I lived in Maryland for most of my life. Occasionally I wrote to my congressional representatives, and I always voted even though I knew it didn’t make much difference in safely blue Maryland.
For the 2008 election I wrote postcards for Virginia and campaigned at George Mason University in Fairfax County and I like to think in my small way, I helped Obama win Virginia that year.
My husband and I moved to Virginia and I got more politically involved that year, going to Moveon.org meetings, canvassing, and hosting meet-the-candidate get togethers at my house.
Living in Virginia I became more politically aware. My district delegate and Congressional representatives were both republicans. I wrote letters to them but they were adamantly opposed to doing anything to help Virginians.
The Affordable Care Act was on my radar. I was thrilled that Obama pushed to get it passed, but frustrated that it wouldn’t help many of the people I knew until 2013 when insurance companies had to accept people with preexisting conditions. I knew a lot of people in their late 50s and early 60s who were living on tenterhooks until they were old enough to be on Medicare. They were unable to get jobs that would provide health insurance.
And then the Supreme Court ruled that states didn’t have to expand their Medicaid programs. Naturally our republican controlled general assembly refused to expand Medicaid, leaving 400,000 Virginians out in the cold, not poor enough to be on Virginia’s very limited Medicaid and not making enough money to get their health insurance subsidized by the Affordable Care Act.
It was a frustration for people in Virginia, but people in Maryland were blithely unaware of the dilemma for Virginia and other republican states that refused to expand Medicaid.
A Maryland friend with very long hospitalizations had medical coverage, unaware that if he had been living in Virginia he would not have coverage and could go bankrupt, not get treatment… or die.
But my Maryland friends, family, and former students live in a utopia-like state where they do not have to worry about the things Virginians worry about.
Even when Larry Hogan was elected it wasn’t a worry for people, even Democrats. They liked the four years of Hogan rule and thought of him as being moderate. But a lot of people in Maryland, even Democrats, don’t realize that a strong Democratic legislature is what kept Hogan from doing anything overtly right wing.
On the issue of reproductive justice and access to abortion care, Hogan vetoed a law to increase the number of trained providers and availability of services, including in the two-thirds of Maryland counties without a single provider. Fortunately for Marylanders (and maybe some nearby Virginians) the legislature overrode his veto. The law enables nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and physician assistants to provide abortions with training and requires most insurance plans to cover abortions.
If republicans had a majority in the senate, Hogan would be unlikely to defy republican leadership and vote against a national ban on abortion. After all, do any republicans in Congress actually vote against republican leadership?