On January 6, as alarmed Americans were still grappling with the afternoon’s shocking images of the Donald Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol, a just-evacuated Andy Harris sat down in his House office for a virtual interview with WBAL-TV.

While waiting for word if Congress would reconvene to finish the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory, Maryland’s 1st District representative was calm. Disconcertingly so, given the day’s extraordinary and tragic events. Leaning back in his chair, Harris recounted witnessing Capitol police escorting House leaders “Mr. Hoyer, Speaker Pelosi, Mr. Scalise” off the floor. He matter-of-factly described being told that tear gas had been deployed in the rotunda and members of Congress should be prepared to use the emergency gas masks beneath their seats. He gave hint of a smile as he recalled the mob banging on the chamber door, comparing “the thumping” to the enthusiasm witnessed when a president arrives for a State of the Union.

“Obviously, later we heard there was a gunshot, but other than that,” Harris said, “there was no indication that this was a truly violent protest, as violent as one as you would worry about.”

Also disconcerting: While Harris said he didn’t support rioters breaking windows or disobeying lawful police orders, he stressed that he understood their frustration. He repeated Donald Trump’s debunked allegations that credible reports of election fraud had not been investigated and absolved the president of any role in fomenting the Capitol invasion. Instead, Harris—one of the Republicans challenging that day’s generally pro forma affair—placed blame with the summer’s Black Lives Matter protestors, whom he claimed had normalized violent political protest.

It went downhill from there.

After Congress reconvened, Harris got into a shouting match and near-tussle with a Democrat. During a Fox Baltimore interview the next morning, he spread the uncorroborated charge that leftist provocateurs were behind the Capitol assault. A week later, he skipped the House vote on impeachment altogether. A week after that, Capitol police stopped him after a handgun in his possession set off a magnetometer near the House chamber (a situation currently under investigation).

Not a good start to the sixth term of this GOP congressman who has said he will run next year? Not necessarily. Even with some Republican constituents joining Democratic officials in calling for his resignation, Andy Harris isn’t likely to pay a political price for his mounting controversies. The way his district is currently drawn, Harris’ stature in the eyes of his Trump-loving base might have only grown.

“The Democrats have no one to blame but themselves,” quips Richard Vatz, a conservative Towson University political analyst. In other words, to understand the often out-there politics of Andy Harris, you’ve got to understand the gerrymandering that enables him.

If it’s not obvious yet, Representative Andrew Harris is an anomaly in Maryland. He is the only Republican in the state’s congressional delegation and a Freedom Caucus member, the furthest right bloc in the House Republican Conference. (Founding Freedom Caucus members include Judiciary Committee member Jim Jordan, governor of Florida Ron DeSantis, and Mark Meadows and Mick Mulvaney, both of whom served as the former president Trump’s chief of staff.)

In one of the bluest states in the country, Harris’ stop-sign red district stretches from Assateague Island, up the entire Eastern Shore, and across the northern spine of the state to the Carroll County border of Pennsylvania. The result is that he has cruised to reelection since 2010 (which, to Vatz’s point, is basically how Democrats intended it when they crammed as many Republican precincts into the 1st District as possible).

On one hand, it would be easy to dismiss the 64-year-old Harris as a fringe politician in a hyperpartisan district. He’s a Cockeysville anesthesiologist by profession, and not particularly charismatic. He doesn’t hold any leadership positions. He hasn’t authored significant legislation outside of trying to prevent the legalization of marijuana in D.C. and generally only makes the news when his extreme-right positions place him outside even recent GOP norms.

It’s not a short list. He has expressed support for Hungarian dictator Victor Orban. He was the only House member to vote “present” on a resolution denouncing QAnon. He opposed naming a North Carolina post office after Maya Angelou, calling her a communist. (His politics often smack not just of Trumpism, but McCarthyism.) Unlike say, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, he continued to back Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore after credible allegations of sexual abuse.

