Crushin’ it with Cardin and Van Hollen, Moore not keen on taxes, more MACo notes

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Harborside Bar and Grill owners Chris Wall and Lloyd Whitehead, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) at the Harborside Friday. Photo by Danielle J. Brown.

U.S. Sens. Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen ran a final victory lap Friday in their battle to prove that Maryland is the one true home of the Orange Crush, a drink invented in Ocean City.

“We are here to uphold Maryland’s honor and make it clear that we are the home of the original Orange Crush,” Van Hollen said Friday at the Harborside Bar and Grill, which is accepted as the birthplace of the iconic cocktail.

Delaware lawmakers this summer voted to dub the Orange Crush – made with fresh orange juice, vodka, triple sec and a splash of lemon-lime soda – the state drink, much to the surprise of Marylanders, including Democrats Van Hollen and Cardin. The bill even notes that the Orange Crush was originated in Ocean City.

Orange Crush in hand, Van Hollen called the move “pure theft.”

“We understand that they want to be the Orange Crush capital, but history tells us that this place we’re standing right now is the home of the Orange Crush,” Van Hollen said.

The debate resulted in a mixology contest on Capitol Hill between Cardin and Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), to see who could make the best Orange Crush. The judges – Washington Post Food Reporter Emily Heil, Washingtonian Food Editor Jessica Sidman and Van Hollen – determined Cardin’s Orange Crush the best, declaring Maryland the home of the cocktail.

The outcome of the mixology contest did not stop Delaware Gov. John Carney (D) from signing the legislation on Aug. 9 to officially make the state beverage the Orange Crush.

However, Cardin and Van Hollen maintain bragging rights.

“This is where it all started,” Cardin said Friday at Harborside. “Delaware has a lot of nerve to try to take any credit.”

Moore’s high bar for taxes

Gov. Wes Moore (D) reiterated his opposition to increased taxes in the coming legislative session, telling reporters Friday his “bar for raising taxes is extremely high.”

“I don’t think taxes are an ideology,” he said. “I think you have to be able to look at the budgets that are in front of you. You need to look at the needs that we have for the state and then figure out what is the best way of actually producing the type of revenue that is necessary in order to grow.”

Moore was in Ocean City for the Maryland Association of Counties conference, where he is scheduled to deliver the closing address Saturday morning to leaders of Maryland’s 23 counties and Baltimore City. Many are anxious to learn about the state’s fiscal situation and how it will affect their local budgets.

The Board of Public Works last month cut $150 million from the current year’s budget, and some are worried more reductions are looming as the state faces growing structural budget deficits. While some in the House of Delegates are again considering tax increases, Moore and Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) are again hesitant.

Ferguson told reporters Thursday that he is focused on growing the state’s economy, mirroring Moore’s comments that any increase in taxes would have to meet “an extremely, extremely high bar.”

Neither Ferguson nor Moore has defined what that high bar would look like. Moore said there is no “specific triggering mechanism,” but “multiple facets that I look at every single week to determine what we need to do.”

“But the thing that I do know is that we have to be creative and thoughtful about ways we drive growth and just simply saying, ‘Well, raise taxes,’ or simply saying, ‘We’re not going to raise taxes,’ I don’t think that’s giving,” Moore said. “I don’t think that that’s fair to the complexity of these issues, or is it really fair to the hopes and aspirations of the people of this state.”

Sample-Hughes support

Del. Sheree Sample-Hughes (D-Lower Shore) missed her own fundraiser last year with a case of COVID-19, but she was not going to let that happen again. She was all smiles Friday at Dry 85 restaurant, where she was decked out in an orange dress that matched a few campaign signs outside the restaurant.

While hundreds attended Sen. Ben Cardin’s final town hall forum Friday morning at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference, Sample-Hughes’ guests nibbled on a brunch that included fruit, coffee and chicken and waffles. Besides poultry being a vital part of the Eastern Shore economy, “I also like chicken, so that had to be a part of the menu,” Sample-Hughes said.

Three of her colleagues turned out: Dels. Shaneka Henson (D-Anne Arundel), Mike Rogers (D-Anne Arundel) and Kent Roberson (D-Prince George’s). Roberson and Sample-Hughes serve on the House Judiciary Committee.

“It’s wonderful to be with people on the committee [and] to show the support to those who have supported you in the past,” said Roberson. “I’m grateful for her friendship and leadership on the committee and how she has been a public servant for 18 plus years and is sharing that knowledge with myself and others who are willing to listen.”

Sample-Hughes calls Rogers “colonel” because of his three decades of military service in the Army. Both are advocates for veteran’s issues. She calls Henson “a genuine friend.”

“These are true people who I love to serve with in the legislature,” Sample-Hughes said about her three colleagues.

After giving a few remarks to attendees, she told a story about learning to shoot a firearm while on a family vacation last week in North Carolina. She was with her oldest son, Jordan, a police officer in Somerset County, and indicated how she held an AR-15 pointing down toward the floor.

“He said, ‘Don’t hold it that way,’” she said, laughing. “My 25-year-old son teaching me.”

Her youngest son, Noah, 20, is entering his senior year in the aviation program at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. “I just need him to become a pilot so I can travel and get some flights free somewhere,” she joked.

Sample-Hughes is headed to the Democratic National Convention next week as a delegate representing the 1st Congressional District.

Solar panels and cannabis

You might not think cannabis and solar panels have anything in common.

You would be wrong.

House Economic Matters Chair Del. C.T. Wilson (D-Charles) sees one important connection — counties that want to use zoning and other laws to block where solar panels and cannabis businesses can be located.

Last year, Wilson championed a bill that limited the ability of local governments to use zoning to restrict the location of cannabis growing, processing and dispensing businesses.

“The same thing I did for cannabis, I’m going to do for tier one resources, which is basically, you’re not going to zone it out in our community,” said Wilson.

Wilson called the community opposition to building solar energy arrays on farmland “insane,” saying farmers should be able to decide how they use their land.

“If that’s a solar farm, I know he’s producing something. It’s electronics. We’re consuming those electrons. We may not be consuming the soybeans or the corn, but he’s still a producer,” Wilson said.

“And when we’re done, that farmland is not being destroyed, because the people that argue with me about the beautiful farmland don’t mind if he sells that bad boy off and subdivided for homes and townhouses. That seems to be OK. But when we talk about solar now, everybody clutches their pearls,” Wilson said.

He called opposition to solar farms “audacious …  because it’s not ruining anything. It’s very frustrating, because some people just don’t agree with this type of technology.”

Data centers and transmission line NIMBYism

Wilson had more to say on the rising chorus of voices looking to defeat a proposed 500,000-volt, 70-mile power transmission line through parts of Frederick, Carroll and Baltimore counties. He called it “comical.”

The transmission lines, part of the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, would help provide energy to data centers the state wants to attract.

“There’s a certain area in the state that wants a new data center but does not want the transmission lines,” he said of opponents. “Somehow, they want all the benefits of that data center. But how dare we bring transmission lines —  ie, the electricity it’s going to take to run that data center — through their neighborhood. You don’t get both.”