Political Business

by Len Lazarick

April 2006



Good Crop of Candidates

Reporting on new candidates for office this month and attending several events reminded me how blessed we are in Howard County with the quality of our candidates and elected officials.

No kidding, that's not tongue-in-cheek. I really mean it.

Oh, there are a few bozos, and some people are plainly out of their depth - no, I'm not going to name names. You can pretty much figure that out after you read a few stories that make you say: "This guy/gal is an idiot."

Fortunately, most of our elected officials and the people who want to replace them are not idiots. Many are incredibly bright, accomplished in their own fields of endeavor, and, of course, some are incredibly ambitious.

I know many people put down politicians in general, but I think that is because so few people have actually had much personal contact with them.

Ah, but Lazarick, you say, the politicians have clearly hoodwinked you into believing they are sincere public servants, interested in the commonweal (that's "public good" for those of you expanding your vocabulary). Those politicians lie all the time, you say.

Actually, I've found that politicians don't lie much more than the average business person or professional. We all spin the truth in our own favor (let me know if that's not true in your case - I'll send you the sainthood application). We all dissemble, tell half-truths or engage in probably the most dangerous kind of deceit - self-deception.

Few politicians have actually lied to my face. One of these, from another county, is now under indictment on another matter. Most of the lies involved embarrassing personal matters, like drinking problems, illness and adultery.



Upstarts and

Old-Timers

These thoughts were stirred by some of the new generation of politicos, many of whom grew up here. You can read reports elsewhere in this issue.

If you're a strongly partisan Democrat or Republican, you may reject these folks out of hand, but they are in general appealing figures, some just getting their acts together. Most will work long and hard over the next months to earn your votes.

There is, for instance, Melissa Ridgely Covolesky, who acquired a mouthful by marriage to a guy with not so shabby credentials - a West Point grad who became a Green Beret and then got a Harvard MBA. Melissa, from an old-line Howard County clan, grew up here and spent over a decade in the airborne military police, holding the rank of major, and is finishing her law degree. She's 37. If she works hard, as she seems inclined to do, she will give the two incumbent delegates in 9A a good fight in the Republican primary. They ought to be concerned, but average voters need not worry. They're all good candidates.

Whoever wins that primary will likely face Democrat David "Oz" Osmundson, a retiree from the National Security Agency. "Faith, Family, Flag and Freedom" is the slogan on his web site, www.Ozfor9a.org. But read on, and he sounds like a traditional Democrat. In western Howard County, he'll need help from the Wizard if he is to make it home as the winner.

Rick Bowers is an evangelical preacher who heads an anti-gay marriage group. He's running for delegate in District 13. Sounds like one of those right wing whackos? But born and raised here, in a one-on-one interview, he comes off not as a hatemonger, but as a Christian conservative, tolerant and caring, even if many heartily disagree with his views.

The list goes on and on. At the Columbia Democratic Club, someone asked the candidates for County Council and executive whether they had ever voted for a Republican. A few candidates answered, but then school board member Mary Kay Sigaty, seeking the West Columbia council seat again, showed a little fire, calling the question inappropriate. "The secret ballot is our birthright," she insisted. It was a principled none-of-your-damn-business stand that would have worked well for either party.

And then there was Don Dunn, 77, a witty retiree with nary a chance to win as a Democrat for council in western Howard's district 3. Maybe you don't much care whether candidates say smart things in clever ways, but for an old political reporter at a night meeting, it is a treasure.

On the fall ballot, we'll have MBAs, lawyers, ex-police chiefs, scientists, engineers and college professors - lots of good, competent choices in a tough profession where it's impossible to please everybody.



Age Discrimination

County Council member David Rakes, 69, and county executive candidate Harry Dunbar, 61, both federal retirees, have taken very condescending approaches to their 30-something opponents, who are young enough to be their children. Calvin Ball is "a fine young man," said Rakes at a Democratic forum, as if he were a precocious collegian, and not a 30-year-old college instructor.

