for elected office.
Good thing, because the Hatch Act — which restricts the political
activity of government employees who work in federally funded programs —
made him choose between the job he had and the one he wants.
Having lost one high-stakes race because he admittedly “got complacent
and lazy,” the 49-year-old Bissett has vowed never to make that mistake
again.
Now, campaigning is his full-time job, which, according to his way of
thinking, has given him an early edge.
He’s run for the job before successfully — at the primary level. In
2002, Bissett won the Republican nomination, capturing near 64 percent
of the vote in a two-man race against Tom Angelis. But he lost the job
to incumbent Democrat Janet Owens.
This time, Bissett jumped in early and enthusiastically, declaring his
candidacy in January of 2005, 20 months before the election, and
offically filing on January 4, 2006.
“As a member of the General Assembly, I often wore a black-and-white
shirt [signifying] I was a referee. I don’t want to be the referee any
more; I want to be the coach,” Bissett said. “And the coach’s job is to
bring everybody together and make a plan work.”
For this race, Bissett secured a professional volunteer campaign
manager, Diane Rey, and works with a polling firm, Gonzales Research &
Marketing Strategies, both of Annapolis. They paper the press with
e-mails and lure them to briefings.
Then there’s the volunteer Bissett Brigade. “We’ve got a lot of people
out there — maybe 200,” Rey says, “because they believe in Phil.”
Everywhere Bissett goes — some 8,000 campaign miles thus far, by his
calculation — he hauls a mobile billboard proclaiming his candidacy
behind his bright blue Jeep Liberty.
Most days, Bissett says, he spends the hours between 2 and 5pm knocking
on doors. What people see is a smooth operator who could have been sent
out by a casting office. He’s got the kind of average good looks that
work for late-night television hosts: a smile with a hint of arrogance
and a shoulder seemingly cocked from the weight of the chip it carries.
He likes to express his conclusion aphoristically. For instance, his
plan for education focuses on “the three Rs: Respect teachers; Rebuild
communications; and Restore autonomy in the classroom.”
He’s got a slogan: Live here, Learn here, Earn Here.
It sounds glib, but Bissett will talk issues till the cows come home.
Meeting the county Elephant Club on an early Thursday morning, he
traveled from bond ratings to school bus schedules.
And he’s got money. Campaign finance statements earlier this year show
that he built the second-richest fund thus far, drawing on the widest
diversity of contributors. Between announcing in 2005 and filing in
January 2006, he raised $140,000, He entered the election year with
close to $70,000 in his campaign account.
Bissett carries the baggage of losing the county’s top job once. And
overall, he’s lost as many races as he’s won, including his General
Assembly seat in 1998.
His history of winning jobs by political appointment is another
two-sided coin. His appointment to the General Assembly was a reward for
volunteering his way up the Republican Party ladder.
Then, when Robert Ehrlich’s election as governor in 2002 gave the
Republicans jobs to fill, Bissett benefited from a series of political
appointments. From 2003 to May 2005, he worked at the Department of
Natural Resources, the Motor Vehicle Administration and finally MARC,
earning raises as well as administrative experience to build his case
for this race for an administrative job.
But Bissett earned a reputation, too: as a hired gun because of his link
to political firings in Department of Natural Resources — and one with a
hair trigger.
Bissett’s the only one of this herd without a college degree. By the
same token, voters could be drawn to his background as a working man — a
former Giant Foods warehouse man and Teamster.
“Winning his party’s primary once has given Phil Bissett endless energy
and dreams,” says Dan Nataf, director of the Center for the Study of
Local Issues at Anne Arundel Community College. “So for him it’s a
tickler problem. A whole lot of Republicans voted for him once. His
thinking must be ‘if I can get my campaign organization started early
and get to registered primary voters … they’ll give me another chance
and I’ll do it this time’.”
John
Leopold
‘I’m bipartisan. I’d be an Independent if I could.’
Banking on Victory
When tall, lean John Leopold dresses up as Abe Lincoln, he achieves two
goals: he pays tribute to the most revered Republican ever and makes
political hay out of his somber appearance.
