Well, friends, I’ve been a bit quiet about the world scene. About politics. I went through a few years of losing friends around the madness of the Covid pandemic, and that made me gun shy. It seemed every time I opened my mouth to comment on an issue that mattered, I lost a friend.

But there’s a little cartoon voice in my head saying, “If they don’t respect your opinions when you talk about the issues, they never respected you at all. And, if they don’t respect you, they were never your friends to begin with.”

Yep. Kindergarten-level stuff, right. Turns out we all tend to forget what we learned in kindergarten.

So, blocks and unfriendings be damned, I’m here tonight to say that I am supporting Governor Larry Hogan in his campaign for U.S. Senate, and I think you should too. I think this especially if you’re concerned that the Republican Party will take control of the Senate. I think that takeover is inevitable in this election. When it happens, our state must be represented, not by a partisan operative, but by a strong, ethical and courageous leader who has a history of putting his constituents ahead of political expedience.

I understand your fear of the Republican party. I am registered as a member of that party. I’ve been one of its elected leaders, at a County level. I know first-hand what a mess it is. I also know first-hand what a mess the Democratic party is in Howard County. Our local Democratic Party is such a corrupt, crony-ish mess that I, a loud-mouthed libertarian, joined the opposition.

Both parties have strayed far from their roots. The Democratic party of today devolved from Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans. That party was born to resist the idea of a strong central government. Indeed, it was founded to resist calls for outright monarchy, including a mad scheme to put one of the sons of England’s King George III on the throne in the U.S. This party found the image of its enemy in the figure of Alexander Hamilton, ironically now the favorite founding father of the 21st Century Democratic party.

The Republican party was founded specifically to fight slavery, because neither Whig nor Democrat would. After the Civil War, it fought for civil rights for the former slaves, until, sometime in the 1880s, it lost momentum and switched over to supporting entrepreneurs. But it was still the party of individual liberty and small government. That has largely gone by the wayside.

Today, both parties support economic protectionism. Both support drilling holes in the Bill of Rights. Both are willing to see the deficit and the debt grow out of control, as long as they win. I’m speaking of the party organizations as a whole, not necessarily their individual candidates or members.

Those two organizations control our nation right now. Each one tells us that the other is an “Existential threat to Democracy.” (God, please curse the day that some middle-brow public relations drone discovered the word “Existential” in his thesaurus. Now it’s applied to climate change, national defense, civil rights, elections… I’ve no doubt we’ll start seeing “Existential” breakfast cereals marketed, and we’ll get our news from “Existential, AI-driven, sustainable apps.”)

The fact is that the only existential threat that worries party leaders is that voters might stop caring which color shirt the candidate is wearing. They might start voting based on qualifications and issues. That could end the existence of both parties.

And the real threat to democracy is the one they don’t want to talk about. It’s the threat that voters will stop using democracy. Stop caring. Stop being educated. You want to save democracy? Use it. Don’t vote for a party. Don’t vote for a do-nothing candidate out of fear or some vague notion that one “team” is “on the right side of history.” Vote for the person who will do the job and do it well.

Angela Alsobrooks will not stand up to Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell. She won’t even have the chance. She’ll be ignored, a member of the minority party, whose name was never heard in the news until she ran for Senate.

Larry Hogan saw us through Covid. He bolstered our economy, and he did it by lowering taxes and fees. He stood up to his own party and said, “Wear the damn mask!” And, yeah, a lot of Republicans can’t forgive him for that. But Marylanders should have nothing to forgive, because this man stood up and fought for us. And he didn’t have to. He was a successful businessman who doesn’t need politics as a career. He’s not a lawyer who ran for office as soon as he passed the bar, or a professor who got his doctorate and never taught a class. He’s a guy who knows how things work, and he made things work for Maryland.

If you’re really worried about a Republican-controlled Senate, then send to the Senate a man who knows how to both stand up to and work with both parties.

For Maryland.