BALTIMORE — Republican state Sen. Chris West spent much of a dispiriting election night driving to various GOP candidate celebrations that turned out to be anything but.
As the Towson legislator made his rounds, leading Democrats cheered their Nov. 8 sweep of statewide offices and danced to songs with names like “Optimistic“ and “Celebration” at a Baltimore hotel.
“It was very depressing,” said West, 72.
Having held his tongue during the campaign, he is now among Maryland Republicans openly criticizing their party over its string of defeats in the November elections that left its voters disenchanted and its state committee in a flare-up over its future leadership and direction.
“I think Republican leaders ought to stand up and let the Republican electorate know where we went astray,” West said.
The question might be where to begin. The GOP not only turned over the governor’s office it had held for eight years, but it also lost races for Maryland attorney general, comptroller and several county executive offices. Already the minority party in the General Assembly, it will now have two fewer state senators and three fewer delegates.
Additionally, its Maryland GOP party apparatus is in limbo, with the current state chairman opting against running for another term and frustrated by what he calls the “petty nonsense” and infighting that contributed to the lopsided electoral losses.
On Wednesday, Republican Gordana Schifanelli, who failed in her bid for lieutenant governor, said she had been “blocked” in her attempt to become the new state party chair in a heated dispute over the filing deadline.
Dirk Haire, the current state GOP chairman who isn’t seeking reelection next month, told The Baltimore Sun that Schifanelli and other members of her slate missed the filing deadline of 5 p.m. Nov. 9. He said he wondered “how individuals who can’t even submit basic paperwork on time could run the party effectively.”
Later Wednesday, Kate Sullivan, a Schifanelli ally seeking to become the party’s 3rd vice chair, fired back, saying the organization needed to become more serious rather than “a little club where they pick out napkins for their Lincoln Day dinners.”
The flap added to a sense of disarray surrounding the state party.
“The only good news for them is when you’ve hit the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up,” said Todd Eberly, a St. Mary’s College of Maryland political scientist. “They’re in a pretty bad spot.”
As with the national party, Maryland Republicans are split between loyalists to former President Donald Trump and moderates in line with Gov. Larry Hogan, who after eight years is term-limited and has cast his attention now to a possible presidential run.
But Republican voters rejected Hogan’s hand-picked successor in the July 19 primary, Kelly Schulz, the former Maryland commerce secretary, in favor of Dan Cox, who was endorsed by Trump and took hard-line stances against abortion and other issues in a state where Democrats have a 2-to-1 advantage.
Hogan and other Republicans refused to support or campaign with Cox, and he was defeated soundly by the Democratic nominee, Wes Moore. The Associated Press declared Moore the winner as the polls closed.
Malane Silver, a Republican voter in Calvert County, said she finds herself increasingly at odds with her party.
“They better change their tune,” said Silver, 68, a retired psychiatric nurse. “They better become more moderate because the Dan Cox agenda is not for my kind of Republican.”
Cox did not respond to a Baltimore Sun interview request that a spokesperson, Jen Charlton, said was forwarded to him.
Current and former Republican officials also are distressed at the current state of the party and are calling for a reckoning.
“We’re certainly at an inflection point,” said Del. Jason Buckel of Allegany County, the state House Republican leader.
Maryland Republicans are emerging from an odd period in which a popular governor from their party was increasingly disconnected from much of the GOP base.
“I’m not happy to see Gov. Hogan go,” Buckel said. But Hogan “certainly over the last few years drew farther and farther apart from some Republican base voters. I don’t know if it ever was a very high priority to sort of lead a movement to move the margins for the Republican Party. I won’t say he didn’t try at all.”
Hogan has sought to move the party away from Trump, whom he considers divisive. Hogan has contrasted Trump’s style with former Republican President Ronald Reagan’s, suggesting Reagan’s more tempered approach was preferable for the nation because he wasn’t focused on scoring partisan points.
