Former planning secretary elected Republican chair

Low on cash, party members remain high on prospects for 2010

Friday, Nov. 20, 2009

Scott, who was planning secretary under Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), pledged to raise more money for the financially strapped GOP. She also said she would work with the party's elected officials, who repeatedly sparred with former chairman Dr. James Pelura.

"We can do for you what you need us to do," said Scott, who served as mayor of Bowie and on the Prince George's County Council, but now lives in Queen Anne's County.

About 300 attended the Maryland Republican Party convention, where central committee members from Baltimore city and the state's 23 counties voted on Pelura's replacement.

Pelura, an Anne Arundel County veterinarian, faced growing criticism for the party's meager fundraising and failure to register more GOP voters since he became chairman in 2007. Republicans in the General Assembly also bristled at his attempts to dictate party policy.

Scott faced only nominal opposition from Daniel Vovak, who ran for the U.S. Senate in 2006 wearing a white wig, a symbol from the colonial era, and called himself "The Wig Man."

He entered the race claiming allegiance to the GOP's forebears, the Whig Party, and renamed himself "The Whig Man."

Vovak received 45 votes to Scott's 610 in a complex weighted vote system the party used.

In previous chairmanship elections, the GOP's voting system favored Maryland's largest counties. After about an hour of debate, the party agreed to a new system that shifted some of the power away from the larger counties and allocated them more evenly.

The party has about $5,600 in the bank, according to a report released at the convention. The party's executive committee Friday night passed a 2010 budget that anticipates raising $438,000 and spending $339,000. The difference will be put toward outstanding debts, including money that the party owes to Michael Steele's campaign account.

Staff writer Alan Brody contributed to this report.