Baltimore County GOP: Central Committee or Crime Family?
ByBarry O’Connell, The Maryland Wire
Baltimore County, 1940s-style: the whispers are getting louder, the shadows longer. What some call the Republican Central Committee, others are beginning to dub the Baltimore County Republican crime family. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear the members themselves muttering that they never signed up for this racket.
The latest flap began with an “Ethics Committee” letter that, according to insiders, broke more bylaws than a backroom bookie breaks promises. Due process? Tossed aside. Standards? Invented on the fly. It’s the kind of maneuver that makes ordinary members feel like they’re being dragged into a caper they never wanted to join.
“They don’t like breaking the Wall,” one observer said, invoking the old code of political respectability. “But the bosses are leaning hard, and nobody wants to be the next sap left holding the bag.”
Closed-door sessions now resemble smoke-filled parlors, with accusations flying like cheap gin bottles in a speakeasy brawl. The Ethics Subcommittee, once a quiet panel for reviewing complaints, is suddenly cast as judge, jury—and, if you ask Glen Geelhaar, getaway driver.
Emails circulating among the rank-and-file read like warnings from nervous associates: unless someone reins in the leadership, the next stop is Scandal City. Some even joke that the state GOP convention could look less like a political gathering and more like a police lineup, with members frisked for forged ballots and phantom “official candidate” standards that appear only under cover of night.
For Baltimore County residents watching from the curb, the message is clear: keep your bylaws close and your wits closer. Because if this crew ever makes it into elected office, the rest of us may find ourselves living under the rule of a political syndicate—complete with bylaws bent like brass knuckles and leadership that treats governance like a backroom deal.
Citations:
Internal emails and accounts of BCRCC procedural violations
Local news coverage of Baltimore County Republican controversies
Special thanks to former Governor Bob Ehrlich and Baltimore County Republican icon Al Mendelsohn
