Politics

Turn the television on in Florida and Texas and voters are being bombarded daily with ads for gubernatorial candidates who have spent upward of $25 million in the past month making their pitches. The same holds true in Georgia, where candidates have spent almost $22 million in the past 30 days. Meanwhile, in Maryland, where Democrat Wes Moore and Republican Dan Cox are competing to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, the airwaves are silent. That changes Wednesday when Moore and Cox take center stage to make their pitches in the first and only televised debate — in what essentially amounts to free advertising for the candidates. With a lack of money to purchase ads and trailing by double-digits in polls, the stakes are high for Cox, a hard-right, Trump-endorsed conservative delegate from Frederick County.

The Harford County Council passed two resolutions and three bills at its legislative session on Tuesday. The two passed resolutions were the fall 2022 update to the Master Water and Sewer Plan; and approval for imposing and collecting of boarding fees for “weekend inmates” at the Harford County Detention Center. The three passed bills were: the extension of a moratorium on applying certain county zoning codes on restaurants to allow for outdoor dining; an expansion of the eligibility of who may receive benefits from the county’s Length of Service Award Program for volunteer firefighters; and an outline of which properties would receive real property tax credits in fiscal year 2023 due to living near a county-owned refuse disposal system.

Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said enforcement of a youth curfew will be extended through the end of the year, saying it has helped protect children and also coincided with a drop in crime in the Maryland county. When Alsobrooks first announced stronger enforcement of the youth curfew on Labor Day, she said it would last for 30 days but could be extended. “Our curfew was successful in many of the ways we hoped,” Alsobrooks said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon, after the initial 30-day period. “Not only did we engage parents in our community more deeply, but we were also able to provide greater protection to a number of our youth.”

Republican gubernatorial nominee Dan Cox on Monday canceled an upcoming appearance and denounced a Republican event called “Unite the Right” — the same name as the white supremacist rally that turned deadly in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017. The election season event in Anne Arundel County was organized by former Baltimore congressional candidate Kim Klacik, whose political action committee also stands to benefit from funds raised at the rally, according to an invitation online.

In 2015, about four months into her tenure, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby made the controversial decision to charge six police officers in the arrest and death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man who suffered a fatal spinal injury in the back of a patrol wagon. Though she failed to secure a single conviction, Mosby defended her decision to bring the cases. She said she took an oath to treat everyone equally and fairly under the law and apply one standard of justice regardless of race, color, sex, creed, socioeconomic status and occupation.

Republican Allan Kittleman got a boost Saturday from Gov. Larry Hogan and two lieutenant governors — one current, one former – as he seeks to regain the job as county executive he lost four years to Democrat Calvin Ball. “He was an unbelievable county executive for Howard County,” Hogan told several hundred people gathered at the Kittleman farm in West Friendship. Hogan emphasized Kittleman’s ability to “work across the aisle” and govern in a bipartisan way. The three Republicans — Hogan, Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, a longtime Columbia resident, and former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, now a TV and podcast commentator — all emphasized Kittleman’s positive qualities without mentioning Ball.