Doug Mayer, a longtime Hogan strategist, said: “We need to have a big-tent diversity party focused on winning, not grievance. If the Maryland Republican Party follows Dan Cox off the cliff, there is nothing but oblivion staring back at us.”
Allan Kittleman, a Republican who was unsuccessful in his bid to reclaim the office of Howard County executive, said it’s been frustrating to see the party in thrall with Trump rather than engaged in its traditional issues, such as fiscal responsibility.
“I certainly see our party as not being functional,” Kittleman said. “I’m disappointed our party has become about a personality rather than our principles.
“We’ve lost — I don’t know if compass is the right word — what we had been as a party,” he said. “We’ve lost the common sense.”
Kittleman, a former state senator, said he believes both parties have swung to their respective extremes. He favors open primaries, in which voters unaffiliated with any party also would be able to vote, as a moderating influence, although he acknowledges the Democrats, with full control in Annapolis, would have no reason to support such a measure.
He said the party has been in similar, weakened straits before, such as after Watergate, and managed to rebuild. But in the near term, the outlook is worrisome, he said.
“I do worry about getting good candidates to run,” Kittleman said. “Why would you run when you don’t have a strong party?”
With Anthony Brown and Brooke Lierman winning the state attorney general and comptroller races, respectively, the General Assembly and several area county executives’ offices remaining in Democratic hands, Republicans are now shut out of much of the state’s halls of power.
“Larry Hogan showed them twice how to win in Maryland, and they basically rejected his approach and went down the road with Trump,” Eberly said.
The question now, he said, is “Do they learn from this?”
The state party organization still is visibly in strife. The term of Haire, the husband of Jessica Haire, who unsuccessfully sought to unseat Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman, ends in January. He said in a recent email to party colleagues that he is frustrated by the disunity and “petty nonsense” that led to electoral losses.
Schifanelli, who was Cox’s running mate Nov. 8, wrote on Twitter that she “was blocked from running” to succeed Haire.
Other candidates to lead the state party include Nicole Beus Harris, a political consultant and wife of U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, who was reelected to a seventh term to Congress and remains the sole Republican in Maryland’s delegation to Washington, and Baltimore County business owner Tim Fazenbaker, a former congressional candidate.
“I can’t think of someone right now,” Silver said of who might lead the party, “and that’s not good.”
Another Republican voter, Lou Pueschel, 41, agreed.
“Barry Glassman seems like a nice guy,” Pueschel said of the unsuccessful Republican nominee for comptroller. ”But he didn’t win, and you gotta win.”
Schifanelli and Nicole Harris did not respond to interview requests left with their law firm and consulting practice, respectively.
Glassman, the former Harford County executive, declined to comment.
Pueschel, who handles logistics for Middle River Aircraft Systems, said his party is in a diminished state. A self-described “very big” Hogan supporter, he said it’s time for the party to “move on” from Trump.
Silver harks back to the party of Reagan, John McCain and Mitt Romney, saying she was particularly appalled by the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“We almost lost our democracy. I voted for Trump in 2016 — I didn’t like Hillary (Clinton) — then I realized, he messed up the country so bad, and we almost lost our democracy,” she said. “The guy’s like a fascist.”
Tom Kennedy, who heads the Baltimore City GOP, said the party has to “overcome the schism of the Hogan/Trump years” and unify against the Democrats.
“The clash of the titans made headlines but did little to advance the Republican cause in our state,” Kennedy said.
“The center and right may disagree, but there’s no daylight between us when it comes to the dangers posed by a veto-proof Democrat legislature with or without a Democrat governor,” said Kennedy, who led Baltimore Republicans’ efforts to reelect Trump in 2020.
“The left’s solutions have failed” on such issues as public education and street crime, he said. “With a refocused, unified party, we’ll be better positioned to make our case to the voters.”
Kittleman agreed, even as he believes the party has a struggle ahead.
“People say, why are you still a Republican?” he said. “Because I’m trying to save my party.”
(Baltimore Sun reporter Hannah Gaskill contributed to this article.)
