Major Reasons Why Rushern Baker III Lost Big – preliminary opinion.

Rushern Baker III

Via @pgpolitics 

The media and pundits seem to be overlooking the extent to which Rushern Baker’s sorry record may have contributed to his defeat.

Baker promised to never allow gambling in PG County, then fought for a casino.

Baker promised to create a strong Inspector General position during his first 30 days, but waited 330 days to come up with a toothless “ethics” office.

Baker promised to not try to repeal TRIM, then pushed through a TRIM-busting, charter-violating tax increase anyway.

Baker said he was for Transit Oriented Development and would fight for transit across the Wilson Bridge–then pushed for major development projects with no transit address and finally bragged about adding infrequent bus service across the bridge, to and from places that would not help solve commuter traffic problems. Baker did nothing to make transit access a prerequisite for approval of his casino site.

Baker said he would not make another attempt to take over the schools. When he broke that promise, he said he wanted to be held accountable. Then appointed his brother-in-law to chair the school board, the wife of the delegate who helped with his coup as deputy superintendent, and took no responsibility for the resulting financial scandals, loss of grant money, grade and graduation fraud, and employment of child sex abusers and kiddie pornographers.

Although Baker got the most votes in his own county, it was much less than he expected.

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