By Marc Korman.
At December’s Maryland Democratic Party meeting, the Party’s 2008 Election Report was distributed. The Governor affectionately referred to the numbers within as PartyStat, in line with his various initiatives through the years like StateStat and BayStat to use numbers to improve government’s effectiveness. The numbers are impressive.
Maryland has not gone Republican since the Reagan landslide of 1984 and, of course, Obama got our 10 electoral votes. 1,628,995 Marylanders voted for Obama, an increase of 294,526 voters from Kerry’s share in 2004. In fact, Obama increased on Kerry’s share of the vote in every county in the state. Here in Montgomery, the increase was 5.6% (40,508 voters). The largest increases in the Democratic column were in Charles County (11.8%, 14,281 voters) and Frederick County (9.3%, 14,510 voters).
Maryland is not thought of as a battleground in presidential elections, but it is thought of as an ATM. We maintained our ATM reputation in 2008, providing just over $19 million in donations to the Obama campaign. At the same time, the state party raised $2.9 million.
But Maryland’s contribution was not just financial. Marylanders also gave their time and energy to the winning effort. The state made 1.4 million phone calls to battleground states and sent 3,600 volunteers to Pennsylvania and Virginia during the last weekend of the election. 2,852 Marylanders actually moved to battleground states during the election. Maryland projected the greatest effort for the Democrats to other states except for California, which has 30 million more people and almost 6 million more registered Democrats. According to the Governor, the effort of Marylanders in battleground states was recognized by the governors of Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, and elsewhere.
Given the success of the Ficker Amendment, it was not all sunshine and roses for Democrats in Maryland. But at the presidential level the state really came through for Barack Obama. To all of you who were a part of these efforts, whether it was writing a check, crowding into an Obama office to make phone calls, dialing from home, or hoofing it in Virginia or another state, thank you.