Dunbar repeatedly refers to Republican Chris Merdon, 35, and Democrat Ken Ulman, 31, as "my young opponents."

These older African-American men, who lived through the civil rights movement, seem totally oblivious to the patronizing ageism inherent in their remarks. One wonders how they would react if their opponents started referring to them as "a fine old man" or "my aging opponent."



Olsen on Rouse

Josh Olsen's biography of Columbia founder James Rouse is in its second printing, with about 7,000 sold, says the author, a very respectable number for a specialized work. The 442-page book is a fairly hefty tome to plough through, but Olsen gave a brilliant and breezy précis over lunch at Howard Community College on March 3, sponsored by Howard Bank.

Why is Rouse such a big deal? Besides creating Columbia on 14,000 acres of Howard County farmland what else did he do? Well before that, in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, he and a partner virtually created the mortgage banking business we've come to rely on, and with it, they financed the building of the post-WWII suburbs.

Rouse created the term "urban redevelopment" and developed the first enclosed shopping "malls," another term he put into the vocabulary. He gave new life to planned community development - Baltimore's Village of Cross Keys on an old golf course was the first in the area - and the company that bore his name was like a university for developers, planners, architects and landscape architects. He created urban "festival marketplaces" at Faneuil Hall in Boston and then at Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Then, after his "retirement," he and his wife Patty created the Enterprise Foundation based here, now a $1 billion nonprofit organization developing community housing and services for the disenfranchised.

Not bad for a guy from the small town of Easton on the Eastern Shore, who lost both his parents at age 16. "I was intrigued by what Rouse had done throughout his career," Olsen said. "Each of them had a moral motive," and hence the title of his book, Better Places, Better Lives.

I asked Olsen what he thought of the way Rouse is invoked in both praise and criticism of proposed changes in Columbia's downtown. "Howard County is very fortunate to have a patron saint" who can be invoked that way, Olsen said. But Rouse was always about "finding solutions" to real problems.

I'm biased about the Olsen book. I gave it a pretty favorable review in 2004 after it came out - and to my surprise, that review is the only one quoted on Amazon.com, attributed to The Business Monthly. My name shows up in a couple of Olsen's footnotes, referring to stories I had done in the Columbia Flier in the 1970s, when I covered politics and business, including The Rouse Co. I also toyed later with the idea of writing a biography of Rouse, and mentioned it to Columbia's founder, but he wasn't much interested at the time. Olsen, who never knew the man in person, wrote a much more thorough book than I would have.

What has this got to do with politics? Little, except for the fact that Rouse's Columbia transformed Howard County politics and government in profound ways.



Farewell Swan Song

This is my final column for The Business Monthly, the last of about 90 in the last 8 1/2 years. By the time you read this, I will be writing for the new Baltimore Examiner daily newspaper as State House bureau chief.

I am grateful to Publisher Becky Mangus and General Manager Cathy Yost, the two co-owners, for letting me say goodbye. They were not happy to see me leave, and they are of course not happy to see yet another print competitor for local advertising dollars.

I strongly believe in the importance of local, independent community newspapers. Unfortunately, they are becoming rarer. When I started at the local, independent, free community weekly called the Columbia Flier, there were three daily papers in Baltimore - The Sun, The Evening Sun and the News American - and two in Washington - the Post and the Star.

People are reading newspapers less these days, and circulation continues to decline. Many people read news reports online, but newspapers haven't found a good way to cash in on this Internet use. In this business, the real moneymaker is still the manufactured, hand-delivered product you are probably holding right now: ground up trees covered with petroleum products, as I would often joke at high tech council breakfasts.

We shall see if a new, startup daily newspaper in Baltimore with free distribution can survive. For my own selfish reasons - continued paychecks, among them - I hope it does. I hope too the BizMonthly survives and prospers. It's gotten to be pretty good.

Please keep reading it. And thanks for reading me.