Leopold’s face ought to be the most familiar in the race, though many
would say it’s not. He’s stood on well-traveled, rush-hour street
corners waving his white-on-red Leopold sign. He’s walked the streets of
Anne Arundel County for 35 months. By his count, he’s knocked on 15,000
doors in neighborhoods from deep Southern Anne Arundel to his home turf
in Pasadena.
“It’s the same strategy I’ve used since 1968 when I was first elected,”
says Leopold, 63. “And every election, the same personal contact is the
spine of my campaign.”
Door-to-door campaigning has served Leopold well. In 30 years, he’s won
nine of 12 elections. He went into politics in Hawaii, where he’d
studied Chinese in graduate school, rising from school board through
House to Senate in 10 years.
In Anne Arundel County — where he finally settled— he’s been elected to
the House of Delegates five times. Twice, he was the top vote getter
among Anne Arundel County’s delegates. In 2000, he was named National
Republican Legislator of the Year.
His reputation is that of an independent rather than party ideologue.
“I’m bipartisan,” he says of his approach. “I work with both Democrats
and Republicans. I would be an Independent if could.”
That independent streak showed up in the recent General Assembly
session, when he helped Democrats override Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s veto of
a Baltimore school bill.
“Creative thinker” is how Leopold styles himself, and that, he says, is
part of the reason he’s running to be county executive.
“This is a harmonic convergence,” he said, “to use my talent and
creativity when it’s needed by taking things I’ve done at the state
level and translating them to the grass-roots level.”
What he’s done, Leopold says, is extend technology scholarships beyond
high schools to students already in college. He’s created a state-local
payback for radium remediation in private wells. He’s capped community
noise levels and funded more noise inspectors. He’s supported
scholarships for the children of fallen firefighters and law-enforcement
officers. All touch-you-where-you-live laws.
Watch him greet a stranger who opens the door or work a room where he
seems to get around to everybody and you’ll see that he seems to relish
human touch.
“I ask them about themselves: Where do you work? Is there any issue you
care passionately about? So when I meet a person, they believe I’m
somebody who will listen, and if they have a problem I will call them,
and I seem to have the ability to help them,” he says. “I convey that
sense.”
In campaign finance, Leopold took an early lead in the race of
elephants. He began the year with $450,000 in the bank. Nobody else came
close.
Leopold, who has been successful with investments, is by far the biggest
backer of his own campaign, having loaned himself half of his war chest
to fund his aspirations.
Yet inside his party and out, handicappers expect this elephant to pull
up short.
Fueling speculation, he has not formally declared his candidacy.
He says they’re wrong. Even when the door to a state Senate seat opened
with Phil Jimeno’s retirement announcement early this month, Leopold
says he bypassed the temptation to run for another seat he has coveted.
For the three months Leopold was occupied in the General Assembly, he
cut back on his neighborhood visits. He suspended fundraising — while
trumpeting the fact that his less well-bankrolled opponent, Boschert,
did not.
Now he’s back politicking full time, but his campaign seems a
one-man-band. He has a webpage, but no supporting team. His advisors,
including former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Holt and Recorder of Wills George
Nutwell — are unofficial. He says that he’ll extend his reach “as I
round third base” with direct mail and telephone campaigning.
So far, from financing to campaigning, Leopold’s independence goes so
deep that he looks like a loner. He alone among the candidates is
unmarried; he alone has not been a parent to kids growing up and going
to school in Anne Arundel County. Distanced from the governor, he’s even
a loner in Maryland Republican Party politics.
“It’s hard to do shoe leather county wide,” Nataf said. “You can’t do it
all by yourself. You need an organization of some sort. That could be
his Achilles heel.”
David
Boschert
‘To lead a county as its executive, one must first have served in it.’
Accepting the ‘Mantle of Leadership’
Dave Boschert, 58, is a big guy whose smile transforms his long face and
puts a twinkle in his eye.
Like Leopold, he is giving up his seat in the House of Delegates, where
he’s served two terms, beginning in 1999.
“It’s a sacrifice worth taking for people of the county,” he told Bay
Weekly. “I love this county, and the time for me to move forward and
accept the mantle of leadership is now.”
Boschert, a banker and businessman, says his previous employment at
Arundel Center sets him apart. From 1979 to 1982, he chaired the busy
county board of zoning appeals. As a Democrat, he won two terms on the
County Council, representing the county’s west-central District 4 from
1984 to 1994. For his last two years, he chaired the council. He’s the
only Republican to have won election to county office.