In recent years, he voted “no” on both funding for 9/11 first responders, which the House passed 402-12, and recognizing the mass extermination of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire, which passed the House 405-11. Closer to home, he denounced the CDC response to COVID as “a cult of masks” and railed against Governor Hogan’s closure orders at a ReOpen Maryland protest, comparing them to “Communist China” and North Korea.

In March, Harris voted against a resolution to award Congressional Gold Medals to police officers who protected the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The measure, which Harris called “a stunt,” passed 413-12. 

 

“Democrats have no one to blame but themselves,” says Richard Vatz.

 

What remains up in the air at this point, is whether the Old Line State’s Grand Old Party will continue lurching toward Harris and his Freedom Caucus wing and likely put itself out of business in terms of winning statewide office. Or, will it swing back toward Larry Hogan’s brand of traditional conservatism, which has proved capable of winning the most important elected office in Maryland? “The million-dollar question,” says Mileah Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Field Politics Center at Goucher College. It’s a divide analogous to the national GOP’s reckoning in the wake of former President Trump’s stinging election rebuke, the GOP’s loss of the U.S. Senate, and their standard bearer’s second impeachment.

Not surprisingly, given divisions within the GOP, different Republicans answer differently. State delegate and Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga, a former Harris chief of staff who lives in Perry Hall, remains all in on her former boss’ take-no-prisoners brand of politics.

“I’m launching a ‘Keep Harris in the House’ effort,” she told Baltimore in early March. Perhaps more noteworthy, Szeliga admits she’s given thought to running for Congress from the 1st District once Harris steps aside. “I don’t think Andy will be there another 20 years.”

Szeliga represents one direction for Maryland’s GOP and could conceivably run for governor sometime as well. “She would be a U.S. Senator if she lived in Alabama,” one veteran, non-partisan political observer says, paying a compliment, albeit a backhanded one, to her savvy political and communication skills.

Meanwhile, Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, closer in manner and rhetoric to Hogan, sees a potential opening to unseat Harris. Shortly after the events at the Capitol in January, he announced he’s weighing a run against Harris. The term-limited Glassman points to Harris’ oft-repeated campaign pledge not to run for more than six terms, which he recently disavowed, as a case study.

“The pledge he made is a popular one—‘I won’t stay in office more than 12 years and become a product of Washington’—but that’s exactly what has happened to him,” Glassman says. “I don’t know if he was always this conservative, and I wish I had another word, because I consider myself a conservative, or if he’s gotten more conservative since he’s been in Washington. But I feel it’s clear he’s become the very thing he said he was going to avoid by not seeking more than six terms.”

Harris did not make himself available for an interview for this story.

Heather Mizeur, a former State Delegate and talented campaigner with the ability to raise money, is the most prominent Democrat to throw her hat into the ring so far for 2022. But political observers across the board describe her task of upsetting Harris as a near- hopeless cause in the district as constituted.

It was not always this way in Maryland’s 1st District, or the state, for that matter.

For 18 years, Wayne Gilchrest, then a moderate Republican, represented the 1st District. Before him, Democrat Roy Dyson represented the area for a decade. But after Democrats remade the congressional map following the 2010 census, Harris has been untouchable.

The premise for the Democrats in creating the distorted district map was to boost their 6-2 advantage in the House to 7-1. They literally drew long-serving Western Maryland Republican Roscoe Bartlett out of the picture by adding a large portion of Democratic-majority Montgomery County precincts to his district.

Inconceivable today, 20 years ago Maryland’s congressional delegation was split 4-4. From 1993-2003, voters sent Republicans Wayne Gilchrest, Bob Ehrlich, Connie Morella, and Roscoe Bartlett to the Hill. Of course, it’s hard to imagine Gilchrest and Morella in to- day’s GOP. Gilchrest has switched party affiliations, and both were among more than two-dozen former Republican House members last year who announced they backed Joe Biden.

