By: James Simpson
DC Independent Examiner

Well, Maryland delegate Haven Shoemaker has treated us to yet another demonstration of his incisive wit, engaging personality and stunning political wisdom with his measured, wise and gracious remarks about Robin Frazier’s appointment to Joe Getty’s Maryland state senate seat.

Not.

Shoemaker called the Carroll County GOP “nuttier than outhouse rats,” for choosing her, adding, “To make this decision represents a nullification of the will of the people.” (Robin Bartlett Frazier nominated to State Senate seat, Carroll County Times, January 10, 2015). Shoemaker’s disrespectful remarks reflect Shoemaker’s poor character and lack of integrity more than anything else.

In fact, Shoemaker has it exactly backwards. When union sanctioned, pro-government, pro-spending candidates took over the Republican primary elections across the county last year, they truly did nullify the peoples’ will. All Marylanders should be concerned by this development. You can read more about that institutional vote fraud disgrace, here. To suggest the “will of the people” had anything to do with it, reveals a profound, perhaps willful ignorance.

Democrats switched sides en masse in the primary; then switched right back after voting. Meanwhile government unions provided money, muscle and materiel to defeat conservatives. Remember all those yard signs saturating the County? Your tax dollars – through the government unions – paid for that. It was the most unethical election in recent history, and for Maryland, that is quite an accomplishment. Robin Frazier was an unfortunate casualty.

But for Haven it was all good. Moral compass swinging like a windsock in a tornado, Mr. Shoemaker now deigns to enlighten us all with his gratuitous smearing of the Carroll County Republican Central Committee. If you need further proof of Shoemaker’s true loyalties, look no further.

Haven said Frazier can’t “reach across the aisle.” Be confident that as a newly-minted delegate, Mr. Shoemaker will reach across, risking your hard-earned tax dollars in the process. In fact, he proves yet again that he is already there. And there he will stay, because as a pandering, big government statist in Republican clothing, Mr. Shoemaker is much more comfortable retreating to safe, go-along-to-get-along politics than standing on principle.

Robin Frazier stood on principle every single day as commissioner. I saw that firsthand during my time working for the commissioners. That is why Carroll County’s RINOs conspired with the state’s Democrats and unions to defeat her in last year’s election. They are not interested in saving taxpayer dollars, lifting onerous regulations, or reducing the size and scope of government. These are the things she did.

Instead, RINOs like Haven find common cause with tax and spend Democrats to explode government, smother us with regulation, and spend money when they don’t even have to. I challenge Haven to name even one thing he did as commissioner that reduced spending or regulation – which he himself, rather than Frazier or Rothschild thought of. He did, however, vote their ideas many times.

Robin would be the first legislator to reach across the aisle if she believed it would genuinely serve Maryland citizens’ best interests. And she would do so from a position of strength, knowing full well the principles she stands on. Unlike Shoemaker, she is willing to go to jail to defend them. Robin will fight. Haven is content to manage the decline. For a long time, RINOs have been compromising whatever principles they have just to claim “bipartisanship.” The disastrous results are self-evident.

And about that lawsuit over prayer? The Carroll County Times somehow forgot that the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Robin (see Greece v Galloway). They also forgot to mention that a non-profit law firm dedicated to protecting First Amendment rights donated all their legal services on behalf of the County. That battle is mostly over; won by Frazier and like-minded patriots, even if the Humanist Association and the Times can’t admit it. Haven voted with Frazier on that one too.

The Carroll County GOP Central Committee based its decision on Frazier’s extensive experience in both public life and private industry. This included her four years service in the Ehrlich Administration as the Intergovernmental Affairs Coordinator for the Governor’s Office on Service and Volunteerism and Community Initiatives, and her appointment by Governor O’Malley to the Board of the Maryland Association of Counties. The Committee noted: “In this position she worked closely with legislators and other county leadership to improve, modify or eliminate legislation of concern to the counties and consistently lobbied for smaller government.”

Following are some of the things Frazier advocated and voted for as Carroll County Commissioner over the past four years:

• for tax cuts every year she was in office;

• for smaller county government with more efficient use of tax dollars;

• for controlled spending on education in correlation with the continuing decline in enrollments;

• for less regulations in both county government and from the state;

• to educate county residents on the problems with common core and to return control to teachers and parents;

• to stop palm scanning of Carroll County public school students;

• to protect Carroll County residents’ 2nd Amendment rights;

• to prevent the rain tax from being mandated in Carroll County;

• to provide resources for the 20-25% of the student aged population in the county who aren’t in the public school system;

• to get out of the incinerator contract that promised to bankrupt the county;

• to increase the CATS bus system efficiency and reduce its costs to taxpayers;

• to keep mass transit out of the county;

• to protect the Commissioners’ right to pray before open session if they want to, as guaranteed in Article 36 of the Maryland State Constitution.

Pity there aren’t more people like Robin in public office. Never mind his gratuitous insults, Haven Shoemaker’s assertions are entirely off base. Haven is the kind of person who hangs on his every word. It’s a good thing that others don’t. The Carroll County GOP made a great choice in appointing Frazier. It will at least partially rectify the results of the election that was stolen from her, and assuredly blunt some of the idiocy Haven is sure to bring to the Maryland legislature – which already has more than enough.