Anderson kept the city delegation chair post he has held for four years after he apologized profusely and got a tongue-lashing from his fellow Democrats, who said they were disappointed and disrespected by his action.
“My apologies to you for any embarrassment I might have caused by my action,” Anderson said.
He said he still supported the Tea Party’s opposition to tax increases and for reduced government spending, “as long as their agenda remains fiscal,” not social policy.
“The Tea Party was willing to accept me,” Anderson said, even appointing him vice chairman — though they were aware of his generally liberal position on social issues.
“We need to look at the waste in government,” Anderson said. But for some of his city colleagues, “it was like I joined the Ku Klux Klan.”
Most of the 15 delegates at the emergency delegation meeting Wednesday morning accepted Anderson’s apology, but not without giving him a piece of their mind about the Tea Party.
“It is more than a fiscal movement. It is a social movement,” said Del. Maggie McIntosh, “a Democrat with a big D” who chaired the unified Democratic statewide campaign last year.
McIntosh said the Tea Party was one of the best organized grassroots movements in the country, and was “a subset of the Republican Party.”
She said the Tea Party positions ran counter to the best interests of Baltimore City, which is already facing loss of funding in this year’s budget.
Del. Cheryl Glenn said, “I know we all make mistakes but this was a huge one.”
Even the soft-spoken queen mother of the delegation, Del. Hattie Harrison, 84, told Anderson she was “really disappointed” in him.
“I don’t think we should replace you now,” Harrison said, but there will be an election at the end of the year, she said pointedly.
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1 comment:
If he can't stand a smackdown from dens the people of the constitution have little use for him.
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