“To lead a county as its executive, one must first have served in it,”
he says.
Born in Annapolis, now living in Crownsville, he’s lived in the county
all his life and earned his first college degree from Anne Arundel
Community College. He was a volunteer firefighter in the county. He was
named the Annapolis Anne Arundel Chamber of Commerce’s legislator of the
year in 2003.
“We’re all in the Anne Arundel family,” he likes to tell audiences in
his mellifluous cadence. “I have a vision and a plan, but there won’t be
change unless we as a group work together.”
If Leopold goes it alone, Boschert talks of himself as part of a
collective. Of his decision to run for executive, for example, he says,
“People started asking me to consider running as someone who has had
experience in local government.”
He also points to his support from another voter bloc: the active-duty
and retired military community.
A combat Marine veteran of Vietnam, Boschert is the only GOP candidate
in the race who has served in the military.
“It’s important to have people who have served,” he says, “with Anne
Arundel growing in the west and Fort Meade and the National Security
Agency.”
One of his campaign promises is locating a veteran’s home on the
Crownsville Hospital Campus.
The growing military presence in the county’s west is part of Boschert’s
advantage in the race for county executive. He comes from a Republican
stronghold, likely a reason he renounced the Democratic Party. Now, he
calls himself a “common sense conservative.”
In his District 33, all three current delegates and the senator are
Republicans.
“He’s in a treasure-trove district,” Nataf said. “There are more
Republican votes there than in the north for John Leopold or the south
for Phil Bissett. If they all rise to same level county wide, Boschert
ends up with a few more votes.”
Listen to Boschert speak confidently of the pending “Boschert
Administration,” you’d think he was about to be anointed county
executive without even running.
Yet he’s tasted defeat, as in 1994, running as a Democrat for the
General Assembly. He folded his tent in another race, a 2003 bid for a
seat in Congress, in deference to Bob Duckworth.
In this race, Boschert’s campaign is still coming together. His business
cards still have him a legislator; his webpage won’t be up until late in
the month. His issue papers are works in progress.
Money has also been thin. He had $14,000 earlier this year. Yet in a
fundraising appeal letter he mailed to Republicans in early March, with
the Legislature in session, he linked his candidacy to other
Republicans’ inability to raise money.
Leopold contends that it smacked of desperation and questioned the
ethics of raising money during the General Assembly session.
Boschert, like others in the race, probably understands the premium
voters place on ethics these days.
Honesty, integrity and ethical rectitude are the qualities voters most
prize, according to the spring survey of attitudes in Anne Arundel
Community College’s Center for the Study of Local Issues.
Tom
Angelis
‘I’m a good manager. No other Republican in the race has led an Anne
Arundel County department.’
‘A Sign From God’
One of the books Tom Angelis’ high school English students read this
semester was Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff.
Angelis, 59, hopes his stuff is right as he aims for yet another career
change.
Back in September of 2001, when a lot of outlooks changed, Angelis was
ready for a new path.
Besides teaching, he’d been a D.C. policeman, a Senate aide, a salesman
and the county parks administrator.
Maybe he’d run for the legislature, he thought. Then, with the kind of
illumination that makes you slap your forehead in wonder, he said to
himself, I’d make a great county executive.
For one reason and another — not the least was having a son across the
street from Ground Zero on 9/11 — he postponed his announcement.
Finally, with the year almost done, he says, “I talked to God.
“God, I’m not asking you to help me win,” he said. “But I need a sign. I
want to know I’m doing the right thing.”
His sign came on December 31, in a phone call from a friend and
supporter who, he said, had read his mind.
“Are you running for county executive?” she asked.
“I was stunned,” said the former police sergeant. Her prescience was his
sign.
That 2002 Republican primary was Angelis’ first political race. He ran
against the odds: “I started late, without name recognition and I didn’t
spend a lot,” he says. Neither did his party anoint him.
He lost to Phil Bissett by 8,015 of the 28,977 votes cast. No surprise.
But Tom Angelis was no longer an unknown; he was in the running.