But even with Maryland’s 2-1 Democratic registration advantage, the state’s gerrymandering is crazy. Some Dems admit as much.

“It’s difficult to justify a 7-1 split in the congressional delegation,” says Len Foxwell, the veteran strategist who until recently served as the top adviser to Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot and has since launched his own communications firm. “One downside is many people are disenfranchised from casting meaningful general election ballots.”

Change is hard, however, and power difficult to part with. Gerrymandering is built into our political DNA. The practice derives its name from a former Massachusetts governor named Elbridge Gerry. Described as “a nervous, birdlike little person” by a biographer, Gerry was both a signer of the Declaration of Independence and the brains behind the dubious legislation that created a misshapen political district in his home state in 1812.

The result is Harris has little incentive to appeal to the widest swath of voters. He can meet with a white supremacist on the Hill—he later said he didn’t know the man’s background—and call Christine Blasey Ford a “troubled woman” with “psychological problems,” without worry. In the past, as Gilchrest says, the 1st District, which used to include the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland, shared a more libertarian bent and a concern for the Chesapeake Bay. Now, the 1st is represented by someone with a lifetime 3-percent score from the League of Conservation Voters.

Adding to the polarization in Maryland, as elsewhere, local jurisdictions are also gerrymandered. According to Foxwell’s research—he teaches a class around some of the wonky details at Johns Hopkins—more than 75 percent of Maryland’s jurisdictions are de facto monopolies. Baltimore’s 100-percent Democratic City Council isn’t the exception; it’s the rule here. In Montgomery County it plays out blue, but on the Eastern Shore and in Western Maryland, it’s a GOP-only show. “The result is an increasingly corrosive effect,” Foxwell says.

 

Harris has little incentive to appeal to the widest swath of voters.

 

Earlier this year, Hogan created an independent commission to address gerrymandering, but power rests in the Democratic legislature. Suffice it to say, Senate President Bill Ferguson quickly shot down the idea of a dramatic overhaul.

In the end, says Doug Mayer, Hogan’s former top communications strategist, Harris is less a cause than a symptom of what’s wrong with gerrymandering and GOP politics. For starters, he’d like to see a state map where four congressional seats are largely “safe” for Democrats, two for Republicans, and two up for grabs, reflecting the state’s party registrations. But he’s too much of a realist to be optimistic.

Mayer is similarly skeptical regarding any significant move away from Trump and Trumpism by the Maryland GOP or national GOP base and adherents like Harris.

“Donald Trump is the litmus test for Republicans,” says Mayer, now with the Annapolis-based Strategic Partners and Media, a highly regarded Republican campaign consulting firm. “As a long as the Republican Party stays a cult of personality, it’s going be a problem here and nationally to win.”

After a 22-month investigation into President Donald Trump’s possible collusion with Russia, special counsel Robert Mueller’s 448-page report garnered riveting attention across the country Thursday after a redacted version was made public.

The key findings span a range of conclusions, and frustratingly to some, no conclusion in one key matter—the allegations of obstruction of justice.

The report found there were numerous contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Russians affiliated with the foreign government during the run-up to the 2018 election and afterward. But the special counsel did not establish that there was sufficient evidence to indict the president, or any Trump campaign official, with conspiring with Russian intelligence operatives to influence the election.

However, the Mueller investigation did find repeated examples in which the president directed officials around him to halt or derail the inquiry, including attempting to get Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to oust Mueller. Trump’s efforts failed because those officials did not comply with the president’s wishes and demands, according to the report.

“The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests,” the special counsel determined.

Rosenstein, who was nominated by Trump to his position, served as U.S. attorney for the district of Maryland from 2005 to April 2017. Following Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the investigation, Rosenstein appointed Mueller, a former director of the FBI, to head the inquiry.

Ron Weich, dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law, said that even without further indictments of president’s campaign team, the release of the report was important and necessary for the American people “to see the full conduct the president and his team.”

