Analysis: Why Dennis Schrader Sailed Through His Senate Confirmation

The state senators who expressed ambivalence about the nomination of Dennis R. Schrader to be Maryland’s secretary of Health on Friday were, in many respects, mirroring the public’s mixed feelings about his agency’s most high-profile task — the distribution of COVID-19 vaccine. A Goucher College survey released in March revealed a significant, and seemingly-contradictory, split in public opinion. That survey was in the field in February, during the early weeks of the distribution campaign, when appointments were hard to come by — and when local health and political leaders, and state lawmakers, were heaping scorn on the administration.