All of us have seen the images from The Cambridge Debate, imprinted as they are into the political iconography of this election season from hell.
Congressman Andy Harris (R-Trump), inexplicably sporting a cream-colored blazer and khakis in defiance of all sartorial etiquette, loudly scolding constituents who dared to giggle at his explanation for soaring diesel fuel prices.
“The facts are…that diesel prices HAVE gone up. And why has it gone up? Because the Democrats and the environmental regulations have not…”
[CUE: LAUGHTER – LOTS OF IT]
“You should let me finish the sentence, ma’am. You are RUDE. You’re rude. OK?”
Harris, disinclined to simply bask in the glory of that charm offensive, convened a post-debate press conference and unleashed his fury on a student reporter who dared to cover it.
“You do NOT have my permission to record…if you record, we WILL refer you to the prosecutor…we are in a two-party state…you are not allowed to record.”
“You’re gonna have to take her camera…you’re gonna have to take her camera…she is violating the law. In fact, get an officer in here. She is violating the law.”
This exchange, captured on camera by a roomful of other reporters who were also recording this exercise in political statecraft, served as a reminder of why the eight-term incumbent and chairman of the House Freedom Caucus doesn’t go out in public very often.
Many things can happen, and most of them are bad.
To be sure, there is a market for Andy Harris’ political ideas—as extreme and as dismissive of the economic and societal interests of his constituents as they are.
To suggest otherwise is to be intellectually dishonest and unknowledgable of history.
His political resume, dating back to his first win— a decisive victory over venerable Baltimore County Senator Vernon Boozer in the 1998 Republican primary—is impressive.
Three terms in the Maryland State Senate, representing a deep-red district in Baltimore and Harford Counties.
A 2008 primary upset over Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest in the Republican primary for Maryland’s First Congressional District seat. Gilchrest was an avuncular conservationist who was beloved on both sides of the political aisle for his attentiveness to local matters and his rumpled, low-key humility, but who had become estranged from the most rabid elements of a Republican base that was about to transmogrify into the so-called Tea Party.
He lost the General Election to Democrat Frank Kratovil, a sharp, pragmatic former prosecutor whose politics synced with the sensibilities of his district. But Harris won a rematch in 2010 when Kratovil was unable to overcome the massive backlash against President Obama and the Affordable Care Act.
Seven subsequent, double-digit re-election wins. Made possible by a 2011 gerrymandering effort that made possible a seventh Democratic congressional district—this one, a smash burger of Republican counties out in the Appalachian Range and far more populous district in Montgomery County’s agricultural reserve. The Democratic ruling class had to do something with the Republicans who, suddenly, were politically rootless as a result of all this chicanery, and so they packed as many of them as constitutionally possible into Harris’ First Congressional District.
Let’s restate that for emphasis. The dire threats posed by Andy Harris’ continued political existence, as described by Democratic Party leaders as they stump for the unfettered right to draw congressional districts as they wish, were created in the first place by extreme Democratic gerrymandering.
This rare public display of Harris’s most odious personal qualities now has Maryland political observers wondering if he could actually lose a seat that was literally built to guarantee his political hegemony in perpetuity. Most analysts believe, without the benefit of actual polls, that Harris will manage to escape this self-inflicted trainwreck with a far narrower victory than once expected.
However, the mere fact that Harris’ political career is now shrouded in uncertainty, with even a modest chance that he could snatch defeat from the jaws of sudden victory, has led many to suggest this is a political collapse without precedent.
On that point, this late middle-aged writer must push back. Far from being unprecedented in the annals of our state’s politics, such abrupt and bizarre reversals of fortune are embedded in the history of Maryland’s First Congressional District.
In the 1970s, there was Bob Bauman. A Pennsylvanian who was born into modest circumstances and moved to Maryland’s Eastern Shore as a boy, Bauman graduated from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and, subsequently, from Georgetown Law School. Like Harris, Bauman served in the State Senate until winning a special election in 1973 to fill the seat of William Mills, who had died by suicide earlier that year.
Once in Congress, Bauman leveraged his seat to build a reputation as a national conservative leader, serving as founder and national chairman of both Young Americans for Freedom and the American Conservative Union. He also leveraged his well-documented mastery of parliamentary procedure to advocate for, if not always ensure the adoption of, key conservative priorities. This writer, in a forum on Maryland political history, once referred to Bauman as the Newt Gingrich of the disco and flammable leisure suit era. Politically invincible at home and lionized in Washington’s conservative circles, Bauman was poised for a starring role on the national stage as the Reagan Revolution dawned.
And, then, it all fell apart. Bauman, a married father of four, was arrested and charged in October 1980 for soliciting paid sex from a 16-year old boy at the Chesapeake House, a well-known gay bar of the era. He pleaded guilty to the solicitation charge, attributing his personal conduct to “an increasingly serious personal problem with the consumption of alcohol,” and attempted to re-center his focus and that of First District voters on the caliber of his congressional service.
