The Runback: 100 Days of Disasters
As Nicole Beus Harris nears her 100th day as Chairman, problems continue to mount for Maryland Republicans
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Food for Thought
The Monday Thought
We are roughly one hundred days into Nicole Beus Harris’s term as Chairman of the Maryland Republican Party. And for Republican activists across the state, it seems like that term can’t end soon enough.
Harris ran for State Party Chairman touting her experience and a bold agenda for “rebranding” the Maryland Republican Party. So far that “experience” and “rebranding” has included:
Hiring an incompetent and inexperienced outsider as Executive Director;
Attempting to appoint election denier William Newton to the State Board of Elections only for the appointment to be denied by Governor Wes Moore, setting a new precedent of denying partisan Board of Election nominees.
Defending the appointment of Newton by calling Wes Moore names;
Appointing another election denier to the Board of Elections in place of Newton, only for *that* nominee to go down in flames in the Senate;
Harris already had enough problems with her, knowing that counties were going to pull stunts like bringing in alleged torturers and Trump flunkies for Lincoln Day dinners. But Harris has continued to dig the hole deeper and deeper and deeper.
Most of what is apparent is how much time Harris and her gopher Adam Wood are putting into social media. The problem, beyond the spelling mistakes, is bad. Posting about bills weeks or even a month after they have already passed one of the Houses.
Social media, of course, is not where elections are won. But several Republican activists have told me that Harris is routinely skipping meetings, some of which she is scheduled to speak at. One even told me that they have a “backup plan” for an upcoming meeting at which Harris is scheduled to speak due to her notorious no-shows.
If a Chairman can’t even keep a simple promise to attend a meeting, how can she effectively raise money and create an effective party apparatus?
One would have expected that with Nicole Harris’s “background” as a campaign consultant that she would have been ready to lead from Day One. But maybe her experience was a little overblown considering she only earned $7,660.10 from state-level candidates in the last ten years.
During the same time frame, Harris’a company earned $203,735.60 from federal campaign finance accounts. But there are only three accounts from which she received payment:
Nancy Jacobs 2012 campaign for Congress
The Maryland Republican Party; and,
Andy Harris
Yet, none of those receipts have come since 2017. This leads credence to the idea that maybe, just maybe, Harris isn’t the successful political consultant she led people to believe.
The results would certainly indicate she’s not.
Look, as a former Republican I’m not invested in this as much as I used to be. But Harris’s mismanagement of the Maryland Republican Party is telling me and others that Republicans are not serious about trying to compete with Democrats in Maryland anymore. And that’s a problem for all of us, Republican or not.