Angelis insists that he’s going to win this time. But to do so, he’ll
need to make his candidacy official: Like Leopold, he’s not formally
filed to make the race.
In many other ways, his campaign seems a work in progress. He had almost
no money on hand earlier this year and, like Boschert, has no home page
to visit. Even his Wikipedia biography is a stump. His fundraisers —
like one in March at Homestead Gardens — are family affairs, with his
79-year-old mother the official greeter.
Nonetheless, the affable Angelis is loved by more than his mother, a
reason that he is not written off in this robust field.
“I’d be proud to call him county executive,” said Bob Duckworth in
introducing Angelis — though not endorsing him — at Homestead Gardens.
Count Angelis’ assets, and you start with confidence. He’ll look you in
the eye as he enumerates why he’ll be “the best manager the county ever
had.”
Point one, chalked up by his talking fingers, is that his “whole life’s
geared toward being a great administrator.”
There’s another art in making the human connection that keeps people
listening while you talk. Salesman and teacher, Angelis has both down
pat.
“I’m a good manager,” he says. “No other Republican in the race has led
an Anne Arundel County department.”
In this field, Angelis’ two years as director of the Anne Arundel County
Department of Recreation and Parks — he was appointed by county
executive John Gary, Janet Owens’ predecessor — is a tangible asset.
So is his human connectivity.
That’s why listeners may say they’ve met a man they like and trust.
Listening at an early forum sponsored by Congregation Kol Ami was Bill
Weintraub, who before retirement was Angelis’ physician.
“He’s a straight guy,” said Weintraub. “I wish he weren’t a Republican.”
Tom Angelis is a plain man but not an uneducated one. He’s earned three
degrees, the most recent — a master’s of education at UMBC last year.
Does the candidate who received a sign from God have a prayer?
“He must have felt he ran strong enough against Phil Bissett in 2002,”
Nataf said, “that if, in a five-way race, he can just hold those 10,000
votes, that’s enough.”
Greg
Nourse
‘I can do the job that has to be done to make sure the county doesn’t go
down the toilet.’
I’ve done 98 Percent of the Work a County Executive Does
Greg Nourse is the maiden elephant in the race. With no political past
beyond community association president, the 58-year-old school systems
administrator is the bureaucrat’s candidate.
In the category of charisma, he’s not an Ehrlich, O’Malley or even a
Bissett. He works a room like his shoes are pinching. His campaign
manager is a novice, and his campaign is low on ready money: $566 at
last filing, the remainder of $2,743 raised.
He’s got a web page, but except for the photo of his dog, reading it is
like doing homework.
Why is this man running? Because, he says, “I can do the job that has to
be done to make sure the county doesn’t go down the toilet. I’ve got
eight years left to work before retiring. I want to do something to help
the county.”
Nourse — a transplanted Illinoisian — has a fairly diverse experience of
life in the fast-growing county, having lived 10 years in Crofton, six
in Arnold and the last year in Glen Burnie. He’s been active and held
office in his community associations. His two children and grandchildren
have been educated in county public schools. Still,
that’s not much there to set him apart.
“I’ve spent my whole life in public employment,” says Nourse, who
buttresses his quarter-century’s experience with a master’s degree in
public administration.
He’s spent plenty of county money in a quarter century, 11 with the
schools, 10 with the Anne Arundel County Budget Office and five with
county Recreation and Parks.
As the county school system’s assistant superintendent for Business and
Management Services, Nourse spends $160 million of our tax dollars a
year, with $500 million more to spend on capital improvements over the
next five years.
Clearly, he knows how to break a dollar, and many more, into pennies,
nickels and quarters before dividing them among competing interests,
even though bureaucratic experience has never exposed him to the
bargains, trades and personalities of insider politics.
Beyond money, Nourse has 11 non-instructional departments in his
kingdom, with 2,700 employees whose jobs include feeding 74,000
students, transporting and cleaning up after them.
“I deal with sexual assault, bus accidents, bad teachers and economic
development on a daily basis,” he said. “I’ve done 98 percent of the
work for this county you want a county executive to do.”
But will the math add up on election day?
“His problem is that no one’s ever voted for him,” said Nataf. “He’s got
no track record of running a successful campaign, very little money and
no natural constituency.”
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