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Time to ditch William Donald Schaefer?
Peter Franchot, one of Schaefer's opponents in the Democrat primary election for Comptroller, thinks it's time to retire Schaefer. He's right, but for the wrong reasons.
Months ago, when Franchot first announced for the election, he declared that Schaefer is unfit because he is a "Democrat in name only." Despite this and his stormy relationship with the mayor of Baltimore, the old fart surprised everyone by endorsing Martin O'Malley for governor. That sounds like Democrat party loyalty to me.
Now, as the primary approaches, Franchot is pleading his case in the Baltimore Afro-American, the oldest of a growing number of racially-based newspapers in the metro area. The whole mess is describe in today's Baltimore Examiner. The operative sentence in the story is this: “In many well-publicized incidents,” the ad copy reads, “William Donald Schaefer has demonstrated insensitivity, intimidation, and abuse toward Maryland’s minority communities.”
The reasons to dump Schaefer run into the hundreds, if his entire career were to be tallied. But that aside, Franchot needs to answer two important questions, lest he continue to look like a dolt:
1. How, specifically, has Schaeffer demonstrated the inability to handle the comptroller's job? If anything, he has pursued tax collection with an excess of zeal--sending undercover state police into Virginia to observe people with MD license plates buying cigarettes, then following them across the line and arresting them; pulling random stops of tractor-trailers, in search of untaxed furniture being smuggled in from North Carolina factories.
2. What makes Peter Franchot a suitable candidate for Comptroller? This is the big question. So far as I have heard, Franchot has said nary a thing about his own qualifications, and Schaeffer's unfitness, even if it were demonstrable, does not qualify Franchot.