She crushed Peter James with more than 70% of the vote, and she is a lead pipe cinch to win in November, so she will have a bit of a leg up in terms of seniority over the other freshman Congressmen.

Of course, the election did cost a bit of money. Maybe we should send the bill to Al Wynn, whose resignation in his eagerness to cash in on a lobbying gig led to the election.

Now that Wynn has given his resignation, there is a consensus developing in Annapolis that it would be a good thing for Donna Edwards to get in on an early election, if just to give her a seniority jump on the other freshman congressmen.

O’Malley is proposing a change in the election law to allow for a special election based on the current primary results, which would cut the cost of special elections in half, more so if you hold it at the same time as the general election.

Generally it sounds good to me, though I’m inclined to go with the special election and swearing in at the same time as the general, as it is even cheaper.

Wynn is retiring, effective June.

Nominally, the reason given is that he wants to give Edwards a leg up on the general, that she does not need, but I don’t buy that.

My guess is that either he wants to get a running start on his lucrative lobbying gig, or he is doing this as a way to shaft either Donna Edwards or his constituents.

My suggestion would for O’Malley to call a special election on the same day as the general. That way Edwards has a seniority edge on the rest of the 2009 Freshman class.

Donna Edwards trounced corporate whore Al Wynn in MD-4, getting something over 50% in PG county, and over 60% in Montgomery county, which is about 1/3 of the district.

Gilchrist appears to have lost in a 3-way race by about 6% in MD-1, with state senator Andy Harris getting the nod in the largely Eastern Shore district.

Al Wynn is a bad, bad, man, both personally (won’t go into it) and politically (voted for the Terry Schiavo intervention), in addition to be horrifically bad at constituent service. There is no reason for a Bush Dog in one of the most reliably Democratic districts in the country.

As to MD-1, I think that Harris is a much better chance of a pickup than Gilchrist.

With one exception, paper ballots, Harris is positively Neanderthal (We really are talking Fred Flintstone here), and the Eastern shore has always been a bastion of relatively moderate Republicanism, so Harris is more vulnerable than a multi-term incumbent known for his relative liberalism.

On the Dem side, it will be Frank Kratovil, about whom I know nothing.

In MD-6, which is Western, and very conservative, Maryland, Jennifer Dogherty will Run against Roscoe Bartlett, she’s a former Mayor of Frederick, so hopefully she will be competitive. Bartlett is old, and this is not a Republican year.

The fact that she beat Andy Duck in the primary, and he has ran in, and had built on his organization from the previous election, indicates that she will run a good campaign, but it still a long shot.

Good.

Al Wynn is corrupt, ineffective, and a horrible person, and his campaign has been despicable.

Any democrat who voted to intervene in the Terry Schiavo, as Al Wynn did, case needs to be out of a job.