‘Anthony Brown – The Most Incompetent Man in Maryland.’

And oh, my, but Maryland Democrat Lt. Governor Anthony Brown is. This is the first ad from Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Hogan:

If you need a primer on why Lt. Governor Brown is incompetent, one can be found here. Executive summary: the Maryland Obamacare exchange was an utter disaster. And I don’t use the term ‘utter disaster’ lightly: we’re talking about almost $126 million being spent on a state exchange that didn’t work and had to be replaced.  And, in case you’re wondering: the replacement is scheduled to cost at least $43 million more dollars of my tax money. Three guesses if that project is going to come in under budget, and the first two don’t count.

This is all relevant to Lt. Governor Brown, of course, because he was the top Democratic official in charge of the state exchange roll-out. As Legal Insurrection notes here, this awkward fact is generating even more awkwardness among Maryland Democrats: they’re kind of stuck simply pretending that’s nothing is wrong, everything is fine – and that Anthony Brown had no role in the state Obamacare exchange. Which is, of course, nonsense:

Of the 14 states that opted to build and run their own health-insurance marketplaces, Maryland was among the earliest and most enthusiastic supporters of what became known as “Obamacare.” And it became the second state, trailing California, to enact legislation creating an exchange.

Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (D), the highest-ranking elected official charged with implementing the law, was invited to speak across the country about the state’s early success. The Obama administration began depositing tens of millions of dollars in state accounts to pay for development, thinking Maryland’s exchange might be built so early that other states could copy it.

But out of public view, reports of trouble started arriving.

That story is from January 2014. And come, let me conceal nothing from you: at the time, I assumed that this would hurt Brown more in the primary than it actually did. I still find it bemusing that the Democrats picked, indeed, the Most Incompetent Man In Maryland…

Moe Lane (crosspost)