All posts by: Dinah Winnick

Today’s Gazette reports on clergy in Prince George’s County who are encouraging parishioners to vote against the referendum to expand gambling in Maryland and in Prince George’s County in particular. But Laura Hussey, assistant professor of political science, remarks in the article that clergy who talk politics from the pulpit are less common than some might expect.

Hussey suggests that this is in part because the multifaceted nature of ballot questions, such as the gambling referendum, can make it difficult to take a clear religious stance. “It’s an issue that doesn’t lend itself to being easily decided by the average voter,” she says.

Update (10/27/2012): In a later Washington Examiner article, Hussey remarked on the meaning this election’s historic ballot measures have for voters in Maryland, an overwhelmingly Democratic state where presidential and senatorial races are usually a foregone conclusion. Hussey said, “Here citizens have an opportunity to weigh in, to cast a vote that means something.”

A new Salon column by UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller responds to what Romney strategist Eric Fehrnstrom called “hit[ting] a reset button for the fall campaign.” Moving from the primary to the general election, Fehrnstrom remarked, “everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”

Schaller argues that the Etch-a-Sketch metaphor is apt in that Romney aspires to “invite all center-right voters, be they hardcore conservatives or libertarian Republicans or fence-sitting moderates, to compose whatever sketch of him they find most appealing — and then vote, accordingly, for him.”

Instead of the presidential election, Schaller’s latest Baltimore Sun column focuses on Maryland’s 6th District, which he calls “the only consequential contest on the ballot.” He writes that the Western Maryland district was recently redrawn to include to include chunks of heavily Democratic Montgomery County, with the intent to unseat Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett. Bartlett will debate Democratic nominee John Delaney four times in the next two weeks.

Update (10/18/2012): See Schaller’s newest Salon column, responding to the presidential debate, “Cool cat Obama shows his claws.”

In his latest Baltimore Sun column, UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller critiques conservative pundits’ concerns about “redistributive welfare” in the U.S. today. Schaller argues, “the threat of socialism swallowing America is as imaginary as a Martian invasion.” He writes:

In fact, on almost any measure — from the growing share of income earned or wealth controlled by either the top 1 percent or 10 percent; the geometric rise in CEO-to-worker pay ratio; the declining rates of intergenerational mobility that reinforce and exacerbate these disparities — America is not becoming more socialist, nor is the country’s wealth being redistributed. (At least not from rich to poor.)

Read the full commentary at the Baltimore Sun.