There is no question that Congressman Hoyer is respected in Southern Maryland. He has served in one political office or another for his entire professional life including as the youngest ever President of the Maryland Senate. He boasts congressional activity that has kept the military installations in the region strong and free from reduction and closure. On top of that his role as past majority leader and now Democratic Whip fill many with pride that our very own congressman from MD Congressional District 5 is one of the most commonly spoken names on the national stage. In 2009, Washingtonian Magazine called him, “One of the least likely to be involved in a scandal,” which is a breath of fresh air in such scandalous times.
While some legislative accomplishments are spins at best, many aspects of his record point to legitimate successes spanning over 30 years. However, how do people in the region feel when they balance an anti-incumbency vibe against a man who has served in the US House of Representatives for over 31 years? In Congress, House members are elected in two-year cycles and senators in six-year cycles for a reason. It allows one house to have a finger on the ever changing public pulse, and the other, a reflective and august approach, deliberately slow to change. Was the House of Representatives ever designed for a 15-term incumbent to thrive? Some have served even longer.
Many have tried to scale the mountain of a District 5 race against Congressman Hoyer only to come up so short every time. Many candidates over the years proved to be ill prepared, lacking knowledge for the job they were seeking, in addition to being ineffective at campaigning on a large organized stage. Others, such as Charles Lollar, while having developed quite the buzz as an excellent orator, and winning Calvert County, fell victim to Congressman Hoyer’s popularity in large areas of Prince George’s County.
Hoyer has yet to really meet his match in a campaign. For example, a few years back at a candidate’s forum at St. Mary’s College, Hoyer, sitting at a table to the left of two others candidates including Lollar on the opposite end, kept referring to Lollar as, “my friend over here on the far right.” Passing statements such as these go unnoticed by many but these skills have contributed to Hoyer keeping his seat since 1981. A master rhetorician such as Hoyer knows exactly what to say and who to say it too.
Times have changed though. Calvert County, a once Democrat stronghold, fell in 1994 in large part to national trends but locally suffered too because young Democrat talent with few exceptions had failed to come up through the ranks because there was a powerful multi-term incumbent ceiling preventing cultivation of new leaders.
Calvert Democrats went on the assault, rebounding their voter registration numbers and revitalizing only to again see sparse young fresh talent rise. Those would-be young up and comers were facing a ceiling of the same multi-term incumbents as before. As a result, and even though Democrat voter registration is slightly higher in Calvert, it is firmly Republican right now. It is no surprise that Calvert County voted for the Republican Lollar in the