“The narrative of the report reveals the campaign willingly accepted and encouraged assistance from a foreign adversary, including [former Trump campaign manager] Paul Manafort, who shared campaign polling information to help Russia influence the election,” Weich said.

Among others, Manafort, former deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates, and Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos have all already pled or been found guilty of crimes charged by Mueller’s team, though those convictions were not directly related to their campaign work.

Mueller’s team also declined to prosecute the president’s son, Donald Jr., the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and other campaign members for their participation in the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-connected lawyer, who had promised political “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. In part, investigators said, because they couldn’t prove that they “willfully” violated the law.

In terms of Mueller’s decision not to indict the president on obstruction of justice charges, Weich, who served as an assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice during the Obama administration, noted that according to DOJ guidelines, a sitting president couldn’t be indicted. The decision to remove a president is essentially left up to Congress, which has the power to impeach.

That said, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who represents Maryland’s 5th District, told CNN that he does not expect impeachment proceedings to move forward.

“Based on what we have seen to date, going forward on impeachment is not worthwhile at this point,” Hoyer told CNN. “Very frankly, there is an election in 18 months and the American people will make a judgment.”

“I think Bob Mueller is a cautious man, a cautious prosecutor,” said Weich, who knows Mueller, the director of the FBI during his time at the DOJ, as well Rosenstein, whom he met after taking over as dean of the law school at the University of Baltimore in 2012. “Both Bob Mueller and Rod Rosenstein have sterling reputations.” Rosenstein will be the commence speaker at University of Baltimore School of Law’s graduation ceremony in May.

Overall, reactions to the report’s conclusions fell largely along well established partisan divides.

U.S. Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, who represents Maryland’s 2nd District, pointed to “at least 10 instances” in the report in which President Trump attempted to interfere with the Mueller investigation. He encouraged all Americans to read the report, in particular, the sections on obstruction of justice “so they can determine for themselves if the behavior described in this report is becoming of a United States President.”

In a statement, Maryland U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, said Congress must subpoena the full Mueller report and all underlying documents. “This report catalogues in excruciating detail a proliferation of lies by the President to the American people, as well as his incessant and repeated efforts to encourage others to lie,” Cummings wrote.

Cummings also criticized current Attorney General William Barr’s favorable summary of the report earlier this month and again during a Thursday morning press conference. “Contrary to AG Barr’s attempts at misdirection, it is crystal clear from the report that DOJ’s policy against indicting a sitting President played a key role in Special Counsel Mueller’s analysis—in fact, it is the very first point in the obstruction section of his report.”

In the report’s conclusion in the obstruction section, the Mueller team said, “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, from Maryland’s 1st District, called the investigation “two years of wasted time, energy, and $25 million” in a tweet Thursday. “It’s time we move on from partisan politics to issues Americans truly care about, like securing our border, addressing the opioid crisis, and continuing to grow our economy.”

In terms of how the Mueller report plays out politically, Richard Vatz, Towson University professor of rhetoric and communication, called the investigation document “a perfect Rorschach test.”

“Republicans will take a look and say, ‘See what did I tell you?’ and smile,” Vatz said. “Democrats will take a look and say, “See what did I tell you?’ and smile.

“The president has never had a majority of the country’s support, but [the report’s release] will harden his base,” Vatz continued. “And the 30 percent that despise him will despise him even more. The question will become: If the economy keeps growing and there are no major foreign entanglements, will he get movement from those in the middle when the election comes around?”

On Saturday, in one of the slimmest votes in American history of 50-48, Judge Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States amid controversial sexual misconduct claims from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. He was sworn in promptly after the vote by both Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy—whom he is replacing—in a private ceremony.

This is considered a major victory for the Trump administration and Senate Republican leaders who have made stockpiling conservative judges a signature issue. At 53, Kavanaugh is young enough to serve on the Supreme Court for decades if not more.

