The hotly contested race between former Governor Larry Hogan and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks continues to be a scorcher. Which candidate deserves your vote?
In short, her name is Angela. She grew up in a middle class family and earned her way to the top. Compare her Wikipedia article to Larry Hogan’s and you will see the stark contrast. Hogan was born into big business/politics and Alsobrooks had to earn every goal that she obtained. That’s the kind of person who truly understands what the average American is going through right now during these stressful economic times and that’s someone who deserves to be Maryland’s next U.S. Senator.
As the old idiom goes, “actions speak louder than words”. If this were the year 2017, Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr. would be receiving the endorsement. He had a stellar record up until that point in time and then he blew it the finally year.
How? First, his administration had to settle a lawsuit after they were sued for blocking constituents from his Facebook page. That was strike one. Strike two came after he signed the Extreme Risk Protective Order bill (also known as red flag) into law. While I agree, the law does keep people safer, it blatantly violates Marylanders’ civil rights. Security can never supersede freedom in the USA, per Supreme Court case law.
The names Gary J. Willis and Duncan Lemp are still fresh on my mind. Names that Larry Hogan never dared speak publicly. He is partly responsible for those men’s deaths, along with former Chief of Staff Roy McGrath. Whatever happened to those secret recordings of the former Governor, anyway? Will they ever be released to the public? Will the FBI agent who killed McGrath ever have his or her name released? So many questions…as a side note, the “Ryan C. Cooper” books are a good read and are still available for sale on Amazon.
Strike three came after I was banned from his two Facebook pages in October 2018. This was after the ACLU lawsuit was settled in April of 2018. I voted for Larry Hogan twice and this is how he repays me? At that point, I made it a mission to become his number one critic. At one point, I attempted to organize a protest at this inauguration ceremony, but handgun toting taxpayer funded Maryland State Police officers paid me a visit in an effort to intimidate me into not following through. Their excuse for questioning me was that my words were threatening towards the Governor.
A threat to his power? Perhaps. A threat to the MSP officers’ egos because they were labeled cowards for not arresting a law breaking politician? Yes. But I was and still am certainly not a physical threat to any politician. I may have very strong opinions, but that’s not illegal in the USA. I’ll save the rest of that story for my upcoming biography about Larry Hogan.
It doesn’t end there, of course. Larry Hogan, Jr. cemented his place in Maryland’s history books with his COVID-19 hysterics. While South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem took a measured approach, even insisting that the power to shut down schools and businesses be relegated to the legislature and health secretary. Larry was stupid enough to think we could outrun an airbourne virus. Stupid enough to think that allowing Wal-Mart and Home Depot to be opened at 50% capacity was a lesser risk than a small mom and pop business.
Despite Maryland Constitution law to the contrary, Larry Hogan single-handedly violated countless Marylanders’ rights. He unfairly treated so-called non-essential business owners and employees and ultimately failed to protect Marylanders from COVID-19. In other words, he made a bad situation even worse. We’re still feeling the effects of his bone-headed decisions to this day.
Throughout the course of the Lockdown Era, I harshly criticized former Governor Hogan’s words and actions. Everything finally came to a head when I paid the Maryland State House a visit in August 2020 after being ignored time and time again by Hogan’s Communications Director Michael (Mike) Ricci and Deputy Communications Director Kata Hall Burke. I documented everything on video and as a result of my actions, six Maryland Capitol Police officers were called to the scene to run a background check on me and to ask why I was there. They had zero interest in investigating Governor Hogan’s crimes.
Look, I won’t fault the police for being ignorant of the law. The ultimate power, at the end of the day, lied in then Maryland State Attorney General Brian Frosh to charge Larry Hogan with violations of the Maryland and U.S. Constitutions. Frosh seemingly had zero interest in doing so. Prosecutors and judges have far too much power in this country, but I digress.
Back to the focus of this story, which is why Angela Alsobrooks deserves your vote over Larry Hogan. While she is guilty of COVID-19 mismanagement in her own right, her opponent Larry Hogan was her enabler. He had the executive authority to stop her if he wanted to, but he didn’t. After all, he provided her plenty of ideas to continue with when Hogan relinquished power to local executive officials. The responsibility of COVID-19 mitigation efforts fell squarely on his shoulders and we should never forgive him for that.
After all, Angela wasn’t the one who spent hard earned tax dollars on defective test kits from South Korea. A scandal that was never properly addressed. Larry Hogan should have been subpoenaed and forced to testify in a court of law or in front of the Maryland legislature, but it never happened.
Governor Hogan proved himself to be a threat to democracy during the COVID-19 lockdown era. Democracies give “We the People” a voice and we were ignored/silenced. Hogan proved himself to not care about the average middle class Marylander. He knew that obese Marylanders were the ones being hospitalized with COVID infections, but he couldn’t bring himself to advocate for weight loss being a priority! I was obese myself during the year 2020 and still was passing the word along.
He proved himself to not be studied regarding the severe side effects of mRNA based vaccines, even though I and many others were replying to his Twitter posts! All Larry had to do was scroll down to the people responding to his messages, but he couldn’t be bothered to do that. Or for that matter, hire someone to do it. Oh wait, that’s Mike Ricci’s job and he was asleep at the wheel too. Communication is supposed to be a two-way street and Ricci was an abject failure, acting more as a Hogan campaign supporter than a Comms Director. Ironically, the Hogan for Senate campaign is exactly who Ricci is working for at the time of this article’s publication.
Instead of holding town hall meetings (“virtual” or otherwise “socially distanced”) regarding his COVID-19 lockdown measures, Larry Hogan threatened citizens with imprisonment and fines. All the while the State Police and National Guard leaders stood by his side at the podium. The images during that time period still disgust me to this day. I still regret not driving down to Annapolis and using a high powered megaphone to disrupt his outdoor speeches. Opposing voices were desperately needed during that time period!
More recently during last week’s debate at Maryland Public Television, Larry couldn’t give straight answers to the debate moderators’ questions. Is this the kind of leadership that you want in the United States Senate? A wishy-washy, indecisive big businessman? A guy who wants to distract you from the real issues with his campaign ads regarding property tax evasion, that at some point before he left office should have been caught/red flagged by his administration’s tax auditors?
TIME exposed a new conflict of interest scandal last week as well. Something that Baltimore area media outlets without larger resources than the Baltimore Informer should have exposed, if not for all of that sweet campaign and political action committee advertising money rolling in.
This article could be a lot longer, but again I’ll save the further Hogan criticisms for the upcoming book. For me, this isn’t a difficult choice at all between these two candidates.
Don’t let Gary J. Willis, Duncan Lemp and Roy McGrath’s deaths be in vain. Don’t let a rich man north of Richmond fool you into thinking that he cares about the middle class. Angela Alsobrooks has officially received the Baltimore County Informer’s endorsement!
