Howardcounty

The recent publishing of proposed revised Howard County Council district lines has pushed me to try to finish this series before the new lines are actually adopted. So onward. . . . As noted in part 12, 1990 saw the Howard County political scene shaken up by the election of Republican Charles Ecker as County Executive, accompanied by Republican Darrel Drown being elected to County Council to join Charles Feaga and cut the Democratic majority from 4–1 to 3–2. Since 1990 was also a census year, this led to one of the most interesting episodes in council redistricting history:1 ...

Part 11 of this series took us through the 1990 party primaries for the second election year featuring county council districts; in this part we see how the results of the 1990 general election compare to those of 1986. October 1990. Now that the primaries are over the candidates position themselves for the general election. Republican Charles Ecker faces an uphill fight in his campaign for county executive, at least on the money front: Reports out in late September for fundraising through August 31 show him trailing Democratic incumbent Elizabeth Bobo in terms of attracting major donors (contributing $200 or more), raising under $6K from thirteen major donors versus Bobo’s total of over $60K from 184 major donors. Undaunted, Ecker channels Ronald Reagan as he asks Howard County voters “Are you better off now than you were four years ago” and accuses Bobo of “killing Route 100.” Bobo in turns accuses Ecker of hypocrisy on the matter of county spending: “He asked me to spend the money [when Ecker was deputy superintendent of schools]. . . . Has he changed his mind?” ...

A continuation of my history of Howard County Council redistricting series is coming soon (I promise! really!), but after an evening at the HoCo Blogtail party I’m not in any shape to do any serious historical blogging (even one blogtail will do that to you). I thought I’d use the opportunity instead to plug my other blog math.hecker.org, on which I publish worked out exercises from my attempt to relearn various branches of mathematics. I’m starting with linear algebra, a field of study that isn’t as well known as calculus but in some ways is even more important as a basis for a lot of real-life applications. ...

After a long hiatus, I’m happy to announce that I’m resuming my series on the history of County Council redistricting in Howard County (which is also, as in this post, somewhat of a potted history of Howard County politics in the modern era). I hope to finish the series in a timely manner, and possibly do a couple of extra things in this general line. If you recall, at the conclusion of part 10 Howard County had just completed its first set of council elections based on the new district lines, with the election producing a 4–1 Democratic majority on the council along with a Democratic count executive. (The electoral results were very similar to those of the 2010 elections—almost scarily so, in fact.) We now jump forward to 1990 and the second set of county elections held under the district boundaries adopted in 1986. Because 1990 was a census year, the 1990 elections were also the last set of elections under those district boundaries, with boundaries to be redrawn after the election (and hence the importance of that election, as we shall see).1 ...

I happened to stumble on this New York Times article this evening: “Calling Off Auction, Borders Plans to Liquidate.” According to the article, “Borders said it would proceed with a proposal . . . to close down its 399 remaining stores. . . . The company will begin closing its remaining stores as soon as Friday, and the liquidation is expected to run through September.” I presume that the Borders store in Columbia Crossing will be closed in the coming weeks as part of this plan, along with the Borders Express store in the Mall at Columbia. Whether another bookseller will move into either of these locations is an open question. The article speculates that “Other national book chains, like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, could move into stores vacated by Borders.” but also notes that “Some competing bookstores are already nearby. A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble said that 70 percent of Barnes & Noble’s stores are within five miles of an existing Borders store.” This is true locally: The Ellicott City location of Barnes and Noble is just around five miles away in driving distance from the Columbia Crossing Borders, and less than five miles away as the crow flies. ...