I don’t care why a colleague is voting the right way. That support helps us get to 71, the number needed to pass a bill.
That was my thinking as we gradually (over seven years) reached the majority to repeal the death penalty.
Peter Schmuck’s column in yesterday’s Sun makes that point about moving the Preakness to Laurel – in the DC suburbs.
There already is a real question about how much excitement the Preakness — under any circumstances — will generate in the Washington area. Obviously, the hardcore horse racing fans in the Mid-Atlantic region will show up anywhere, but does anyone seriously believe the parochial affinity for the race and infield festival that generates annual six-figure crowds at Pimlico will somehow shift from Baltimore to Laurel?
That’s not one of the arguments we’ve been making, but we will now.
This comes on the heels of the decision by Pimlico’s ownership to close a portion of the facility for safety reasons while refusing to make public the engineer’s study that prompted this action.
I went to Pimlico yesterday, the first day of the abbreviated spring meet.
I ran into a classmate from Pimlico Junior High. He said that a horse trainer had told him that the racing surfaces at Pimlico – both dirt and grass, were superior to those at Laurel. I had heard something similar from friends in the industry.
When I went to bet on the favorite in the sixth race, the teller recognized me from the polls for early voting.
It reminded me of Black Eyed Susan Day several years ago.
Waking through the crowd with a friend from college, I spoke with several people I knew from the legislature.
On the parking lot as we were leaving, someone I didn’t recognize thanked me for coming to his community meeting a few weeks earlier.
Afterwards, I turned to my college friend and said, “That’s the most important person I saw today.”