“I applaud and congratulate the U.S. Senate for confirming our GREAT NOMINEE, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to the United States Supreme Court,” President Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon. “Later today, I will sign his Commission of Appointment, and he will be officially sworn in. Very exciting!”

Maryland officials were not pleased with Kavanaugh’s confirmation and made their grievances known on social media:

Senator Chris Van Hollen, who voted no to the confirmation, believes that the allegations against Kavanaugh should have prevented him from obtaining the seat on the high court.

Maryland gubernatorial candidate Ben Jealous also expressed his opposition to the confirmation.

Officials on the other side of the aisle were pleased with the decision to vote him in.

Before the vote, Governor Larry Hogan declined to say whether he would confirm Kavanaugh if he were a senator.

“I’m glad that actually happened, that there was an FBI investigation,” Hogan told The Sun. “I have frankly no involvement in that. I’ve never taken any position on any Supreme Court nominee. I’m not qualified to make those decisions. I’m not a member of the Senate. I haven’t seen the report. I haven’t watched the testimony. I’m working 15, 18 hours a day, seven days a week. I’m not sitting home watching television. I’ve followed what’s happening, but I don’t feel educated enough to make that decision.”

Today former FBI director James Comey told the the Senate Intelligence Committee that he believes he was fired by President Donald Trump because of concerns with the Russia investigation. Due to this mistrust, Comey testified, he documented their private conversations, appointed a special counsel to probe the administration, and accused White House officials of telling “lies, plan and simple.”

In numerous, seemingly uncomfortable, conversations with President Trump, Comey said he was asked for his “loyalty” and to abandon the FBI’s investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 

Several Maryland representatives had varying reactions to the bombshell testimony, including U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who called the details “disturbing.” 

“There is no reason to doubt the integrity of Mr. Comey’s recollection of how Mr. Trump repeatedly used the weight of the presidency to ask a law enforcement official to drop an investigation,” Cardin said in a statement. “Such inappropriate actions cannot be simply written off to a learning curve.”

Cardin said it should further encourage his colleagues to cosponsor his legislation to create an independent, 9/11-style commission to investigate Russia’s actions during the 2016 presidential campaign. 

Other local representatives had a different takeaway from Comey’s testimony today.

“I am disturbed by Mr. Comey’s statement that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to refer to the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email servers as a ‘matter’ instead of an ‘investigation,'” Rep. Andy Harris said in a statement. “If true, this would in fact demonstrate a clear bias by Ms. Lynch and an attempt to influence public perception of Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign.”

The testimony was also of special interest to Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, which is running an investigation into possible Russian collusion. Today, he announced that Rep. Trey Gowdy, of South Carolina, was chosen by the Republican Steering Committee as the new Committee Chairman, subject to final approval.

“I offer my sincerest congratulations to Rep. Gowdy on his new role as Chairman of the Oversight Committee,” Cummings said in a statement. “I look forward to working with him in a constructive and bipartisan manner on an agenda that serves the interests of the American people.”

 Cardin concluded his statement with another note of bipartisanship, urging both sides of the aisle to investigate Russia’s interference with the American political system.

“It is time for Republican leadership in Congress to acknowledge publicly how dangerous the president’s actions and rhetoric have been to American rule of law—the very foundation of our nation,” he said. “We need an independent commission to get to the heart of Russia’s interference in our country and to make public its findings and recommendations for how we can avoid this kind of nightmare in the future.”

Shortly after the Comey hearing, Sen. Chris Van Hollen went down to the Senate floor to urge Congress to pass sanctions on Russia. 

“Right now the world is looking at the United States and asking why we haven’t imposed tougher sanctions on Russia for its unprecedented and multifaceted campaign to undermine our elections,” he said. “There is no excuse for inaction. The United States must show Putin that we will not stand idly by while he attacks our democracy. We need to be unified in our resolve and put patriotism over partisanship.”