In full disclosure, his “service” included co-sponsorship of the so-called “Family Protection Act,” which, among many other things, permitted employers to fire employees with impunity solely for being gay.
Whatever slender hopes Bauman entertained of salvaging his political career were finally extinguished within days of his Oct. 3 guilty plea. A 26-year old Dorchester County native named James E. Regina was arrested for trying to blackmail Bauman for $3,000 in exchange for remaining quiet about their own intimate relationship.
The following month, Bauman was defeated in his bid for re-election by St. Mary’s County Democrat Roy Dyson, who had been regarded just weeks before as a Democratic sacrificial lamb. A 1982 comeback bid was aborted and Bauman—whose political potential in the Age of Reagan was once believed to be limitless—never held or sought public office again.
From the age of leisure suits and wide ties, let us now go to 1988—that glorious and neon-splashed age of Gordon Gekko, shoulder pads, Dirty Dancing, acid washed denim, UB40 and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. By this time, Dyson was no longer the unwitting beneficiary of a catastrophic political collapse. He was, as 1988 dawned, every bit as ensconced in the First District seat as Bauman had been the decade before.
While Dyson’s leadership style was more collaborative and much less insurgent than Bauman’s, his tangible influence within the House far exceeded that of his headline-grabbing predecessor. His unconditional support for robust military spending earned plaudits throughout Southern Maryland, which was and is economically anchored by the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. Similarly, his relentless advocacy for the interests of the Eastern Shore’s watermen and farmers, and of Ocean City’s powerful hospitality industry, fully endeared him to the powers-that-be throughout the Eastern Shore.
Dyson had defeated Democrat Harlan Williams for re-election in 1986 by a two-to-one margin, and all that stood between him and another resounding victory in 1988 was an unknown schoolteacher and itinerant house painter from Kent County.
You probably know, dear readers, where this is going.
Yup.
In May of 1988, the Washington Post published a longform, investigative piece on the highly unconventional professional conduct of Dyson’s Chief of Staff, Tom Pappas.
The story was summarized, at the time, by famed Post opinion writer Richard Harwood as follows:
As the office manager for Rep. Roy Dyson, an Eastern Shore Democrat, Pappas behaved as a petty tyrant, a sort of Captain Queeg, placing unreasonable and sometimes irrational demands on his staff.
He recruited young, single males and sought to dominate and control their lives. They were forced, night after night, to serve as his social companions at parties and prolonged drinking bouts. He forbade one young man from having dates during his first year of employment and tried unsuccessfully to have another perform a striptease at an office party. He defined himself and his role in a memorandum to the staff: “It is important for everyone . . . to remember that Tom Pappas is the chief of staff, responsible for everyone’s paycheck. When he expresses a wish, however slight, it should be taken seriously.
Hours after the front-page story was published, the 49-year old Pappas jumped to his death from a 24th floor window at the Helmsley Palace Hotel in New York City.
The story, and Pappas’ tragic suicide, set into motion a dizzying chain of events that dominated the A Section of the Washington Post and the front pages of newspapers throughout Dyson’s sprawling congressional district.
There were reports of an improper relationship with defense contractor Unisys, which had made sizable contributions to Dyson’s campaign and personal bank accounts and, at the time, was being investigated for bribery in exchange for lucrative defense department contract awards. Charles Gardner, a senior Unisys official who was known to be particularly close to the veteran congressman, was later convicted and sentenced to nearly three years in prison for his role in the procurement scandal.
This blizzard of bad headlines, revealing a pattern of both personal and political corruption within Dyson’s congressional office, frayed his once-unbreakable ties with his constituents. He eked out a win of fewer than 2,000 votes against that teacher and house painter, Wayne Gilchrest, who spent less than $1,000 on his race.
For Dyson, it was merely a stay of political execution. By the time 1990 rolled around, a full roster of Republican political heavyweights lined up to have their shot at the enfeebled incumbent. They included two-term state Del. Rich Colburn, popular Calvert County Commissioner Mark Frazer, former Bush White House aide Ray Briscuso and former Bauman consigliere Luis Luna.
It was Gilchrest, however, who had happened to be there in 1988 when Dyson nearly fell. The GOP electorate rewarded Gilchrest’s persistence, embraced his amiable and easygoing style, and gave him the party’s nomination in September. Gilchrest defeated the once-mighty Dyson in a 57-43 rout that November, and went on to restore a sense of unassuming integrity to the seat once held by the legendary Rogers C. Morton.
When it comes to this most unique congressional district, history has shown that there is no such thing as a truly safe seat, and that the perception of invincibility is often a mere plot device that foreshadows the inevitable fall.
