Board Sails to Re-election;
Zylak Destined to Lose
There seems to be a good amount of satisfaction with the St. Mary’s Commissioner Board, if the general lack of applicants for the available positions means anything.
The Republican Party, despite all its gains in registration, couldn’t seem to find any significant candidates to oppose Commissioners Dan Raley and Tom Mattingly for reelection.
While one of the incumbent two-term Democrats seems to have generated an appointed opponent, the GOP failed to find any major contender to run for commissioner president.
The best hopes for commissioner seats for the GOP remains with incumbent Republicans Kenny Dement and Larry Jarboe. Both are as popular as Raley and Mattingly.
It seems that the commissioners have been paying attention during their current terms in office and that they decided that it is obscene to raise taxes unnecessarily, to spend tax funds with wild abandon is unfair to the citizens from whom this money is taken and to take liberties with property rights in the zoning process is the best way to get defeated at the polls.
Such was the lesson of 2002 for Shelby Guazzo, Joe Anderson and Julie Randall.
While all three may have had aspects of their performance as commissioners which some may find to have been admirable, they pretty much raised every dad-burned tax there was, some of them twice, played roulette with property rights and spent money like it was going out of style. They lost decisive races and those who won that year paid attention.
While Dement and Jarboe have significant opposition during this election cycle which looks like Republicans are on the run, voters can be assured that the two GOP incumbents will remind them at every opportunity, that they have lowered the property tax rates three years running while increasing spending on education to record levels. It is hard to be opposed to any of the four incumbent commissioners running for reelection. The flames of insurrection that were in place in 1994, 1998 and 2002 are just plain not there. The only hot race for commissioner is in the Democratic Primary where Merl Evans and Mike Hewitt are barnstorming around the county trying to make friends and win votes. Jackie Russell has a worn out refrain of old-time waterman based politics, but he is genuinely sincere and easy to like. Don’t count him out. The winner of this race ought to stomp the little known Republicans who are out to win the ‘never heard of them’ contest.
The most important race is that of Sheriff with voters being given the chance to dump dumb ol’ Dave in the Democratic Primary and vote for the son of Sheriff Joe Lee Somerville. Deputy First Class Daryl Somerville will make a fine sheriff if he wins and is a long shot, but all he needs is one more vote than Zylak can gain. Democrats should get behind Somerville and support him in order to remove the taint of corruption and good ol boy southern sheriff-style law enforcement that Zylak has brought to the job. Zylak’s first act was to appoint the least qualified and most inept supervisor as his captain and then to ask the commissioners to fund a half dozen new high-paying positions he planned to use as political payoffs for campaign support.
Throw in Zylak’s reluctance to tell his wife to go find a job outside of the Sheriff’s Department and his continual attempts to get raises for his wife, and one gets the whole picture of what a mess the St. Mary’s Sheriff’s Department has become.
With a truckload of stolen property, taken by crooked deputies, recovered by the State Prosecutor, one might think that Sheriff Zylak would have been able to arrest the deputy responsible. Not only was no arrest made but the deputy involved was allowed to retire.
Sheriff Zylak deserves a vote of no confidence in the Democratic Primary and Democrats now have a choice. Should the Democrats fail to make a choice for honesty in September by voting for Somerville, they better believe that the voters can surely choose the Republican candidate in November.