The quote in the headline of this post appears in my weekend column in The Baltimore Sun. It is how Heather Mizeur, the Democratic candidate for Maryland's 1st District congressional seat, characterizes the record of her Republican opponent, Andy Harris.
The post office mentioned is in Salisbury, and Mizeur is correct: It was a bill filed by Harris in 2018 that led to the naming of the post office in honor of Sgt. Maj. Wardell B. Turner, a Salisbury native who was killed in Afghanistan four years earlier.
Was that Harris' only legislative accomplishment, as Mizeur claims?
According to congressional records, the post office renaming is the only Harris-introduced bill that became law.
If anyone from Harris' staff ever responded to one of my phone or email inquiries, I would ask if we missed something.
Harris certainly has attached his name to plenty of bills and, as I have documented, he has a horrible voting record — against the Affordable Care Act, the infrastructure bill that passed last December, the Inflation Reduction Act, all of which benefits his constituents in one way or another. He voted against the certification of President Biden's 2020 election and he later voted against honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6.
All of this supports the fact that Harris has little to show for his years in Congress. He's running for re-election again despite a pledge not to serve more than 12 years, and voters will decide on Nov. 8 whether or not to give him a seventh term.
If they do, it will be a shame.
They'll be sending back to Washington one of the least effective legislators and an extremely partisan one.
Harris is rated one of the worst members of Congress when it comes to bipartisanship by the Lugar Center and Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy. The center annually ranks how often each member of Congress works across party lines.
Out of the 435 House members, Harris ranked 426th. He's near the bottom with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green, Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert.
You'd think Marylanders who live in the 1st District would want Mizeur representing them this time — someone potentially more effective, certainly more reasonable and willing to seek bipartisan solutions to the nation's problems. Mizeur is an underdog. She only wins if Democrats come out in big numbers and just enough independents and moderate Republicans (assuming there are any) back her at the polls. That's a tall order. We live in tribal times. If Mizeur wins, it will be one of the biggest — and most satisfying — political upsets in Maryland history.
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