Adkins: Death of a (Democratic) Party?

In what seems like a doom loop of incompetence and division, Wicomico County’s Democrat political groups face as grim a future as the national party. Despite nearly flipping the county blue in 2020 and in spite of endless claims that the growth of Salisbury will create a more progressive or Democratic leaning voter base, the recent results suggest that local Democrats remain anchored to 45% of the electorate during a presidential cycle and about 42-43% during off year elections.

In some ways this is actually good news when we consider that functionally there is not one actual democratic party but two distinct and deeply incompetent groups. The Wicomico County Democratic Central Committee (WCDCC) consists mainly of Salisbury-based, pro-development “corporate Democrats” who can’t seem to support any policy beyond championing developer schemes and narrow cultural issues (the city’s pride crosswalk, street naming, etc.). They also were almost non-existent with regard to voter outreach, media coordination and canvassing during the recent election and seem to be in endless tension with the other major entity. Living out in the county, there has almost never been local community engagement from this group. The second organization, the Wicomico County Democratic Club, has its own problems and inner turmoil. With a membership comprised of mostly of older retirees and under the very anemic leadership of Gains Hawkins, the Democratic Club could not muster up any basic campaign actively beyond distributing Harris signs and running limited operations at their (Salisbury-based) campaign office.

By comparison, Wicomico Republicans have a large and civically engaged community of volunteers and elected officials at their disposal. Their local activities, constant presence and enthusiasm in county life has mirrored national trends. Democrats just seem to come out of hibernation for a few months before every election cycle while Wicomico’s republican political elements are- like it or not- woven into daily community life. Despite how much we democrats don’t agree with their ideology and their religious and cultural fundamentalism, the party is driven by extroverted people with good messaging. Moreover, the local Democratic party’s inability to adopt clear positions on important local matters (education, housing, etc) or even in staving off a sizeable number of their own moderate members from supporting Larry Hogan’s senatorial run suggest that the party is as fragmented as it is stale. Wicomico county remains solidly “red” despite having potential to be a truly competitive county for local, state and national election cycles. One need only watch the weekly soap-opera of a Salisbury City Council meeting to see that even in a solidly blue city, local democrats appear to be stuck with incompetent and indifferent party representatives, allowing policy and electoral success to consistently be given away to republicans.

Whether or not the local party can improve to become relevant is a big question mark. Certainly, the departure of Gains Hawkins as the Democratic Club president can only help things. Likewise, the controversial and -at times- chaotic tenure of City council president D’Shawn Doughty and several of his peers on the council will also hopefully not worsen in the coming months. Ultimately for local Democrats things can only go up; because right now they could not get any worse.

Wesley Adkins
Mardela Springs resident
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.